BEIJING, Dec. 22 -- Farmer Li Cuiqin took her first shower in early November - the first since she got married and settled down three decades ago.

    The 52-year-old from Xia'anmen Village of Dingbian County, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, lives on the Loess Plateau, one of the country's driest areas.

    Li had to walk more than 1 hour to collect water from a spring where dozens of local people queued day and night.

    But thanks to the Mother Water Vault Programme conducted by the China Women's Development Fund under the All-China Women's Federation, a water vault was built in Li's yard two months ago to collect rainwater.

    "We suffered enough from water shortages and could see no end," Li said. She, like many of her fellow farmers, suffers from serious disease and arthritis from drinking fluorine-loaded saline water drawn from local water sources.

    "Now I have seen hope because I have cleaner water," said Li, who has also started to plant vegetables in her yard and raise a sheep.

    Rainfall has become the only water resource of Li's and other villages in northern Shaanxi and North China's Inner Mongolia and Yunnan in Southwest China, where the programme helped local farmers build underground vaults.

    A typical water vault has a big catch basin - about the size of the yard floor standard covered with cement. Rain waters inks from two or three holes through pipes to the basin below.

    After sedimentation and purification, the summer's rainwater collection can provide drinking and irrigation water for a family for almost a year.

    The programme has helped roughly 1 million rural people realize adequate water since 2001, said Qin Guoying, deputy secretary-general of the fund.

    "Most of the fund comes from donations from enterprises and individuals," Qin said.

    The US soft drink PepsiCo (China) has donated more than 2 million yuan (US$240,000) to build more than 1,400 water vaults in Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi in the past three years, helping more than 11,000 people. Enditem

(Source: China Daily)