Women learn traditional Yi-style embroidery at a farmer school in Xide county, Sichuan province. YE ZIZHEN/CHINA DAILY

There are only two such restaurants in the village. However, locals go to the cooking class mainly to cultivate healthier, more economical eating habits. Traditionally, the Yi people have been used to a dish called tuotuorou, meaning to boil meat in large pieces, usually weighing 50 to 100 grams for one piece.

The farmer school of Xiaoshan village in Mianshan town, Xide county, is the first in the country.

The village with a population of 1,340 where locals used to plant potatoes and keep livestock for a living was once the only impoverished village in the town.

Some villagers bought young pigs in 2015 in hope of developing a breeding industry, but they failed. With an average altitude of 2,800 meters, all the 20 pigs froze to death that winter.

Therefore, in 2016, the village organized the locals to teach them how to properly breed livestock.

Lama Wusha, the village's agricultural technician, recalls the first classes: "At first the villagers didn't trust vaccines because the livestock would feel uncomfortable and didn't eat for the first days after injection."

However, as the livestock injected didn't get ill and survived the next year, the villagers began to trust the school and rushed for vaccines.

According to Zeng Siming, who is from the provincial department of emergency management and now taking a temporary post at the village's Party committee, the farmer school has held hundreds of classes over the past four years.