THEN VS NOW: Meet the witnesses to a rural metamorphosis in SW China

Editor's note: Anti-poverty efforts have turned Abuluoha village in Southwest China from an isolated leprosarium into a promising rural community. In this set of images, photographer Jiang Hongjing captures the changes happening to and around local individuals and families over a 15-year time span. Meet them to visualize this great rural metamorphosis.

Abuluoha, a village encompassed by mountains and cliffs, is located in a river valley about 60 kilometers from Butuo county in Southwest China's Sichuan province.

As its name in the native Yi language denotes, the village was once "a place off the beaten path", serving as an isolated treatment center for local leprosy patients in the 1960s. Years after the disease was eliminated in the area, Abuluoha became an administrative village in 2007.