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BEIJING, Feb. 1-- As a time-honored tradition for preparing for Chinese New Year, Spring Festival shopping in cities has become more rustic this year. Pepper sauce from Guizhou, navel oranges from Jiangxi and beef shank from Anhui are part of the rural specialties Beijing-based IT engineer Zhang Xin bought for the upcoming week-long Spring Festival holiday. They are all products from poor villages. Zhang bought some of the delicacies from e-commerce platforms, and some from a fair held in his community designed to promote products from rural areas. The rural specialties sales boom in urban areas is a result of China's all-out efforts to achieve its goal of lifting its rural population out of poverty by 2020. Wholesalers, e-commerce companies and supermarkets are encouraged to establish stable and long-term cooperative relationships with impoverished villages to power the country's poverty eradication campaign, according to a plan released Tuesday by 10 government agencies. E-COMMERCE PUSH Social e-commerce giant Pinduoduo showed that orders of rural specialties exceeded 55 million from Jan. 4 to Jan. 24 in its online Spring Festival fair, a record high. A local pickle product in central China's Hunan Province developed by the platform's poverty-reduction program sold 15,800 bottles on the platform the day it was launched. Total sales exceeded 3.3 million yuan (490,500 U.S. dollars) so far, bringing additional income of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan for over 200 rural households. | 
