Road from Urumqi to Taqalo

Author: Nana Sisvadze
15.09.16
Edition: Entrepreneurship

Urumqi is a city in China, Taqalo - a village in Marneuli, Georgia. What could these two completely different places have in common? Our story is about the cohabitation of people from these two places.

Chinese agronomists have come a long way from Urumqi to Taqalo to work in the so called “Chinese Greenhouses”. They employ new technologies, unknown to the local farmers who are still using traditional farming methods. They say that the soil here is very fertile, and should be used as much as possible.

Powered by solar energy, the facility lies 4 meters underground. The soil is amassed on one side, creating a kind of wall which collects energy from the sun. In the evening the greenhouse is covered by thick felt, maintaining a regular temperature of 25-30 C regardless of the season.

Chinese and Azeris work side by side. The language has been a major barrier - they were barely able to communicate at the beginning, however today the two communities learned each other’s languages. The greenhouse employs all the locals, and it’s the only source of income for them.

Taqalo is the village of 780 people, who are mainly engaged in agriculture. The people of Taqalo sell artisan cheese and local milk, and also produce harvested from their gardens, in the municipal market of Marneuli. “Chinese Greenhouse” created working places and became a source of income for the villagers.

Join us, we’ll tell take you to a Chinese greenhouse that changed the life of an Azeri village in Georgia.

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