Although the mainland officially downgraded the severity of the drought afflicting the southwest in the first week of May, in Yunnan province relief has only come in the form of scattered showers. The worst drought in a century has devastated nature reserves and caused migratory birds to move on - raising the risk of insects ravaging crops.
When the crops materialise that is.
On the outskirts of Wenge village, Xuanwei county, about a four-hour drive past parched fields from Kunming , 48-year-old farmer Chui Yongfa says that intermittent rain over the past two weeks gave him hope to plant his crop of corn.
'It's two months late,' he says, adding that he doesn't know how much the drought will cost him. Chui says he only generally makes around 3,000 to 4,000 yuan a year, but this year his income will be 'a lot less'.
In the village, residents queue patiently to draw water from wells. They are lucky. At least Wenge's wells have water. Chinese language news items from Yunnan regularly report on villagers having to walk kilometres to fetch water and the government is reportedly considering relocating many remote mountain villages where people have no natural sources of water if rain does not come by late May.
If that does not happen, Zhu Youyong, president of Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, told the website Nature News that the results would be 'unthinkable'.