A year after moving into their new homes, nearly 5,000 relocated residents enjoyed a traditional yet fresh Chinese New Year this year in Aizhai town of Jishou, Hunan province.

Following the beginning of the Daxingzhai Reservoir project in 2023, a total of 4,904 people from 1,141 households, many of them from the Miao ethnic group, needed to relocate from their ancestral homes.

Back then, many of them still lived in wooden stilt houses in the deep mountains. Eighty-year-old Yang Yongshou, who had never left the mountains, jokingly lamented that he could only see a patch of sky "as big as his palm".