PhD graduate gives up a million-yuan salary to return home and farm, leading the whole village to prosperity and earning praise

Seven years ago, Huazi, a doctoral student, had a good job in the city with an annual salary of more than 1 million yuan. However, to fulfill a childhood dream, he quit his job, left his wife behind, and returned to his rural hometown alone to farm with his elderly father. At the time, Huazi's story spread all over the city. Some said he was a bookworm, others said he was foolish, and even his wife Lingling said he was crazy. Yet seven years later, he accomplished one thing, becoming the "outstanding one" in the eyes of the whole village and winning everyone's praise.

That day, Huazi sat eating dinner with his wife and son. Huazi suddenly said to his wife, "Lingling, I quit my job." His wife was startled, put down her chopsticks, and asked in confusion, "You were doing so well, why quit? Were you unhappy? Or did your boss give you a hard time?" Huazi glanced at his wife and said, "Neither. I just want to go back to my hometown and do something."

Huazi explained to his wife why he had quit. It turned out that when Huazi was little, his family was extremely poor. His father was a cripple, and his mother died of illness when he was five. Normally, the villagers, seeing how pitiful his family was, often helped them out. When they had more green vegetables than they could eat, they would send some to his family, and during the Dragon Boat Festival, they would take a few zongzi to his home as well.

Huazi was sensible from a young age and studied especially hard. In the year of the college entrance exam, he was admitted with excellent grades to a key university in the provincial capital. He got into university, but tuition became a problem. To scrape together his tuition, his father borrowed here and there, but only managed to gather half of it. With the school term about to begin and the tuition still not enough, Huazi cried anxiously, and his father was at his wits' end. Just then, the village Party secretary reached out to help them, organizing the whole village to donate money, and only then was the tuition finally raised.

Once in university, Huazi studied while also doing work-study jobs. After graduating, he worked while also pursuing his doctorate. After several years of work, he felt it was time to repay the villagers, so he quit his job and returned to his hometown.

The first thing Huazi did after returning home was accompany his father to work in the fields and conduct an in-depth study of the village's farmland. Skilled in biological research, he quickly discovered that the village's soil was suitable for growing lingzhi (Ganoderma lucidum).

With his father's help, Huazi tried converting half of his family's fields to growing lingzhi. At the time, the villagers all laughed at him, saying this place had grown rice for decades or even hundreds of years, so how could it possibly grow lingzhi? An elder in the village laughed at Huazi behind his back, saying he had studied himself silly, giving up a perfectly good job to come back and compete with farmers for land to plant.

In the first year, Huazi's experiment failed, and all the lingzhi he planted rotted. For a whole year, Huazi had no income at all and even lost a large sum of money. His wife could not understand either and quarreled with him, demanding he return to the city to work, saying that if he did not go back, she would divorce him. Huazi knew his wife was speaking out of anger, did not take it seriously, and continued researching his lingzhi cultivation.

As time flew by, Huazi researched for three years before he finally succeeded in growing lingzhi. Three years later, Huazi contracted several hundred mu of land and established a lingzhi cultivation base. Moreover, he helped the entire village grow lingzhi together. Previously, the villagers' annual income was less than 100,000 yuan, but after they started growing lingzhi, their income doubled.

In just three short years, the whole village became prosperous. Every household built a small Western-style building, and some even bought cars. At this point, everyone gave Huazi a thumbs-up. Even local TV reporters interviewed him. For a time, Huazi became a local celebrity. In an interview with reporters, Huazi said, "I just did an ordinary thing, not worthy of everyone's praise. When I was little, the villagers helped me a lot. Now that I have the ability, I should help them too. This was a childhood dream of mine."

Now, Huazi's dream has come true. However, another headache has come his way. Huazi spends all year in the countryside, while his wife and child are in the city. The couple has lived apart in two places for years, and their affection has gradually faded. Not long ago, his wife proposed divorce. He knows that this time it is real. If he does not return to the city, his wife will definitely divorce him, but he still wants to do more for the villagers. Between family and career, he finds it hard to choose.