Leaders who returned home to get rich are deeply attached to their hometowns and help with poverty alleviation
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 2 (Reporters Zhang Bin, Xu Yang, Gao Jie, Wang Zuokui) In this battle against poverty, there is a special group of people. They are the "golden phoenixes" who flew out of the countryside and, after years of hard work, achieved success in their careers. But in order to change the impoverished face of their hometowns, they chose to return home again and lead their fellow villagers onto a new road to prosperity.
Lanxi County, Heilongjiang: Let officials return to their own townships and villages to help
How can people who came out of the countryside return to their own villages to help? How can the enthusiasm and initiative of poverty alleviation officials be mobilized? Lanxi County in Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province, implements the "Red Gene Project," letting county and township officials return to their own villages and hometowns to help poor households get rich. At present, 2,253 officials at the section and division level or above across the county have returned to their own townships and villages to help.
When reporters came to interview Changchun Village in Changgang Township, the village's first secretary, Huang Jingsheng, was leading officials and the masses in planting trees at the village committee and leveling the courtyard. Huang Jingsheng was born in 1965 in Yongfa Tun, Changchun Village, Changgang Township. He is now director of the Lanxi County Civil Affairs Bureau and is a "big official" who came out of the village. After the "Red Gene Project" was implemented, he served as first secretary of Changchun Village.
Huang Jingsheng's assistance target, Wang Jixian, is an old Party member, 65 years old this year, blind in one eye and with weak vision in the other, a typical case of poverty caused by illness. Reporters had repeatedly heard the story of him running a distillery to escape poverty. "Old Wang has experience using local methods to distill liquor. Last year we helped him with 20,000 yuan to start a small distillery, with an annual production capacity of more than 5,000 jin. Last year his net income was 13,000 yuan, and he has already escaped poverty," Huang Jingsheng said.
Policy guarantees are temporary. If people are to be lifted out of poverty sustainably, there must still be industry. Changchun Village currently has 32 registered poor households, 27 of which fell into poverty because of illness. A case like Wang Jixian, who can escape poverty through a craft, is individual.
In order to keep this group of people, impoverished by illness, from falling behind, Huang Jingsheng began adjusting the agricultural planting structure. He called on the people to plant soybeans. This year the village will plant 350 mu of soybeans. He calculated the figures for reporters: soybean oil is 10 yuan per jin, soybean cake is 2 yuan per jin, 100 jin of soybeans produce 14 jin of soybean oil and 80 jin of soybean cake, and planting soybeans can increase income by 300 yuan per mu. In order to further raise the people's income, Changchun Village will also open an oil processing plant this year. This oil processing plant is a shareholding system; the funds are raised by assistance officials, and the shares are enjoyed by registered poor households.
Huang Jingsheng said that as officials who came out of their own townships and villages, they all want to return home and do something for the people. The people have high expectations, and we cannot let everyone down.
The Gastrodia Brothers of Yunnan: daring to venture and fight, they carved out a road to prosperity
On the Biluo Snow Mountain at an altitude of 2,400 meters in Nujiang, Yunnan, amid swirling clouds and mist, there is a "Gastrodia base" of more than a thousand mu. The owners here are two post-80s Lisu young men, Qu Yihua and Guang Xiongwen. Since 2012, relying on gastrodia, Qu Yihua and Guang Xiongwen have led the elders of their hometown gradually onto the road to prosperity.
Qu Yihua was born in 1983 in Ani Dadi Group, Makua Di Village, Gudeng Township, Lushui County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. He depended on his grandparents since childhood. After dropping out of high school, he left his hometown to work in Myanmar. Through 8 years of accumulation, Qu Yihua became a moderately successful businessman. But in his heart, he always missed his hometown.
In 2012, Qu Yihua heard that gastrodia was in short supply. At this time he remembered his experience of gathering wild gastrodia while farming in his hometown. "Since wild ones can survive, planting them will definitely be no problem too." Qu Yihua felt he had found the point of prosperity for his hometown. Afterwards, he mobilized his cousin Guang Xiongwen to join. At that time Guang Xiongwen was doing IT business in Kunming, with annual income already exceeding 500,000, but after thinking it over again and again, he also decided to join.
The brothers persuaded their fellow villagers to participate in planting gastrodia, but it was very difficult - for the villagers, the fields had been planted with corn for generations, and this gastrodia was wild and had never been planted before. Even if it could be planted, could it be sold? The brothers realized that if they wanted the villagers to change their thinking, they still had to set an example themselves.
After many attempts, they succeeded. In 2015, 43.5 tons of gastrodia sold for 4.35 million, with net income of 1.8 million. The technicians, workers, and some farmers who followed the brothers were the first to taste the benefits. The villagers of Ani Dadi began joining the ranks of gastrodia planting one after another, and the name "Gastrodia Brothers" spread quickly.
In order to solve the villagers' initial investment, the brothers established a rural cooperative, providing seeds free of charge, free technical guidance, and purchasing finished products at a guaranteed minimum price. In all of 2016, the cooperative's total sales reached 10 million yuan, of which farmers accounted for more than 4 million yuan, with profits of about 1.5 million yuan and average household income of about 30,000 yuan. Before this, Ani Dadi Group mainly planted corn and potatoes, with average household net income of 3,000 yuan. Qu Yihua, who was raised by the food of a hundred families, has now increased the villagers' income by 10 times.
A large chicken farmer in Guizhou: driving more than 2,000 poor households out of poverty
Young people in the mountains have chosen to go out to work one after another, but Zhang Yuhui, a large chicken farmer at the Xingnong Breeding Farm in Baqiao Village, Baiceng Town, Zhenfeng County, Qianxinan Prefecture, Guizhou Province, chose to be a "reverse traveler." She built the breeding farm in a mountain hollow at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, eating and living halfway up the mountain. The chicken she raises is called "Jingu Huang," a hybrid breed. Its original ecological, pollution-free nature is exactly her "golden signboard" for breaking into the market.
During the 2009 Spring Festival, clutching the 10,000 yuan she had saved from working in Zhejiang for so many years, Zhang Yuhui ran to three places in succession, but ultimately decided to contract the barren hills at her doorstep, return home to start a business, and care for her aging parents. Zhang Yuhui's breeding farm now has an annual output value of several million yuan.
Because she herself came from hard times, Zhang Yuhui hoped to give a hand to fellow villagers who had not yet escaped poverty. Starting in 2015, Zhang Yuhui took the poor households in the village as her poverty alleviation targets, giving them chicks to raise for half a year and then buying them back for money. When township officials in Baiceng Town saw that this assistance model was good, they used special poverty alleviation funds to buy chicks from Zhang Yuhui and distribute them free to poor households to raise. After a hundred farming households successfully tested the waters with 100 chicks, this year it expanded to 1,000 per household.
Now, Zhang Yuhui has brought in a total of 1,181 households as shareholders and distributed chicks to 2,081 nearby precisely targeted poor households, radiating benefits to and driving poor people in 7 nearby townships (subdistricts) out of poverty.
Yang Zhikui of Fuchuan County, Guangxi: leading Chashan Village to escape poverty as a whole
Yang Zhikui, Party branch secretary of Chashan Village, Fuchuan Yao Autonomous County, Guangxi, likes to drink a cup of rice wine at dinner. Recently, he said he could drink one more cup, because through the township government's matchmaking, the 5 mu of golden melons planted by the cooperative had already signed an order.
After 20 years of being buffeted by the market, Yang Zhikui's fruit and vegetable transport and wholesale business and fertilizer sales both broke through, earning more than 400,000 a year. Business was so good, so why return to rural areas to develop? To this question, Yang Zhikui answered: "Our Chashan Village is too poor. Many people go out to work, and when people leave, the village is empty. I could not bear to watch."
Under Yang Zhikui's arrangement, Chashan Village established a fruit and vegetable cooperative. Among the 53 members, there were not only capable people who had become rich and economic leaders, but also 33 poor households. "We must let poor households participate! Otherwise, I would not have needed to put so much effort into running this cooperative," Yang Zhikui said.
For the cooperative's affairs, Yang Zhikui did a lot of running around. Seedlings, fertilizer, registration... However, what worried him most was whether the expected returns could be obtained after sowing. The signing of the golden melon order gave him confidence. "As long as there is no major disaster, 5 mu of golden melons can bring in about 50,000-60,000 yuan, so everyone's investment recovery is guaranteed," Yang Zhikui said.
According to the agreement reached, the cooperative's dividends will be distributed equally among the 53 participating farming households. Yang Zhikui has no complaints about this. "Some poor households in the village have worked hard all their lives, yet do not even have 20,000-30,000 yuan at home. It is too bitter. How could I have the nerve to quibble with them over who should get more dividends and who should get less," Yang Zhikui said.
Yang Zhikui was calculating another account: "Besides dividends, poor households can also get wages by working at the cooperative. If these 33 households can smoothly escape poverty, then Chashan Village is expected to achieve overall poverty alleviation this year."