Tan Xiujing becomes the leader guiding mountain villagers to prosperity

By growing cherries, Tan Xiujing led the villagers of Sanbanshi Village onto the road to prosperity.

He was once an ordinary farmer in Sanbanshi Village. After being discharged from the army and returning home, he tied himself closely to the villagers, leading them out of poverty toward prosperity and building a beautiful homeland. He is Tan Xiujing, Party branch secretary and village committee director of Sanbanshi Village, Jieshi Town.

In 1980, Tan Xiujing joined the army and became an artillery scout in the Yanwei Garrison Command. In the army, he was rated as an "activist in learning from Lei Feng" for many consecutive years.

In 1984, Tan Xiujing was discharged and demobilized, returning to his hometown of Sanbanshi Village, Jieshi Town. For more than 30 years, he led the cadres and villagers of Sanbanshi Village in forging ahead on the road of building their hometown and increasing income and prosperity, achieving abundant results. He was elected a deputy to the Weihai Municipal People's Congress, was rated as an "Advanced Individual of Weihai City" in the 2010 environmental improvement work, and was repeatedly rated as an "Outstanding Communist Party Member" by Wendeng.

Sanbanshi Village is a small mountain village with only just over 40 households and 132 people. When he took office in 1984, the village collective economy was weak, and there were still more than 3,000 yuan in debts. With the people poor and the village weak, the problems facing Tan Xiujing were severe.

In order to change the village's backward economic situation as quickly as possible, Tan Xiujing took the villagers around looking for work. When he heard that a unit on Mount Kunyu was recruiting laborers for construction, he took the initiative to contact them, saying he could first contract part of the project and that they could pay the wages after the project was completed and passed inspection. This deeply moved the other party. Relying on a spirit of simplicity and persistence, the village undertook more and more projects, and the scale of the projects grew larger and larger. That same year, the village paid off its debts, and the people praised this new secretary endlessly.

As the village's "head of the household," Tan Xiujing was always thinking about how to make the people's lives a little better and how to make the village collective's income a little greater.

Not long after returning to the village, by chance, Tan Xiujing dug up twenty or thirty cherry seedlings from a neighbor's home. They bore quite a few small cherries. They tasted sweet and tart when he ate them himself, and they were also very popular when served to guests. A light went on for Tan Xiujing: growing cherries might become a way to help the villagers get rich.

Seeing that small cherries were easy to grow and bore abundantly, the villagers all followed suit and began planting them, and the cherry planting area in Sanbanshi Village grew larger and larger.

In 1989, a cannery sent some large cherry seedlings, hoping the villagers would introduce and plant them. However, without experience in growing large cherries, the villagers were worried, and no one dared to try.

Tan Xiujing stepped forward. With the courage of a soldier to face difficulties directly, he was willing to be the masses' "leading goose."

He tried planting 18 large cherry trees at the edge of a field. At first, the large cherries failed to bear fruit for years in a row. Tan Xiujing asked around everywhere, searching for good cultivation methods, tending them carefully, and secretly resolving that he must grow the large cherries well and open up a new way of thinking for the villagers to get rich.

Finally, after five or six years, the large cherries began to bear fruit. Plump cherries hung on emerald branches, delicate and ready to burst, and Tan Xiujing's heart was as sweet as honey.

Large cherries have a long ripening period and many varieties, and picking them is also less trouble than small cherries. As soon as they hit the market, they were deeply welcomed. Tan Xiujing immediately decided to plant all 10 mu of land he had contracted in Wutong'an Village with large cherries.

Seeing that large cherry cultivation had considerable benefits, Tan Xiujing immediately used Party member meetings, village meetings and other means to widely publicize and promote large cherry cultivation. He went to other places many times to learn advanced management experience, introduced fine varieties, and guided the villagers in planting.

He believed that to get rich, they had to change their way of thinking and develop cherries into an industry, making it bigger and stronger. Relying on the courage to be first and the sense of responsibility to take on duties, Tan Xiujing led the people of Sanbanshi Village farther and farther along the road to prosperity through cherry cultivation.

Gradually, cherry cultivation became a trend in the village and became the "money tree" in the villagers' fields.

Today, "green mountains, clear waters and red cherries" has gradually become a signature calling card of Wendeng tourism. From cherry income alone, the per capita annual income of Sanbanshi Village is more than 10,000 yuan.

The village's yellow mud road was rugged and uneven, and the road up the mountain was even more overgrown with weeds. Such an environment could not attract tourists, let alone energize the village's tourism economy. Tan Xiujing understood this deeply.

To this end, he led the villagers to haul stones and fill sand themselves, hardening more than 20,000 sq m of village roads and mountain paths.

Those days of road building, though bitter and tiring, planted the seed of sharing joys and hardships in the hearts of Tan Xiujing and the villagers. "At that time, whenever the village had a little income, we started building roads, and we built them on and off for four or five years," Tan Xiujing said. It was not until 2010 that the road-building project in Sanbanshi Village came to an end.

The mountain spring water in Sanbanshi Village is pure and sweet, and water resources are abundant. Tan Xiujing believed that as long as he did the preparatory work and follow-up services well, he would surely attract a "golden phoenix."

So Tan Xiujing discussed it with the villagers and dug three wells, enabling the mineral water plant that came to invest to quickly begin production. Today, through leasing land, factory buildings, labor and other means, the village collective's annual income can reach 60,000 yuan, completely changing the former appearance of poor people and a weak village.

Right now, the cherries are red and the tourists have come. Tan Xiujing and the villagers of Sanbanshi Village are busy again. Next, he plans to comprehensively carry out the building of a beautiful village, create a cultural and entertainment center, and deeply advance work such as comprehensive toilet conversion and rural tourism, so that Sanbanshi Village's tomorrow will be even better.