Li Kui Leads Villagers Out of Poverty Toward Prosperity
Ziyang selenium-enriched tea has tender, plump and uniform buds and leaves, visible white down, an emerald green color, a high and lasting aroma with floral notes, a tender green and bright liquor, and a fresh, sweet aftertaste. Just as a Ziyang folk song goes: "On the third day of the third month, go up to the tea hills; fragrance drifts from hill to hill, fine tea gardens everywhere." It is precisely this uniquely endowed selenium-enriched tea resource that has made the tea industry the economic mainstay for farmers in Ziyang County.
Li Kui, 42 years old, lives in Dalian Village, Huangu Town, Ziyang County, by the Han River. From the moment he smelled the fragrance of selenium-enriched tea and tasted its flavor, his bond with tea was formed. "Tender green, faintly yellow, richly moistening spring; at picking time, I hear one must give up meat and pungent foods; I will not beg with money but with poetry - I ask, how many mountain elders are there?" This is a tea-begging poem left by the Tang Dynasty poet Yao He when he visited Huangu Beach and tasted fine tea. Li Kui was deeply impressed by this poem in his childhood.
At the age of 30, Li Kui began serving as a village cadre. In the villagers' memory, for more than ten years he has been mobilizing villagers to plant tea bushes and guiding them in scientific tea cultivation and processing. Today, he is the director of the Dalian Village Committee, and Dalian now has nearly 3,000 mu of tea gardens, becoming a well-known specialized selenium-enriched tea village. Li Kui has also become the leader in Dalian Village's efforts to escape poverty and achieve prosperity through selenium-enriched tea.
In order to make the tea bushes grow better and yields higher, Li Kui is willing to endure hardship and loves to study. He has attended tea science training courses organized by the county many times, and whenever he has the chance, he discusses tea cultivation and processing techniques with tea science professors and experts, then returns to his own tea garden to conduct experiments. As early as 2012, he obtained a professional tea farmer qualification certificate, and was among the first certified, scientifically tea-growing professional tea farmers in the entire town.
Li Kui became an expert in tea cultivation and processing. He has summarized many tips for tea garden management, and keeps his own more than 10 mu of tea garden in perfect order. One person's prosperity is not true prosperity; Li Kui's dream is to help the surrounding people escape poverty and become prosperous. He generously passes on his tea cultivation and processing "secrets" to other tea farmers.
In August 2011, under the guidance of the local government and tea technicians from the Agricultural Broadcasting and Television School, Li Kui founded the first professional farmer tea cooperative in Dalian Village. He was determined to become the village's leader in prosperity by vigorously developing tea cultivation, and to use his own example to guide tea farmers onto the road to prosperity through scientific and large-scale planting. In the first batch, 88 farmer households joined the cooperative. The cooperative's tea gardens adopt unified management, unified processing, and unified sales, with shared risks and shared benefits, aiming to help more people master tea cultivation and processing techniques and move out of poverty toward prosperity.
As a deputy to the municipal people's congress, Li Kui has always adhered to the purpose of serving the people. He has hired tea experts many times to give on-site lectures and guidance at the village tea gardens; funded poor tea farmers to expand their tea gardens, helping them escape poverty and become prosperous; and strictly controlled quality in tea sales, emphasizing commercial reputation and treating people with sincerity, thereby winning customers' trust and praise.
Under Li Kui's leadership and service, tea farmers in Dalian Village joined his cooperative one after another, and the cooperative's tea garden scale continued to grow. In 2016, among the cooperative's 40 registered poor households, tea income alone increased per capita income by more than 3,000 yuan, and the 40 households successfully shook off poverty and were delisted. Dalian Village achieved a stage-by-stage victory in its poverty alleviation efforts.