Lobsang's Small Courtyard Grows a Big Article on Prosperity: Courtyard Planting Boosts Income

Following the flowers all the way, the interview team arrived at a beautiful village in Dexing Township, Medog County - Dexing Village. Standing at an open vantage point and looking down, beneath the swirling clouds and mist, Dexing Village showed faint green mountains and gently flowing waters, and the blue roofs of the Monba courtyards stood out as especially fresh and refined. This place not only has beautiful scenery, but also has a magical fruit tree that, while improving people's diet, has become the "money tree" for every household to escape poverty and become prosperous.

Six years ago, cadres aiding Tibet in Medog told the villagers of Dexing Village: "If you want to get rich, you can't rely only on growing vegetables. You have to plant something that can make money, such as loquats, pomelos, peaches..."

After hearing the words of the cadres aiding Tibet, Lobsang, the Party branch secretary of Dexing Village, looked at the vegetable plot in the courtyard and began to worry: should he plant fruit trees or continue growing vegetables? "You can't plant fruit trees. What if the fruit trees don't survive or don't bear fruit?" His wife Jin Hong raised an objection at once.

At that time, although Lobsang's courtyard was not large, it was full of vegetables of all kinds, including green vegetables, chili peppers and eggplants. In addition to being self-sufficient, Lobsang could also take some vegetables out to sell to supplement the family income.

After thinking it over again and again, Lobsang felt that growing vegetables could only cover the daily expenses of a family of five, but could not let the family live a better life. So, despite his wife's opposition, he stopped planting all the vegetables in the courtyard and planted more than 40 loquat trees.

Three years of growth, three years of fruiting. Lobsang's persistence back then brought him today's harvest. In 2016, Lobsang's loquat planting brought him nearly 10,000 yuan in net profit. "Compared with growing vegetables before, growing loquats earns much more." Lobsang happily told the reporter.

In order to change the people's outdated business thinking and promote villagers' income growth and prosperity, the cadres aiding Tibet and Lobsang together mobilized the masses to plant fruit trees. With the help of the cadres aiding Tibet, they introduced saplings, dug pits and sowed, weeded and fertilized, and every household in the village planted loquats. Now it is exactly the season when the fruit ripens. The loquat trees are lush with branches and leaves, and the fruit hangs heavily on the branches. The whole village is filled with the delicate fragrance of loquat fruit. "Try some. These fruits have not been sprayed with pesticides." As he spoke, Lobsang casually picked a few golden-yellow fruits and handed them to the reporter.

According to Lobsang, although loquats have brought the villagers a decent income, the villagers still need to improve in areas such as loquat cultivation and large-scale management. Pointing to the loquat grove in front of him, Lobsang said: "When these loquat trees were small, we would still weed around them, but after they grew bigger, we hardly managed them much. Moreover, people in the village always think that if a fruit tree grows luxuriantly, it will bear a lot of fruit, and they are reluctant to prune the branches and leaves, so that both the yield of the fruit trees and the quality of the fruit are on the low side."

"For this reason, the village decided to invite technicians to prune the branches and trim the leaves of the loquat trees in the village, and to systematically teach the villagers planting techniques." Lobsang continued.

In addition to loquat trees, Lobsang's courtyard also has honey pomelos, oranges and sugarcane. Whenever the fruit trees bloom and bear fruit, the scenery in the whole courtyard is extremely beautiful, with luxuriant branches and leaves, fragrant flowers and abundant fruit, and sturdy mother hens leading chicks to forage and play under the trees. All of this has now become a beautiful sight in Dexing Village.

Relying on his own intelligence and diligence, Lobsang not only enabled his own family to live a well-off life, but also led the villagers onto the road to prosperity together. Now, with smooth roads, Dexing Village has closer ties with the outside world, and quite a few tourists even come to the village to experience rural life, directly driving the development of the village's tourism economy.