Bright golden leaves lead villagers onto the road to prosperity

"The organic tea we sell now is generally 980 yuan per jin, and the most expensive can reach 5,000 yuan per jin." At the taping of the 33rd episode of the province's "Poverty Alleviation and Prosperity TV Night School," Fu Xiaofang, head of the Wulilu Organic Tea Cooperative in Yacha Town, Baisha Li Autonomous County, brought organic tea with distinctive Baisha characteristics and, drawing on her own experience, shared with the audience Baisha's organic tea cultivation and management experience, as well as her clear ideas on how to use the organic tea industry to help villagers escape poverty and become prosperous.

Fu Xiaofang said she was born into a poor family in a mountainous area. To attend junior high school, she had to cross several mountains, and it was rare for her to go home. Because of poverty, she brought her weekly food from home to school, and kept only 2 yuan a week for emergencies. It was precisely this harsh growing environment that forged Fu Xiaofang's tenacious spirit of being willing to study hard and endure hardship.

After graduating from vocational high school, Fu Xiaofang sold dried fish and grew bananas, but due to a lack of understanding of the market and depending on the weather for a living, she ultimately failed. By chance, she learned about the organic tea industry from a TV financial channel, and at the same time discovered that the mountainous land of Baisha was also very suitable for growing organic tea, so she resolved to devote herself to studying it.

Fu Xiaofang said the biggest problem in cultivation was insect pests. "When passing by the tea garden at night, I could clearly hear the sound of insects eating the tea leaves, which at one point caused me heavy losses. But considering that many fellow villagers were growing tea along with me, I held on to a sense of responsibility and gritted my teeth to persevere."

In Fu Xiaofang's tea garden, from tea cultivation to picking and processing, there is a strict set of institutional requirements. The organic tea produced has a green and bright liquor, a fresh and mellow aroma, a smooth and throat-soothing taste, and a full sweet aftertaste. Because chemical fertilizers cannot be used, Fu Xiaofang planted stylo between the tea trees to feed sheep, and the sheep manure produced and green manure composted together to form natural fertilizer; to deal with insect pests, she used biological natural enemies and colored boards in the tea garden, forming a delicate ecological balance. Today, her organic tea has already been sold as far away as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangxi and even abroad, and has obtained international certification; at the same time, she has also led the 78 households of the cooperative and many other growers to escape poverty together, and their lives have gradually become more affluent.

At the event, Fu Xiaofang and her husband also invited the host and the audience to taste the organic tea together.

As a rural woman who went from poverty to prosperity, Fu Xiaofang led by example, treating the cooperative as her home and taking growing good tea and producing good tea as her life's career. At the event, Li Yaofu, a member of the Wulilu Organic Tea Cooperative, said: "Through working in the cooperative over these years, my old habit of not working seriously and clocking out right on time has completely changed. Now I learn from Fu Xiaofang, and not only do I strictly require myself to complete work with quality and quantity, but I also consciously supervise my colleagues' work."

When talking about how to get fellow villagers to change their old ways, Fu Xiaofang said she motivated everyone's enthusiasm for work by establishing a fair distribution system such as daily wage settlement and more pay for more work. Second, she also treated the pursuit of perfection in the business as the cooperative's cultural inheritance. Now the cooperative members are positive and upward, and their lives have more to look forward to.

At the event, Fu Yumiao, a member of the Wulilu Organic Tea Cooperative and a college student who returned to her hometown, also told everyone about her journey of choosing to join the cooperative after hesitation and struggle, and developing the cooperative's e-commerce business. As a college student who studied away from home and developed her career away from home, her attachment to and love for her native land became the driving force for Fu Yumiao to return to her hometown. Now, like Fu Xiaofang, Fu Yumiao also takes leading the people of her hometown to prosperity together as her own goal.