Cai Hualiang Makes a Fortune by Growing Fruit

In March of early spring, walking into Gaowei Village in Xiping Township, Xilin County, one sees the hillsides around the village covered with sugar mandarin trees, and public figures busy at work can be seen everywhere in the orchards. In recent years, Gaowei Village has seen a boom in fruit planting, and many farming households now have their own orchards, relying on fruit growing to get out of poverty and onto the road to prosperity. Everyone says it was Cai Hualiang, deputy director of the villagers' committee, who led them to achieve this.

Cai Hualiang is from Pingxin Tun in Gaowei Village. In 2002, the Xilin County Party Committee and county government introduced sugar mandarin cultivation from Sihui, Guangdong. Cai Hualiang actively responded to the call of the local Party committee and government, and with the spirit of "a newborn calf does not fear the tiger" and a willingness to endure hardship, he planted 6 mu of sugar mandarins on his own hillside. At the time, many people had doubts about this. After all, in the village, farmers' family resources are not really substantial; once a trial fails, at best one's strength is greatly weakened, and at worst one is left penniless. To avoid the tragedy of "labor and effort with no benefit, like dipping a bamboo basket in water and coming up empty," Cai Hualiang sought out teachers and friends everywhere, humbly asking for advice. In 2005, the Xilin County Agriculture Bureau organized fruit farmers to go to Wuzhou City to attend sugar mandarin cultivation technique training, and Cai Hualiang actively signed up to attend. In just 8 short days in Wuzhou, he gradually mastered a complete set of sugar mandarin cultivation techniques, from digging pits, selecting seedlings, planting and management to pest and disease control. With technical support, Cai Hualiang's confidence became firm. Time does not betray the diligent, and his hard work finally paid off. Under Cai Hualiang's careful management, by the end of 2006, the 6 mu of sugar mandarins he had planted bore abundant fruit, uniform in size and sweet in taste, with initial production reaching 15,000 jin and income of nearly 30,000 yuan, making him the first local example of growing fruit to become wealthy.

Cai Hualiang became wealthy through growing fruit, and this became a much-told tale among the local people, but Cai Hualiang saw that the people around him were still struggling. In order to help everyone get out of poverty and become wealthy together, he decided to guide the villagers around him to develop sugar mandarin cultivation, and to use the techniques he had learned to provide technical services to the public free of charge. When talking about how to mobilize everyone to grow fruit together, Cai Hualiang said: "At first they neither knew how to grow it nor were willing to grow it. I told them to go to the orchard and look, and one by one they were convinced, and I enticed them to grow fruit." Under Cai Hualiang's demonstration and encouragement, Gaowei Village has now planted more than 1,200 mu of high-quality sugar mandarins, averaging more than 5 mu per household, and many poor households, under Cai Hualiang's careful guidance, have embarked on the road to prosperity.

In order to adapt to market demand and put the whole village's fruit cultivation on the path of scaled and industrialized development, in 2014 Cai Hualiang organized local growers to establish the Xilin County Jinmandi Sugar Mandarin Production and Marketing Farmers' Professional Cooperative. The cooperative provides various guidance in fruit seedlings, fertilizer, pesticides, techniques and sales, and fully leverages the cooperative's advantages of refined techniques, ample funds and broad information to actively help growers handle the various difficulties and problems encountered in planting, management and sales. Cai Hualiang also actively helped local people resolve sales difficulties, and with his help, in recent years the local people's sugar mandarins have often been snapped up.

One sentence Cai Hualiang often says is: "One person being rich does not count as being rich; only when everyone is rich does it count as being rich." That is what he says, and that is what he does. Cai Hualiang has won the respect and admiration of the broad public through practical help and honest service. He has also repeatedly been rated as an excellent Communist Party member by the local Party committee, and is affectionately called by the people "the guide who leads the people to prosperity."