Jia Xiuqin of Qiu County: 11 years leading villagers to build a beautiful countryside together
These days, having just built a farmhouse vegetable garden on the cleared idle residential plots, Jia Xiuqin, Party branch secretary of Dongzhaotun Village in Xiangchenggu Town, Qiu County, is once again leading the villagers tirelessly in building a villagers' cultural activity square.
Jia Xiuqin, 64 this year, was originally the village doctor of Dongzhaotun Village. For more than 30 years, no matter wind or rain, as long as villagers had a need, she would rush over at once. In 1996, her children working in Handan City brought her to the city to lead a comfortable life, but the poverty and backwardness of her hometown always weighed on her mind. "Better to build a career in the village than eat idle meals in the city." In 2004, with her husband working away from home, she returned to her hometown alone, and the following year she was elected Party branch secretary of the village.
As soon as she took office, Jia Xiuqin started with what the common people most hoped for, raising funds from various sources to pave the village's main streets, so the villagers bid farewell to the days of walking on muddy roads. Grasping the key of improving agricultural infrastructure, she secured funds and launched projects, repairing and drilling 13 motor-pumped wells, and repairing more than 3000 m of field roads and more than 4000 m of underground pipelines, enabling the village's 1300 mu of farmland to achieve "fields laid out in squares, canals forming a network, irrigation in drought, drainage in flood." She also led the villagers in developing specialty planting and carrying out environmental sanitation improvements, greatly transforming both the villagers' lives and the village's appearance.
Since last year, when Qiu County began using "hollow village" governance to boost beautiful countryside construction, Jia Xiuqin has started another round of hard work. Most of the village's young and middle-aged adults work away from home, and facing the difficulty of few people and a poor village, Jia Xiuqin charged ahead at the front line while widely mobilizing villagers to take part in building it together.
Under her leadership, everyone in the village, from an 84-year-old elder to young wives just past 20, became volunteers for the beautiful countryside construction. Every morning before 6, anywhere from about 30 villagers to nearly 100, spontaneously take to the streets, bringing their own shovels, carts and other tools to join the work.
"Secretary Jia, our family just steamed buns, come to our home to eat later" "Our family just made porridge, when you're done we'll bring it over to you"... Getting up at 5 in the morning and still working at 10 at night, Jia Xiuqin is so busy every day she has no time to drink water or cook a meal. Seeing her tanned and thinner, the villagers' hearts ache, and they invite her to their homes to eat or spontaneously bring her food.
Up to now, the village has demolished more than 30 old residential plots, freed up more than 30 mu of land, cleared more than 900 cubic meters of household garbage, and planted more than 300 peach trees. "Once the villagers' cultural activity square is built, we will also build a leisure garden beside it, so the villagers will have a place for leisure and entertainment, and the village will become more and more beautiful," Jia Xiuqin said with a smile. (Reporter Ye Juanjuan)