Guangxi's first secretary stationed in a village builds a road to happiness for a Miao village deep in the mountains
On the phone of Zhou Zheng, first secretary stationed in Datian Village, Anchui Township, Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, Liuzhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, there is a photo: on November 7 this year, he came to the home of Dong Yinshu, a little Miao girl in Hongkoutang Tun, Datian Village, and brought her new clothes, shoes, a schoolbag and some school supplies. After receiving the gifts, the little girl went back inside to change into a set of Miao festival attire, and put on the new cloth shoes she usually could not bear to wear, and invited her uncle to take a photo with her in front of their wooden house. In the photo, both of them are smiling sweetly.
"Come on, open the new schoolbag and put it on."
"Uncle, I won't wear it. I want to save it for next semester."
This photo always pulls Zhou Zheng's thoughts back to a year ago, when he first visited Hongkoutang Tun.
A photo of wading across a river speeds up the road construction
Zhou Zheng is the Party branch secretary of the road management team of the property company of Guangxi Liuzhou Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Liugang"). In October 2015, he was assigned by the organization to serve as first secretary in Datian Village, Anchui Township, Rongshui County. Datian Village is a Miao village deep in the mountains, with clear waters and beautiful scenery, but the local economic conditions are relatively backward.
When Zhou Zheng took up his post, Guangxi was just carrying out a new round of precise identification of poor households across the region. During those months, Zhou Zheng and the village cadres worked from dawn to dusk every day, going door to door to investigate and verify villagers' property information and to register poor households and set up files.
Hongkoutang Tun is a relatively remote village settlement in Datian Village. Before going there, Zhou Zheng had heard that there was still no gravel road, that villagers could only travel on foot, and that transportation was very inconvenient. On December 29, 2015, he, Dong Jianbing, secretary of the Datian Village Communist Youth League branch, and work team member Shen Jianqiang traveled by car to Hongkoutang Tun. Half an hour later, the car reached the foot of the mountain where Hongkoutang Tun is located. Ahead was the Datian River, more than 30 meters wide, and everyone could only get out of the car and walk on foot.
Dong Jianbing led the way, and the 3 people walked slowly into the river barefoot. As soon as they entered the water, the icy, bone-chilling river water quickly numbed Zhou Zheng's feet, and he could only grit his teeth and follow step by step. After crossing the river, what lay before their eyes was a "winding footpath" that could not really be called a road at all. The road was slippery on the rainy day, and although Zhou Zheng used both hands and feet, he still fell quite a few times along the way.
Half an hour later, the group finally arrived at Hongkoutang Tun, located halfway up the mountain. The home of Tun head Dong Shunfu was a traditional Miao wooden house, with eaves made of tree bark. Dong Shunfu introduced some basic facts about the settlement to Zhou Zheng: Hongkoutang Tun currently has 34 households and 111 people, including 17 registered poor households and 59 poor people. Each person has 2 fen of farmland and 3 mu of mountain forest. The main sources of income are growing rice and Chinese fir, raising poultry and working outside the village. The per capita income is more than 2,100 yuan. A tractor road that originally existed in the settlement was washed away by mountain floods a few years ago, and for reasons including funding, it had never been repaired.
When Dong Shunfu's daughter Dong Yinshu saw strangers, she blushed and did not dare to speak. Zhou Zheng noticed that although it was deep winter, Dong Yinshu was still barefoot and wearing a pair of sandals. When asked why she did not wear cloth shoes, Dong Yinshu said that the road was all mud, and as soon as she wore them out, the shoes would get dirty, so sandals were more convenient.
During the conversation, Zhou Zheng also learned that every Monday, Dong Shunfu would get up early and walk more than 1 hour along the mountain road to take his daughter to the teaching point at the foot of the mountain to study. On the way, the older Dong, who has some physical disability, also had to wade through water and carry his daughter across the river. Looking at the simple house and the honor certificates pasted on the wall by his daughter one after another, Zhou Zheng felt waves of sadness.
After returning to the village committee, Zhou Zheng posted the photo of himself wading across the river in the Rongshui County first secretary exchange group, which attracted the attention of county leaders. He then coordinated and communicated with the county and township governments, hoping that the road from Hongkoutang Tun to Dasan Dapinggou Tun would be approved and start construction as soon as possible, and gained the understanding and support of higher-level government departments. The Hongkoutang Tun village road construction project, which was originally planned to be approved only at the end of 2016 or in 2017, was approved after the 2016 Spring Festival.
The Hongkoutang Tun village road construction project officially started in March this year. When the villagers saw the construction team enter the site, they even spontaneously pooled money to invite the workers to a meal. The Miao people love singing and dancing, and that evening they also held a barbecue party.
In June this year, the gravel road with a total length of more than 6 kilometers was completed, making travel much more convenient for villagers than before. Zhou Zheng said that the plan is to pave a cement road in the second half of next year, and by then it will be even more convenient to drive to the settlement.
????Building a "blood-generating" path to poverty alleviation
Once, while talking with Du Wensheng, the 77-year-old former Party branch secretary of Datian Village, the old man told Zhou Zheng that at present, after solving the problems of infrastructure and road transportation, escaping poverty and becoming prosperous still depended on developing the village's industrial projects, but one must not be too impatient or launch projects recklessly, because farmers cannot withstand repeated upheaval. At the same time, Du Wensheng also said that under the leadership of the Party, farmers' lives are getting better and better, but there are few cultural activities in the village. During festivals, young people returning home have nothing to do and gather together just to eat, drink and gamble, which has a very bad influence. He hoped that Zhou Zheng, as first secretary, would do a good job in building the village's cultural infrastructure, coordinate with relevant departments to repair and renovate the village basketball court and stage, and provide the villagers, especially young people, with a good place for cultural activities.
After consulting with his original work unit, in June this year Liugang provided a batch of steel and cement to Shangliuxiu Tun in Datian Village for the construction of the village stage, background wall and pavilion. Led by village committee cadres and Communist Party members, the villagers contributed labor.
Seeing all these scenes, Zhou Zheng wrote in his diary: Although poor households' escape from poverty and pursuit of prosperity cannot do without the support and investment of higher-level Party committees and governments, not everything can be done well only by investment and spending money. In this regard, Shangliuxiu Tun in Datian Village has made a useful exploration. In the face of difficulties, they did not complain, nor did they simply wait, depend and ask. They adopted the approach of "the government contributes a little, the masses contribute a little, and social forces contribute a little," actively guided and organized Party members, cadres and the masses to carry out voluntary labor, and built a beautiful homeland with their own hands.
While visiting poor households in Datian Village, Zhou Zheng learned that local villagers had a tradition of raising rice flower carp in rice fields, but due to objective reasons such as fry quality, breeding technology, and soft and leak-prone field ridges, locally bred rice flower carp had a long growth cycle, generally taking two to three years to harvest, with low yield and poor economic returns.
In order to build a "blood-generating" path to precise poverty alleviation, Zhou Zheng contacted a leading local agricultural company and actively guided villagers to adopt a modelized comprehensive rice-field breeding format, improve breeding varieties, and achieve diversified breeding so as to increase yield and income. Changing to new breeding varieties was not only costly, but also technically difficult to manage and high-risk. In order to dispel the villagers' doubts, he visited them many times to communicate and persuaded this agricultural company to give 6,000 new-variety golden-edge rice flower carp fry to poor households in Shangliuxiu Tun for free trial breeding. Next, he also plans to contact relevant departments such as the township animal husbandry station to provide concentrated breeding technology guidance to poor households.