If you want to make money and get rich, hard work and willingness to do the work are the foundation.
The photo shows He You'an picking navel oranges for market.
"Now the navel oranges are basically all sold. In another 10 days, these more than 8 mu of gonggan oranges will ripen and go on the market. At current market prices, that will bring in nearly 80,000 yuan." On November 10, in Zubiao Village, Tongde Township, Jingxi City, fruit farmer He You'an said happily to reporters while picking navel oranges.
He You'an, now 51 years old, was born in Pojun Tun, Zubiao Village, Tongde Township, Jingxi City, and is a plain farmer born and raised there. Pojun Tun in Zubiao Village sits against the Gulong Mountain, with the Luoshui River running past the edge of the village. The land is fertile, and the village's per capita arable land area is 0.9 mu. He You'an's family has a total of 6.3 mu of arable land. Previously, He You'an's family got by growing rice, corn and the like, and there was no problem at least having enough to eat. However, as his two children entered middle school, the family's expenses increased, income could not cover outgoings, and life fell into difficulty.
In order to improve their lives, He You'an took his wife to "go to Guangdong," hoping to earn some money to supplement the household income. In 2006, the couple first worked at a pig farm in Sihui City, Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province, working from dawn to dusk for a monthly wage of only 700 yuan. Because the workload was heavy and the pay low, a year later they switched to a chicken farm in Guangning County, Zhaoqing City, managing 30,000 chickens. Every day after feeding the chickens they still had to clean the chicken houses, and sometimes at 3 in the morning they still had to get up to care for chicks kept warm, which was extremely hard work, and the monthly wage was only 1,200 yuan. After finishing a day's work, exhausted in body and mind, He You'an lay on the bed resting and thought, if he worked this hard in his hometown, why would he worry about not making money? Yet here he wore himself out every day and still did not earn the boss's respect. So he got the idea of going home to develop his own prospects.
The photo shows He You'an grazing goats.
Rather than working for others, it is better to return home and start his own business. In 2011, He You'an resolutely quit his job and returned to his hometown. He saw that most people in the same village had gone out to work, and many hillsides had been left abandoned, so he opened up wasteland on the hillside at the source of the Gulong Mountain one kilometer from the village entrance to grow fruit, and invested the tens of thousands of yuan he had saved over several years by skimping on food and expenses into building the orchard. He first went to Yangchun County, Yangjiang City, Guangdong, to buy 1,000 mashuiju mandarin seedlings, and afterward successively bought and planted fruit varieties such as mashuiju mandarins, emperor mandarins, navel oranges and bayberry, planting a total of 2,100 fruit trees over an area of 30 mu.
After careful tending, He You'an's orchard began bearing fruit in 2014, and in 2015 he had an income of 70,000 yuan. Having tasted success, He You'an worked with even more energy. In 2015, he again expanded the orchard's planting scale, newly planting 60 mu of fruit varieties such as Wogan and W. Murcott.
"This mashuiju mandarin tree has a yield of at least 130 jin. At the current market price of 5 yuan per jin, a single tree brings in more than 600 yuan." Through his own hard work, He You'an turned barren hills into gold mines and set himself on the road to prosperity. It is expected that this year his orchard income will reach more than 200,000 yuan.
"As long as you are hardworking and willing to do the work, you need not worry about not being able to make money." This is He You'an's motto and also the successful experience of his entrepreneurship.
Having become rich, he did not forget his fellow villagers. After becoming rich by growing fruit, in 2014 He You'an actively mobilized the villagers in his tun to grow fruit and patiently taught them practical fruit-growing techniques. Driven by him, the villagers of Zubiao Village became highly enthusiastic about growing fruit. In Pojun Tun alone, more than a dozen households including Deng Bangcai, Deng Jun and Nong Baoxiang grew fruit, over an area of more than 1,000 mu. In 2015, He You'an also established the Jingxi Rong'an Breeding Professional Cooperative, raising more than 120 black goats himself and bringing in four households from the same village, Liang Huirong, Huang Shiqiang, Huang Kou and He Hui, to raise more than 500 goats. The cooperative works together in mutual aid and sells in a unified way, and the road to prosperity grows ever wider.
"Next, I plan to contract 3,000 mu of land around the source of the Gulong Mountain for tourism development, so that more farming households can take part and more people can escape poverty and become rich." As for his future plans, He You'an is full of confidence.