Hongyang kiwifruit is ripe, Puchang enters the picking period on the 28th of this month

Walking into Qijiu Village, Puchang Town, Suiyang County, one sees green kiwifruits hanging heavily on the branches, looking especially striking under the autumn sun and giving off an enticing fruity fragrance. Under the leafy trellises, fruit growers are busy picking the fruit, their faces beaming with the joy of a bumper harvest.

Retired elderly couple busy growing fruit

Xie Qingzheng and his wife Chen Shengwen are from Zunyi. After retiring from state-owned enterprises, they were never willing to sit idle at home. Chen Shengwen, 61, has run a stall, done small business and run a karaoke hall, and many people in Zunyi know her.

Now that they have taken up growing kiwifruit, Xie Qingzheng and his wife spend all day under the scorching sun tending the fruit trees in the orchard and go for long periods without returning to downtown Zunyi, so their children, who have just had a baby, inevitably have some complaints about the two elders.

"There is no way around it. We have poured all our energy into this, so how would we have time to look after our little grandchild," Chen Shengwen said. Since coming to the countryside to grow fruit, her skin is not as good as before and she has gotten tanned.

Xie Qingzheng said that when he was young he liked to study landscaping and nursery planting. After retiring in 2006, he began to get involved in this industry, but at that time he only sold ornamental melons and fruits as well as flowers. That year, Xie Qingzheng invited a master from Cangxi, Sichuan, to Zunyi to teach him how to graft fruit trees. The master suggested that growing flowers carried high risks, and that he might as well grow the "Hongyang" kiwifruit from their hometown, which had lower risk and high economic value.

So Xie Qingzheng and his wife went to Cangxi to investigate, and it took them two years before they settled on developing the kiwifruit industry.

Introduced Sichuan variety has high value

"Kiwifruit is a very strange fruit. When it hangs on the tree, it is very hard to ripen fully, but after it is picked, it will ripen naturally." Chen Shengwen shared the trick to eating kiwifruit: cut the kiwifruit open with a knife, and there is yellow flesh with a red center. Scoop a spoonful into your mouth, and the sweetness fills it, with almost no sourness, leaving a delicate fragrance in the mouth.

Kiwifruit, called "qiyiguo", also known as yangtao and maolitao, is a precious fruit tree native to China, with higher sugar content and lower acid content than other varieties. Because it is rich in vitamin C, has tender red flesh, tastes delicious and has a fragrant flavor when eaten, it is also praised as the king of fruits.

The "Hongyang" kiwifruit variety originates from Cangxi, Sichuan. The cross-section of the fresh fruit shows purplish-red lines radiating from the core, resembling the rays of the sun, and its color is vivid, hence the name "Hongyang". Xie Qingzheng invested more than 2 million yuan in total and in 2014 transferred 400 mu of land in Suiyang County to grow "Hongyang" kiwifruit, Wenchuan crisp plum, longevity peach and other varieties.

Xie Qingzheng introduced that at present the kiwifruit average single weight is 90 grams, with the largest reaching about 150 grams. They are generally sold by the jin, and the large ones are sold by the piece. He said: "Guizhou's natural environment is good and provides prerequisite conditions for the growth of kiwifruit. In addition, some of the soil here is rich in selenium, which increases the nutritional value of the kiwifruit."

"Kiwifruit bore fruit this year, and the harvest is expected to be about 20,000 jin." Xie Qingzheng, 65 this year, told reporters that if there had been no disasters such as hail and heavy rain at the beginning of the year, this year's output should have been 50,000 jin.

Building experiential tourism to promote development

For people in their 60s to invest more than 2 million yuan to develop a fruit-growing industry seems incredible to outsiders, but Xie Qingzheng and his wife take pleasure in it. "Among our friends around us, this one has high blood pressure, that one has high blood sugar, but we have nothing high. If we get a little cold, we do not even need to take medicine; we just go work in the field and sweat it out," Chen Shengwen said with a smile.

"At such an age, still working so hard to do this, our goal is very simple: to set an example for young people." Xie Qingzheng introduced that they adopt a company + cooperative + farmer model to drive local people to get rich together. To this end, Xie Qingzheng established Guizhou Xinboyuan Green Industry Development Co., Ltd. and Guizhou Shengxin Orchard Nursery Planting Professional Cooperative.

Villager Sister Chen said that her family only planted a small plot of kiwifruit and did not dare to plant on a large scale for fear of risk. In 2014, she began working for Xie Qingzheng, helping manage the orchard and pick fruit. "The wage is 50-60 yuan a day, more than 1,000 yuan a month. Usually I have nothing to do at home, so coming to do some work and get paid is a good thing," she said.

At present, the kiwifruit is about to enter the picking period. Xie Qingzheng introduced that picking will begin at the end of this month and is expected to last about a month. For picking in the orchard, the price is 10 yuan per jin. Besides picking fruit, there are also farmhouse restaurants nearby, making it very suitable for a family weekend trip.