Zhang Li: A Woman Who Fell Deeply in Love with the Yellow Earth

No matter how busy she usually is, Zhang Li always finds time to visit the vineyard to see her beloved "children."

In the heat of summer, the grape trellises at the ecological picking garden in Wanglou Village, Lilaqiao Township, Yucheng County, display the vitality of the entire summer, with clusters of purplish-red grapes making mouths water. Amid this scene of abundance, a woman wearing a sun hat is inspecting the fruit trees one by one, and her earnest manner makes it seem as though every cluster of grapes is like her own child, into which she has poured all her true feelings.

This woman standing under the blazing sun is named Zhang Li, and she has been operating modern agriculture in Lilaqiao Township, Yucheng County, for more than 5 years. She has devoted all her time and energy to this stretch of yellow earth, and the friends and relatives around her believe that "she has been bewitched and has fallen in love with the yellow earth."

Zhang Li's hometown is Zhangji Town, Yucheng County, China's hometown of Red Fuji apples, and her family has been growing apples since her father's generation. Like many rural girls, she was exposed to fruit tree cultivation and management from childhood and loved this line of work from the bottom of her heart. But unexpectedly, as the "pampered daughter" of the family, she actually went further and further, falling deeply in love with this stretch of yellow earth and with agricultural cultivation that many people had abandoned.

"Now when I have nothing to do, I sit in the orchard, and the happiest thing is looking at the fruit trees. That is the moment when I feel most calm inside," Zhang Li said with a smile as she looked at the several-hundred-mu orchard. The two to three hundred mu of land she has transferred has already been planted with large cherries, grapes, apples and so on, and at present the picking and sightseeing operation has begun to take shape.

Zhang Li's entrepreneurial path began in 2011. Before starting her business, she had been the only daughter in the family, loved by her parents and cared for by her brothers. However, in her heart Zhang Li was someone who would not admit defeat, and she wanted to control the trajectory of her own life.

Living in the hometown of apples, Zhang Li saw the difficulties facing the development of fruit tree cultivation. She boldly innovated and in 2011 went to Wanglou Village, Lilaqiao Township, contracting more than 200 mu of land at a price of 1,200 jin of wheat per mu, and began developing sightseeing agriculture. At the time, many people thought she was too impulsive and would certainly fail, because most people did not recognize this industry and felt it was too far removed from reality.

However, Zhang Li did not fight an unprepared battle. Before entering this industry, she had already gone to Zhengzhou, Yantai in Shandong and other places to investigate large cherry cultivation, and she believed this was an industry with great development prospects. That year, she spent more than 3 million yuan to build the Wanglou Large Cherry Picking Garden project.

Reality is always ruthless. In the year of investment, just after 279 mu of large cherries were planted, they encountered waterlogging damage rarely seen in many years. Because cherries fear flooding most, and no precautions against waterlogging had been made before planting, more than 50 mu of large cherries drowned that year, with losses of nearly 200,000 yuan.

At the time, looking at the cherry saplings soaked in the water, Zhang Li wanted to cry but had no tears, and no one could persuade her to go back. She stood in the orchard in the rain, guarding them like a mother guarding her children. This waterlogging disaster, which seemed like a natural calamity, gave Zhang Li many warnings: she could not develop only a single type of fruit tree, but needed diversified parallel development to guard against natural and man-made disasters.

So Zhang Li investigated new projects, and under the guidance of her father, an old horticulture expert, she newly developed more than 50 mu of vineyard. According to the habits of each fruit tree, different planting and management methods were adopted respectively to avoid losses as much as possible. At the same time, this also extended the opening period of the sightseeing picking garden, allowing more people to enter the garden and experience the joy of picking.

"You may see that our grapes do not look very attractive, but our grapes taste good, and our management all uses biological control," Zhang Li said while picking ripe grapes and introducing them to the reporter on August 12. Based on the principle of starting a business with conscience, her orchard is built according to biological agriculture: the fertilizers are all biological bacterial fertilizers, and pest control all uses biological control, maximizing the protection of the true nature of the ecological agriculture picking garden and giving the general public an ecologically natural orchard.

In the heat of summer, people try their best to avoid being exposed to the blazing sun. But Zhang Li is different. For five or six years, whenever there has been a rainstorm or blazing sun, she has always been shuttling back and forth in the orchard, because she treats the fruit trees as her own children and wants to guard them at every moment.

"In the first year, I stood in waist-deep water, watching the grape saplings die with my own eyes. My heart was pierced as if by a knife, and at the time I really wanted to give up," Zhang Li said, recalling the hardships of starting her business. But when she thought of her belief in entrepreneurship and of this orchard full of vitality, she roused her spirits again. She wanted to advance and retreat together with the orchard, and live and die with it.

Based on this belief, Zhang Li persisted. However, the entire orchard is currently operating at a loss, and for this reason she has already sold several properties in her home and put all the money into her orchard. Although her family did not support her at first, after seeing Zhang Li's firm confidence, everyone no longer opposed it and instead silently supported her.

This year is the first year that Zhang Li's ecological picking garden has borne fruit, and it is also a trial-fruit year. Although the benefits are not yet obvious, seeing the joyful expressions of nearby residents when they come to pick fruit makes Zhang Li happiest inside.

"Now I truly have feelings for this orchard. Although friends all say I have aged a lot these past few years, seeing the orchard mature day by day makes me happy inside!" Looking at the lush orchard, Zhang Li said with emotion that she had already fallen in love with this land and had poured all her energy into it. On this basis, she planned to further develop livestock raising above the forest and greenhouse agriculture, turning her picking garden into the "back garden" of the residents of Shangqiu.