Zhai Guosong leads the villagers onto the road to prosperity, becoming the leader who guides his fellow villagers to wealth

Giving up the life of a big boss to return to a remote, impoverished small mountain village as a cadre - what's the point? On July 28, with this question in mind, I walked into Nanwangzhuang Village, Xindian Town, Ye County, Henan, which is surrounded by mountains. As soon as I entered the village, I saw villagers working hard everywhere on the hillsides. They were busy interplanting sweet potatoes under newly planted fruit trees, and the whole village was full of vitality.

“This place used to be barren hills. Now it has been leveled into terraced fields and planted with black plums, pears, soft-seeded pomegranates and other fruit trees. All of this is thanks to our village committee director Zhai Guosong.” said Ji Guoming, the village Party secretary.

Zhai Guosong, 50 years old this year, was also working here. Dark-skinned and sturdy, with a simple smile, he did not look like a boss at all.

In 2001, Zhai Guosong contracted a coal processing plant with an annual output of 30,000 tons, and a few years later he moved into the catering and real estate businesses.

However, how did Zhai Guosong, whose business was thriving, come to think of returning to a remote small mountain village to serve as village committee director?

As early as the Spring Festival in 2004, when Zhai Guosong returned home for the holiday, he saw that the village had no cement road and felt very uncomfortable about it, so he contributed more than 40,000 yuan to build a cement road for the village. He also contracted more than 500 mu of barren mountain in the village, planted trees, and worked to improve the barren mountain.

However, several years passed, and his home village still had not improved much. The villagers were still very poor. Zhai Guosong felt especially uneasy. He secretly resolved to become the “lead goose” who led the villagers to prosperity, so that everyone could live a good life together.

In 2015, with the support of town leaders and the village committee, and with the expectations of his fellow villagers, Zhai Guosong was elected village committee director. In order to make the villagers wealthy, Zhai Guosong began traveling around to investigate income-increasing projects. After more than 10 trips elsewhere to investigate, Zhai Guosong decided to plant fruit trees on the mountain. In 2015, he invested more than 5 million yuan, bought an excavator, built mountain roads, and planted fruit trees on the barren mountain he had contracted.

Zhai Guosong's entrepreneurial drive inspired the villagers' enthusiasm. Under his leadership, the villagers' thinking quietly changed. At present, the village has planted more than 1,300 mu of black plums, nectarines, soft-seeded pomegranates and other fruit trees, as well as asparagus, Chinese honeylocust spines and other cash crops. There are currently more than 100 cattle and sheep and more than 2,000 head of livestock and poultry in stock.

For rural areas to develop, infrastructure must first be improved, and the village must have water, electricity and roads. To this end, Zhai Guosong went to the county many times to coordinate and received strong support from the county and town. The county highway bureau helped the village apply for a road-building project, and bridge construction has now begun.

At the beginning of this year, Nanwangzhuang Village also established a mutual fund cooperative. The first batch of “seed funds” of 200,000 yuan has been put in place. Members of the mutual fund cooperative can borrow 500-10,000 yuan each time from the “seed funds” to develop planting and breeding businesses.

Liu Yingxu Yang Peijie