Walnuts plus edible fungi: Li Chengjiang's Li Bin leads his fellow villagers onto the road to prosperity
At around 5 a.m. on July 20, just as dawn was breaking, Jiang Libin, bundled up tightly, shouldered his hoe and set off toward the mountains together with Jiang Baowang, a member of the Green Wing Walnut Cooperative... "Climbing the mountain in the early morning soaks your lower half; once the sun comes up, it soaks your upper half." The mountain path is rugged and uneven; you either wade through a small stream or push through weeds and woods, and if you're not careful your skin gets cut. There are many insects in the mountains, and they are vicious; one bite hurts and makes your skin swell up. You might even run into snakes or wild boars!
It takes at least 40 minutes to get up the mountain. The weeds are as tall as a person; once you step in, you're buried in green and can only communicate by shouting to each other. The climb is hard, harder than climbing to the sky. Either the dew soaks your trouser legs, or sweat soaks through your shirt.
It's this hard, so what did Jiang Libin, a university graduate, come back to his hometown for?
To use the knowledge he learned to "lead the whole village out of poverty and onto prosperity"! This was both an agreement he made with the village committee director and his dream. He hoped his fellow villagers would not have to leave the mountains to live a prosperous life!
1 Setting out on the path of study for the sake of his hometown's development
"You've got a good head on your shoulders. I hope you can go to school, learn knowledge that fits rural realities, put what you learn to use, and come back to build our village well." These words from village committee director Fu Hongwei have lingered in Jiang Libin's mind ever since.
And when the village committee director said this, it was exactly when Jiang Libin had failed the college entrance exam and failed at working away from home, at the lowest point of his life.
In 2008, after failing the college entrance exam, Jiang Libin saw that classmates around him who had not gone to high school were already earning money. Ignoring his family's objections, he set off for Tianjin by train with 500 yuan in his pocket.
Jiang Libin worked packing bundles at a tire factory, purely heavy manual labor, working at least twelve or thirteen hours a day. "As soon as I got off work, I'd lie on the bed and couldn't even move." Recalling those days of working away from home, Jiang Libin said he wanted to go back countless times, but couldn't bear the shame.
At this time, the house he rented with his coworkers was burglarized. He wanted to move out and get his money back, but the landlord not only refused, but also verbally abused them. "The landlord cursed us for a full hour or more, scolding us till our heads were spinning." He later reflected: was this the life he wanted? After that time, he deeply felt that without a specialized skill and without a diploma, it was hard to find a foothold outside.
Jiang Libin went home. After that, whenever he had time, Jiang Libin studied walnut grafting and pruning techniques together with his father, strengthening his practical skills. "Although I seemed to know how to graft and prune, I didn't know why it was done that way." Jiang Libin kept asking himself: what exactly is suitable for rural development? How exactly can rural people be led to prosperity?
He still had to study!
Jiang Libin had the idea of taking the college entrance exam again, and village committee director Fu Hongwei made an agreement with him: after graduating, bring back technology suited to rural development, take part in the election, strive to succeed as village committee director, and become a rural development leader who always thinks of the farmers and works solidly for their interests.
2 Growing mushrooms leads the villagers onto the road to prosperity
In September 2010, after a year of almost self-torturing repeat study, Jiang Libin was admitted to the College of Horticulture at Shanxi Agricultural University. "Before I even entered the university gates, I had already mapped out my life's direction. Our village has many walnut trees, so I would study fruit tree cultivation, learn a truly practical skill, one suited to myself and to rural development."
After military training, by chance he visited a mushroom greenhouse near the school. When rows upon rows of mushrooms appeared neatly before his eyes, he was stunned; scenes he had only seen on TV were actually right there in front of him. "In that moment, I knew I had found a good project suited to rural development - walnuts + edible fungi."
Walnut tree branches can be used to make mushroom sticks, and the spent sticks can also be used as fertilizer. Growing mushrooms in winter and walnuts in summer not only complements the timing, but also allows the raw materials and fertilizer to complement each other, so the villagers have something to do and money to earn all year round.
There was no time to lose! During his studies, he couldn't just learn theoretical knowledge; he also had to learn through practice. Jiang Libin rented several mushroom greenhouses and began a life of being both a vegetable farmer and a university student.
Going to the greenhouse to pull grass mats, ventilate, mix materials, tend the boiler, inoculate... "I was up early and back late every day. My roommates in the dorm basically never saw me before 9:30 p.m., and they didn't even know when I left the dorm in the morning." Jiang Libin said what left the deepest impression was that every time he finished working with the mushrooms and returned to the classroom for class, there was no one around his seat. "After growing mushrooms, I had a strange smell on me, very unpleasant." As a student like the others, the other students were bright and clean, while he was dirty every day, moving among his classmates and feeling their strange looks. Several times he wanted to give up.
But the agreement with the village committee director was still vivid before his eyes.
He gritted his teeth and kept going!
The hard work was not in vain; 90% of the restaurants around the school became loyal customers for his mushrooms. "I often rode a bicycle, with a basket on the front, a basket hanging from the handlebars, and another basket tied to the rear rack, riding through Taigu county town shouting as I went, 'Mushrooms for sale! Mushrooms grown by agricultural university students themselves!'"
Practicing at school was for the sake of the village's cause. In February 2013, while still in university, Jiang Libin established the "Licheng Libin Ecological Planting Cooperative Union" in his hometown and began leading the villagers in growing mushrooms.
After graduating from university in 2014, Jiang Libin built mushroom greenhouses in the cooperative's yard. Today, the cooperative's greenhouses have grown to 14, and his edible fungi business is thriving. "Some of the shiitake mushrooms in the culture bags have already grown all over, so now it's time to cut the bags and give them more air so they can breathe well..." On July 19, when the reporter and party arrived, he was squatting in the greenhouse, hunched over, carefully instructing the workers to take good care of the mushrooms. Cooperative member Wang Jingtang said that Libin taught them advanced cultivation methods hand by hand and also came up with the good idea of potted mushrooms, and everyone has tasted the benefits. "He truly led everyone onto a road to prosperity."
3 The walnut groves hold up his life's dream
Beiquan Village is located on the Taihang Mountains, and wild walnut trees grow all over the mountains and plains.
"Our walnut groves are on this mountain." On the morning of July 20, although the weather felt slightly muggy, Jiang Libin still prepared camouflage suits for the reporters and forced everyone to put them on. "You have to wrap yourself up tightly to go up the mountain, otherwise if you get covered in grass or bitten by an insect, your skin will itch for a week." The reporter muttered quietly, "Is it really necessary, wearing such thick clothes, and then sweating a bit while climbing, won't it steam us alive..."
There is only one path into the mountain, wide enough for just one person, and the ground underfoot is all dirt road, with spring water trickling slowly at all times, mixed with mud, making each step deep or shallow, leaving countless footprints, and if you are not careful your foot slips. After walking not far, the slope suddenly became extremely steep. While carefully watching the mountain path underfoot, when the reporter looked up, weeds as tall as a person already filled the entire view. Although cutting a path with a sickle could reduce scratches on the body from thorns, the speed inevitably slowed a great deal. As they moved forward, their ears were constantly filled with the buzzing of flying insects, and their bodies were constantly tilted at forty-five degrees, advancing in small steps, not daring to look up in order to keep balance.
After crawling for less than an hour, the reporter found a slightly level rock surface and plopped down onto the ground, not wanting to move another bit. Sweat poured down in big drops. Jiang Libin, who had come prepared, promptly handed over two bottles of water. The reporter grabbed them and drank them all in one go.
Along the way, the reporter had already lost count of how many times villager Jiang Baowang said they were almost there. Finally, Jiang Libin shouted that they had arrived. The reporter suddenly looked up, and rain instantly dripped down from above...
In the curtain of rain, walnuts all over the mountains and plains were like mischievous little elves, swaying merrily in the wind. Jiang Libin and Jiang Baowang did not feel tired at all and had already begun pruning the walnut trees. "You rest for a while; we're not tired, we're used to it." Jiang Libin said, "This great mountain is the greatest wealth nature has given us." In Jiang Libin's memory, from childhood, besides farming, the villagers went up the mountain to gather medicinal herbs, and the clusters of wild walnuts on the mountain were worthless in their eyes. Jiang Libin established the Green Wing Walnut Cooperative and led the members in grafting onto wild walnut trees. Today, they have already grafted more than 5,500 edible walnut trees and more than 4,000 Ma walnut trees. And growing Ma walnuts also has very high economic value.
Gazing at the stretches of grafted walnut groves, tears welled at the corners of Jiang Libin's eyes. "My dream is very simple: to let the elders of my hometown live a prosperous life without having to leave the mountains. This wish has always been there and has never left. It is precisely by carrying this beautiful wish that I have been able to advance step by step, steadily, to the present and toward the future."