Female village official Zhou Lianhua returns home to start a business and leads her fellow villagers to prosperity
In Shuzhuang Township, Shangshui County, Henan Province, Zhou Lianhua, the family planning officer of Dazhuzhuang Village, is a household name. This village official not only does her own job well, but also founded a toy factory, set up a farmers' planting cooperative, and created a three-dimensional ecological farming and breeding park; every venture she runs is thriving.
Zhou Lianhua, now 40 years old, worked in a toy factory in Dongguan, Guangdong 10 years ago. After returning home in 2009, with the help of the township family planning association, she invested 400,000 yuan to found Junsheng Toy Factory, giving work to 60 left-behind women from the village. Two years later, Zhou Lianhua had set up 3 toy factories, creating job opportunities for more than 300 women of childbearing age in her own village and neighboring villages. At the same time, through an open competitive recruitment, Zhou Lianhua became the family planning officer of Dazhuzhuang Village.
The workers at the toy factory are all women of childbearing age. Using the toy factory as a base, Zhou Lianhua often carries out national policy education for women of childbearing age, and the toy factory office has also set aside space for a family planning bookcase, providing relevant publicity materials, population and family planning magazines, contraceptives and so on. Over the past few years, the family planning work of Dazhuzhuang Village has consistently been among the advanced in the township, and has won praise from the municipal and county population and family planning commissions.
After becoming a village official, Zhou Lianhua felt she should do even more to lead the people to prosperity. In recent years, Zhou Lianhua has put a great deal of effort into this. The toy factories she founded have now grown to 4, and more than 200 women of childbearing age from her own village alone work in them, with an average annual income of more than 30,000 yuan per person.
Most of the young and strong laborers in Dazhuzhuang Village go out to work, and some fields have been forced to lie “fallow.” Zhou Lianhua transferred 100 mu of “fallow” fields at the edge of the village at a rent of 1,000 yuan per mu. Zhou Lianhua went to the Fruit Tree Research Institute of the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences to consult experts and learned that the new thin-shelled walnut variety had good market prospects, so she introduced 150 mu of walnut saplings, planting 100 mu herself as a demonstration, and providing the walnut saplings for the other 50 mu to 10 family planning households in the village to plant. Now, the 150 mu of walnuts have begun to bear fruit. As soon as they hit the market, they sold for 40 yuan per kg. Zhou Lianhua then led 10 family planning households to grow watermelons and onions in the walnut orchard, increasing each mu of land's income by more than 3,000 yuan a year.
After the walnut trees grew tall, melons and vegetables could no longer be planted in the walnut orchard, so Zhou Lianhua switched to raising ecological laying ducks in the walnut orchard. With the support and help of the township family planning association, she invested 160,000 yuan to raise more than 3,000 laying ducks. Zhou Lianhua not only raises ducks herself, but also helps villagers raise ducks. Under her technical guidance, 20 households in several villages, including Dazhuzhuang, Sansuolou, Fusu and Fenhe, developed duck raising under the trees, and this in turn drove more than 200 local free-range households. Now, the barrel-packed salted duck eggs of Shuzhuang Township have become a well-known local specialty.
Because of her outstanding work, Zhou Lianhua herself has been awarded honorary titles such as “Advanced Worker in Population and Family Planning,” “Pace-setter in Returning Home to Start a Business,” and “March 8th Red Banner Pacesetter” by departments including the county health and family planning commission, the women's federation, the human resources and social security bureau, and the federation of industry and commerce.
Qiao Lianjun