Hebei's Qiannanyu Village finds path to prosperity with "fruit trees + scenery"

In the scorching June, along the winding mountain roads leading to Qiannanyu Village in Xingtai, Hebei, deep in the Taihang Mountains, fruit trees covering the hillsides appear at a glance to be bearing little brown lucky bags. Up close, it turns out that the vast majority of the fruit on the trees is wrapped in small kraft paper bags. Only a few scattered unwrapped green fruits reveal that these are apple trees.

This apple bagging technique was developed for the local fruit growers with the help of Li Baoguo, a late professor at Hebei Agricultural University. By autumn, the bagged apples are large and red, bringing long-term benefits to the villagers. Among the lush apple trees are also chestnut trees with long leaves; chestnuts are Qiannanyu's main fruit product. Villagers began planting chestnuts in the late 1970s, but at that time the average yield was only 1 kg per tree. In recent years, the village has adopted the "two-branch renewal pruning method" that Professor Li Baoguo spent 3 years researching. Through renewal pruning, nutrients are concentrated and quality is improved, and the annual output has increased from the initial 70,000 kg to 400,000 kg.

Forestry and fruit growing is the primary industry of Qiannanyu Village. In recent years, through ecological management, scientific and technological support, and the development of sightseeing agriculture, Qiannanyu has built the mountainous area into a "Flower and Fruit Mountain" that combines ecological and economic benefits. At present, the village has a total of 300,000 fruit trees, 210 per capita. In 2015, the per capita annual income from fruit alone reached 6,800 yuan, accounting for 57.6% of the comprehensive per capita net income.

Qiannanyu's fruit production base has also introduced more than 20 superior new varieties from abroad, including American grapes, Ukrainian cherries, Kate apricots, raspberries, Australian nectarines, European hazelnuts and thin-shelled walnuts. From March to November each year, tourists can pick fresh fruit. Last year, the scenic area received more than 600,000 tourist visits, with ticket revenue of 9.6 million yuan and tourism-driven revenue of 18.6 million yuan.

Wang Haishu, a 46-year-old villager from Qiannanyu Village, once told reporters that from barren hills to a "Flower and Fruit Mountain," having beautiful scenery is equivalent to planting a "money tree" - able to sell fresh fruit and also sell scenery. This is thanks to the government's comprehensive mountain management and ecological economic gully construction.

In the past, Qiannanyu was a poor mountain village known far and wide. Qiannanyu's mountains were bare rocky ridges made of stone. In 1963, a rainstorm washed the mountain clean, and the village houses were also washed away and collapsed. For many years, the people of Qiannanyu managed the bare rocky mountains from top to bottom, gully by gully. On the hard rock, they used steel rods to chisel holes at least 1 m deep, placed explosives, detonated them with detonators, and blasted the rock into fragments, which were used to build terrace embankments, and then planted trees.

Combining green willows and poplars along the river channels, combining dried and fresh fruits on the gully slopes, and combining pines, cypresses and pagoda trees on the mountaintops, the villagers turned what was once "barren land" into "the greenest place in the Taihang Mountains." According to Guo Chengzhi, former Party branch secretary of Qiannanyu Village, at present the village's 32 mountain peaks, 10 major gullies, 72 branch gullies and more than 8,000 mu of mountain land have a forest coverage rate of 90.7% and a vegetation coverage rate of 94.6%.

Water shortage is a major constraint on Qiannanyu's economic development. Through various projects, the villagers store water from the sky and intercept water on the ground; at the same time, they have introduced the world's advanced water-saving facilities and developed sprinkler irrigation, drip irrigation and pipe irrigation, with water-saving irrigation area reaching more than 3,000 mu. In the past, one cubic meter of water could only irrigate 10 trees; now it can irrigate at least 30.

Qiannanyu Village has also focused on developing deep processing of fruit products, investing 38.6 million yuan to build a fruit processing plant and cold storage warehouse. Its main products include vacuum-ready-to-eat chestnuts, and it has registered the "Qiannanyu" fruit series brand. In addition, Qiannanyu Village is cooperating with Tianjin University of Science and Technology to research and develop series products such as chestnut powder, chestnut beverages and chestnut wine. Agricultural product processing and production form an industrial chain, promoting industrialized operation.

Xinhua News Agency reporters Ma Qian and Yang Fan