Portraits of Gaotang's "second-generation entrepreneurs" from farming families: Returning home to start a business is a mission

For many years, people have grown accustomed to pouring from the countryside into the cities to study, work, settle down, and change the course of their lives. But in Guhe Town, Gaotang County, Liaocheng City, there is a group of young people who, having gained knowledge and already holding the key to the city gate, resolutely returned to the countryside, letting their youthful figures take root in the soil. Their arrival has brought new hope and vitality to the land that raised them...

A few years ago, Li Wencai of Liji Village in the town graduated from a vocational college and took a job at a company in the county seat. With an "income that was just about passable," his small life was comfortable and pleasant. However, unwilling to settle for the status quo, he resolutely returned to his hometown. After extensive market research, he found that developing vegetable greenhouses for green cultivation had great market prospects. Decisive by nature, Li Wencai put down 300,000 yuan at once, built 3 steel-frame pillarless greenhouses, traveled all the way to Shouguang to hire a professional instructor, and purchased "Shengshi 402" tomato seedlings that are disease-resistant, large, and high in fruit-setting rate. Using a green, pollution-free management model, the greenhouses brought their produce to market half a month earlier than ordinary greenhouses, and that year each greenhouse earned a net income of as much as 50,000 yuan.

Having tasted the sweetness of success, Li Wencai was full of confidence, and a sense of responsibility to change his hometown welled up spontaneously. He decided to lead his fellow villagers to prosperity together. The following year, he established a vegetable planting cooperative and led the people around him to develop vegetable production. Through joint purchasing of production materials and cooperative management, the cooperative greatly reduced the production costs of farming households. Not only that, Li Wencai also used the professional knowledge he had mastered to guide the ordinary people around him, going deep into the fields to teach scientific planting techniques. After several years of operation, the cooperative now has more than 30 greenhouses and over 200 mu of open-field vegetables.

In Guhe Town, young people like Li Wencai who return home to pursue their dreams are by no means an isolated case. While realizing their own dreams, they also bravely shoulder the mission of the times to lead the people to prosperity, coalescing into a force that enriches the countryside.

On April 21, Cui Hebin, a college student from Liucaiyuan Village, clicked his mouse and in just over ten minutes settled a deal worth more than 100,000 yuan in flowers and trees with a client in Hebei Province. Cui Hebin, a graduate of Shandong Women's University, said, "My hometown has many excellent agricultural products, but they can't command a premium price, and the sales channels are single. But with the internet, this problem can be solved."

In 2014, Cui Hebin, who had returned to the countryside, began selling agricultural and sideline products online, and that year total sales reached as much as 300,000 yuan. The next year, having opened up sales channels, Cui Hebin sold more than 20 kinds of local agricultural products, including vegetables, fruits, minor grains, and seedlings, to all parts of the country through the internet, with monthly sales reaching more than 200,000 yuan. Driven by Cui Hebin, more and more local farmers began using online resources to sell agricultural and sideline products, and one "farmer e-commerce seller" after another has virtually become a leader of the times.

The success of returning students is inseparable from the support of Guhe Town. To encourage and support college and middle school students to return home and start businesses, the town established an "information talent pool," giving priority consideration to returning students in the re-election of village "two committees," and for those withentrepreneurship projectsintentions, providing coordinated support in funding, production sites, water and electricity, and other areas. Over the past 3 years, it has organized returning students on 8 visits to places such as Shouguang in Shandong and Anguo in Hebei to learn greenhouse vegetable and Chinese medicinal herb cultivation techniques, and selected more than 60 young people to train at agricultural colleges and master modern agricultural knowledge. With the government's vigorous help and support, more returning students are standing at the forefront of the times, using their talents and efforts to enrich the countryside.