Li Dequan: Teaching pig farming techniques to help villagers get rich together
"I have the nickname 'Piglet Village Chief.' Besides it being related to my good pig farming skills and the large number I raise, what they remember most clearly is that I once carried a fat pig of over 300 jin with another person and walked more than 5 km." When saying this, Li Dequan, the current village Party branch secretary of Anxi Village, Changling Town, Wanzhou District, smiled brightly, gesturing with both arms as if carrying a pig, as though holding a lovely baby.
Li Dequan is nearly fifty years old, of medium height, somewhat lean, and exudes a capable air in every gesture. There is no doubt that he shares common traits with other village cadres: quick-witted, and in age absolutely belonging to the younger generation among the villagers who stayed behind.
Going out to work and learning pig farming
In the 1980s, Anxi Village in Changling Town benefited from its geographical advantage of being close to the Yangtze River and suitable for growing pickled mustard tuber. The pickled mustard tuber was transported by water, lowering costs and yielding high output. Selling pickled mustard tuber for money became the villagers' only source of income, and their earnings were well known in Wanzhou District.
However, starting in 1992, pickled mustard tuber was gradually abandoned by the market. The village's able-bodied laborers, or those with some means of making a living, all went out to work, and poverty became a lingering pain in everyone's hearts.
That year, Li Dequan went to Zhejiang, learned pig farming techniques, rented a site, and raised pigs on his own. Every year, his family's income was second to none among the village's migrant workers.
"In 2008, I returned to my hometown." He said the reason for returning that year was directly related to the village becoming increasingly impoverished.
Occasionally, when he called his relatives who stayed behind in the village, he learned that the village's fertile fields and rich soil were overgrown with waist-high weeds, and the red orange trees that the hometown was proud of were not harvested due to a lack of labor, with the fruit falling to the ground and rotting...
After every phone call, Li Dequan's heart was hollowed out once again. He said that after countless sleepless nights from his heart being hollowed out, he returned to Anxi Village.
Returning to the village to lead villagers to prosperity
After returning to the village, he continued to raise pigs. During this time, he consciously went to the homes of the villagers who stayed behind to chat.
"He said that one person being rich is not called being rich; we must lead everyone to get rich together, and only then will our village's life improve." Villager Chen Zhongyou remembers that starting in 2010, when Li Dequan came to his home to chat, these words he said have stayed with him to this day.
Chen Zhongyou made a living by driving a motorcycle taxi, and his son worked away from home, making life very difficult. In his eyes, Li Dequan was a capable man.
He returned to the village in 2008 to raise pigs, so why did he only start going to villagers' homes in 2010 to talk with everyone about escaping poverty? Li Dequan said that his hometown differed from Zhejiang in climate, market, and even pig farming methods. He built up momentum for two years before making his move, and his original intention of leading everyone to raise pigs and get rich was to ensure stability.
Under Li Dequan's leadership, Chen Zhongyou's family pig farm was built. That year, the Chen family's income increased, something his family had never dreamed of. When his son, who worked away from home, learned of it, he rushed home to specialize in pig farming.
One year after the Chen family began raising pigs, the village elected a village committee director, and Li Dequan was elected amid everyone's support. That year, the nickname "Piglet Village Chief" spread among the villagers.
In 2013, when the village committee was re-elected, Li Dequan became secretary of the village committee's Party branch.
The Piglet Village Chief gets another nickname
Chen Zhongyou told us that now everyone has changed to calling Li Dequan "the Piglet Village Chief has grown up."
The nickname "the Piglet Village Chief has grown up" is related to three factors supporting the "grown up."
Factor one: his communication skills have grown. Last year, the village began building roads, and the ancestral grave of Yang Shaoming's family, who is over sixty years old, was on the necessary route. Li Dequan went to find him.
Yang Shaoming remembers that after Li Dequan finished explaining the importance and necessity of building the road, he agreed immediately: as soon as the excavator reached the ancestral grave, he would immediately call relatives and friends to relocate the grave.
Yang Shaoming kept his promise and did not ask for a single cent in compensation.
"He has a real knack for explaining things to everyone." Yang Shaoming said that that day, Li Dequan first counted off on his fingers, one by one, the reasons the village was poor, and then said that to cure the root of poverty, everyone had to sacrifice some personal interests. "After he talked for a long time, he mentioned relocating my ancestral grave. I didn't think about anything else and agreed."
When cadres in the town spoke of "the Piglet Village Chief has grown up," they stressed that the Piglet Village Chief has a real approach to grassroots work, especially his down-to-earth communication skills with villagers.
The communication skills of "the Piglet Village Chief has grown up" also played a role when the town attracted investment to build a tourism and sightseeing ecological park and transfer land for planting income-boosting crops such as peaches or pears.
Factor two: his broad-mindedness in sharing the core techniques of poverty-alleviation farming and breeding with everyone has grown. At present, Chen Zhongyou's family pig farming scale exceeds Li Dequan's, and the sales of piglets and commercial pigs reaching 300 head is beyond doubt. Calculated at market prices, an annual income of 300,000 yuan is a foregone conclusion.
The Chen family's current situation largely benefits from learning the best way to prevent the greatest risk in getting rich by raising pigs -- common prevention and control methods for pig diseases and core treatment techniques, which came precisely from Li Dequan.
At present, Li Dequan's family has planted quite a lot of nectarine and walnut. Villagers say that when it comes to nectarine and walnut cultivation, as long as "the Piglet Village Chief has grown up" knows the technique, they will soon know it too, and will be able to master it before long.
Factor three: he puts pressure on himself, only to serve as a long-term leader for villagers in escaping poverty.
Now, his family's income from raising pigs and planting walnuts is estimated to exceed 1 million yuan this year.
"I am the village Party branch secretary. If even I don't know how to escape poverty and am not willing to help everyone escape poverty, how can I share the worries of the higher-level leaders and lead other villagers to prosperity?"
This year is a crucial year for poverty alleviation in Changling Town. The town government has planned strategy carefully. At present, the town's overall poverty situation has been greatly improved, and the next step is to build a demonstration village for poverty alleviation in Wanzhou District.