Why is he called "Niu" by the people of Niuzhuang

At noon on April 10, the sun climbed over the mountain ridge and shone into the sloping field of Liu Yaoyin, a villager of Jiuliping Village, Niuzhuang Township, Wufeng County, Yichang City. He hurriedly called his neighbors to help him prepare the land, getting ready to plant the Chinese medicinal herb duhuo (Angelica pubescens). From years of owing the village grain payments to later building a new tiled house, buying a car, putting his daughter through university, and then buying his son a truck, the transformation of his family can truly be described as earth-shaking.

Liu Yaoyin said: "Our golden rice bowl was given to us by Old Luo; it was he who helped our family live a good life."

Old Luo's name is Luo Guanzhang. On April 13, the reporter met this 79-year-old man in Niuzhuang Township, Wufeng County, the township with the highest average altitude in Yichang. Of medium build, with a dark complexion, speaking in a thick local accent, and having lost two fingers on his left hand, he is Luo Guanzhang, who retired in 1997 from the post of deputy director of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Wufeng Tujia Autonomous County, Yichang City, and returned to his home village.

Xiao Yongkui, Party Secretary of Niuzhuang Township, said: "The people of Niuzhuang have been able to basically escape poverty thanks to Old Luo; it was he who helped us lay the foundation for our industries."

More than 100 experiments over 3 years, harvesting a single seed

Wild gastrodia (Gastrodia elata) is a rare and precious Chinese medicinal herb unique to Niuzhuang, but its wild yield is small and cannot meet market demand. If the bottleneck of artificial sexual propagation could be broken through, "gold" could be dug out of these mountains.

Luo Guanzhang persuaded his childhood friend Chen Konghuan, an engineer who had retired from the Shaanxi Geological Survey Team and returned home, to help him realize this idea. Just after the Spring Festival in 1998, Luo Guanzhang and Chen Konghuan set off for Shaanxi and Shanxi to learn from others' experience. The trip was not smooth; the people they approached either evaded the questions or demanded exorbitant transfer fees. After returning, the two decided to carry out their own experiments on artificial propagation of gastrodia.

The first year, failure. The second year, still failure. Luo Guanzhang and his companion conducted more than 100 experiments, filling a full three notebooks with observation records alone, and the discarded fungal wood piled up into a small hill. While cutting the fungal wood, because the hardwood twisted and slipped, Luo Guanzhang's left thumb was sawed off and his index finger was sawed through. The two severed finger segments fell into a large pile of sawdust and were never found. Luo Guanzhang's wife was so heartbroken that tears kept falling, but he gritted his teeth, stayed in the hospital for only a little over 10 days, and then hurried back to continue the experiments.

In the third year, that is, 2000, Luo Guanzhang finally harvested the first seed of sexual propagation of gastrodia. Three months later, Luo Guanzhang sowed this seed on Armillaria mellea and obtained 42 cultivated seeds. In 2001, Luo Guanzhang expanded the experimental area and earned more than 50,000 yuan that year alone. More than a dozen poor households who followed his lead each increased their income by more than 100,000 yuan.

If you want to wear a woolen coat, you have to work with all your might

Zou Yunbai, a villager of Jiuliping Village, lived on a mountain 15 km from the Niuzhuang town center. With a large family, he had long worn the label of "the poorest household in the village." When Luo Guanzhang came to promote shiitake mushroom cultivation, he found that there was forest land and a water source near Zou Yunbai's home, making it very suitable for growing bag-cultivated shiitake mushrooms. But Zou Yunbai's family worried that the more they tried, the poorer they would become, and were unwilling to do it.

Once, twice, three times... within one month, despite the high mountains and long roads, Luo Guanzhang visited their home seven times in a row, and together with village officials encouraged Zou Yunbai to grow bag-cultivated shiitake mushrooms, even promising to come up the mountain to his home to "work as hired help" when it was time to sow the spawn.

Luo Guanzhang's sincerity moved Zou Yunbai. That day, he took his wife and children up the mountain to plant shiitake mushrooms for the first time. When it was time to sow the spawn, Luo Guanzhang arrived to help wearing Liberation shoes and carrying a hoe, giving on-site guidance. By the time the sowing was finished, night had fallen.

The next year, Zou Yunbai earned more than 10,000 yuan from selling bag-cultivated shiitake mushrooms, which not only paid off his debts but also let him buy a woolen coat he had long yearned for. In less than 3 years, Jiuliping Village developed more than 500,000 logs of shiitake mushrooms, with annual income exceeding one million yuan.

Through many hardships, cultivating three major industries, increasing villagers' income by 510 million yuan

The road to poverty alleviation through industry was not smooth. In 2000, on the path of industrial poverty alleviation, Luo Guanzhang suffered his greatest failure.

One day at the end of August that year, dozens of farmers dragged unsellable radishes to his home, demanding that he buy them all. It turned out that Luo Guanzhang had found that the Baiyuchun radish introduced from South Korea was an ideal variety for off-season vegetable cultivation in Niuzhuang. So he introduced the seeds and promoted planting 196 mu among 116 households in Group 1 of Niuzhuang Village.

Unexpectedly, the market suddenly changed, and that year the purchase price of radishes was only 0.10 yuan per kg. To keep the farmers from suffering losses, Luo Guanzhang took out 15,000 yuan of his own money to subsidize these villagers.

The next year, Luo Guanzhang learned his lesson, organized the villagers to establish a professional cooperative, and signed sales contracts with large wholesale markets, finally opening up the market. The Baiyuchun radish also spread from Niuzhuang Village in Niuzhuang Township to five neighboring villages, with a planting area of more than 8,000 mu, increasing farmers' income by more than 20 million yuan.

Over 19 years, Luo Guanzhang painstakingly explored ways to "pull out the roots of poverty" through industrial poverty alleviation, leading and guiding more than 1,500 farming households to grow tobacco, medicinal herbs, and vegetables, cumulatively helping villagers increase their income by 510 million yuan.