Growing Roses to Lead Her Fellow Villagers to Prosperity: Jingyu's Woman of Strength Li Xiaoqin
In Fuyang Village, Mengjiang Township, surrounded by mountains on all sides, a woman of strength has emerged. She contracted a once-barren hillside that produced no grain, brought bright red roses to this hillside, and established a women's cooperative specializing in roses, transforming a poor mountain hollow into a sea of flowers and leading everyone onto the road to prosperity. She is Li Xiaoqin, chairwoman of the Jingyu County Meihua Edible Rose Farmers' Professional Cooperative.
Finding the right path after many twists and turns
In 1995, the Jingyu County Woodwork Factory where Li Xiaoqin worked was dissolved, and she was laid off. The family could only rely on her husband's modest monthly wage. "I can't just sit at home depending on my husband to support me; I need to find some way to make a living." With this thought, Li Xiaoqin began her entrepreneurial journey.
Li Xiaoqin first opened an internet cafe, but once it opened, the customers were all children and teenagers. Getting addicted to the internet would inevitably affect their studies, and she felt that no amount of money was worth doing this. Afterwards, she opened a laundry, but it too failed before long. Yet Li Xiaoqin never gave up her dream of starting a business. Through relatives, she rented 70 mu of sloping land in Fuyang Village and planted corn and soybeans. Due to lack of experience, she lost money for 4 years straight after 4 years of planting. Li Xiaoqin refused to give in. Every day she sought out the latest agricultural information through various channels, striving to find a path to prosperity that suited her. Finally, she discovered that growing roses had broad prospects, and the land she had contracted was very well suited to growing roses. Braving the cold winter weather, she took buses and transferred to trains, traveling to the far border city of Hunchun to consult her elders about rose cultivation methods and production areas. When spring came and flowers bloomed, she went to Kaiyuan in Liaoning Province to purchase roses for cultivation. By the third year of growing roses, Li Xiaoqin finally succeeded, with an income of more than 20,000 yuan.
Making roses more vibrant
Li Xiaoqin continuously studied health and wellness knowledge and looked into the nutritional components of roses, learning that this flower has functions such as soothing emotions, relieving fatigue, replenishing blood and qi, and beautifying and caring for the skin. She decided to let roses play a greater role.
June in the Changbai Mountain area is the season when roses bloom. She selected the best flower buds for processing, registered her own trademark - Changbai Mountain Edible Rose Tea - and fully launched her new product in the county town. Before long, her rose tea had opened up the market.
Li Xiaoqin's product innovations did not stop there. Right after that, she learned to make rose jam... In 2009, Li Xiaoqin's rose fields could bring in more than 6,000 yuan per mu, and at the same time, she built a 280-square-meter factory building at the foot of the mountain.
Driving the whole village to prosper together
In the late autumn of 2009, Li Xiaoqin began making arrangements to establish a rose cooperative business organization, mobilizing impoverished women to grow roses. Rural woman Li Guiying was already over sixty, and both her husband and son were ill and unable to work. The entire burden of the family fell on her shoulders. Li Xiaoqin persuaded her to work in the rose garden, paying her 1,000 yuan a month, and taught her to grow roses, guiding her to join the cooperative, and even gave her 110 rose seedlings. In 2012, Li Xiaoqin's cooperative had grown from the initial 5 women to 74 households in the whole village. The villagers grew roses, savored the fragrance, and enjoyed high incomes, not only turning this small village into a sea of flowers but also making their days ever more prosperous. Li Xiaoqin's business also grew larger and larger, and she registered and established Jingyu County Jianying Agriculture and Forestry Biotechnology Development Co., Ltd.
The once-barren hillside has become a sea of roses, and Li Xiaoqin is leading the cooperative members along this fragrance-filled road to prosperity, moving forward all the way.