A business-savvy man from Sichuan becomes a village official and digs into his own pocket to grow a "money tree" among the rocks

Wang Jiayuan (center) and villagers inspect the growth of plum trees.

On April 20, Wang Jiayuan, Party branch secretary of Chunfeng Village, Tengda Town, Junlian County, Yibin City, was awarded the national honorary title of “Model of the Times.”

In the eyes of the villagers, Wang Jiayuan has long been a household name and a “big shot.” He led everyone to work hard and turned a jagged rocky mountain into a treasure basin of “shaking off poverty and getting rich.” This man, who made the rocks “bloom and bear fruit,” won the villagers’ trust and respect through his actions.

A business-savvy man returns home to become a village official and vows to leave if he cannot build the road

“No daughter will marry into Mao'er Bay, where there are only rocky hills, the land is barren, the roads are hard to travel, and one meal a day is all you get.” This folk rhyme sings of Chunfeng Village's old appearance. In the former Chunfeng Village, not only were girls unwilling to come, but most adult men also went out to work, trying to change their families' living conditions.

Wang Jiayuan was one of the villagers who “went out.” The third child in his family, he began traveling far and wide at the age of 15. He had been a trainee at the Junlian County Sichuan Opera Troupe, had been to Shanxi, and had been to Beijing. Through odd jobs and business, he saved up several hundred thousand yuan and became what everyone saw as a capable man. Yet faced with envious looks, he chose to return to his hometown.

In the eyes of Chunfeng Village residents, Wang Jiayuan, who could buy a big house in the county town and run a quarry, was definitely no ordinary person. On November 9, 2004, Chunfeng Village held its village committee election, and Wang Jiayuan was elected village director with a high vote of 95%. His father and wife immediately opposed it. They found it hard to understand why Wang Jiayuan, whose business was doing well, would go be a village official in a “thankless” job.

“I'll just do these 3 years, and once the road is built I won't bother anymore.” Wang Jiayuan temporarily soothed his father and wife, but in his heart he thought, “One person being rich doesn't count as being rich; leading everyone to get rich together is true wealth.” As soon as he took office, he made a solemn pledge: “If I cannot build the road out of the mountains within my 3-year term, I'll leave!”

The villagers clapped and praised him, but when it came to actually taking action and pooling funds and labor, there was much thunder and little rain. “With no road, we dig with our hands; with no money, we all chip in. As long as everyone joins hands, we can bite a hole through stone.” While going door to door to mobilize people, Wang Jiayuan also returned to the county town to “borrow money” from his wife's cold dish shop. He also contributed the stone from his own quarry free of charge, spending more than 100,000 yuan of his family's money before and after the road was built.

Seeing this, the whole village, old and young, began to respond actively. After more than 3 months of hard work, they finally chiseled out a gravel road on the steep rock.

In early 2005, when an off-road vehicle from beyond the mountains drove into Chunfeng Village for the first time, the villagers shed tears.

He often used his own money to subsidize villagers and grew a “money tree” among the rocks

The road was open, but where was the key to opening the door to prosperity?

Chunfeng Village has a typical karst landform, with rocky desertification accounting for one third of its area. Faced with limestone rocks baring their teeth all over the mountain, successive village “two committees” were stumped. Wang Jiayuan, who had seen the wider world, understood that developing an industry required more than hard work; it also required science. Seeing that several project attempts failed to gain momentum, he invited agricultural experts to analyze and study the situation on site, and finally decided to plant plum trees according to Chunfeng Village's geographical environment.

“Growing grain won't leave you hungry. If the plums can't be sold, can you eat them as meals?” For villagers who had been poor for too long, getting them to plant plum trees was not easy. To this end, Wang Jiayuan and Party members and officials took the lead in demonstrating, and only then did the villagers follow suit and start planting.

Of course, there were also times when plums did not sell well. Recalling the situation at the time, Wang Jiayuan's wife, Liao Yunlan, said, “Some villagers couldn't sell their plums, so they carried them to our home and asked Wang Jiayuan to sell them all.” Some even complained to town leaders, saying Wang Jiayuan was not properly serving as an official and was secretly acting as a “middleman.” In fact, when Wang Jiayuan helped everyone contact buyers to sell plums, not only did he not earn a price difference, but when the selling price was too low, he often used his own money to subsidize the villagers.

Hard work pays off. In 2005, Chunfeng Village's plum planting scale reached 1,000 mu. “Plum King” Liu Yuanheng, who planted more than 30 mu of plums, said that Wang Jiayuan established a plum association in the village, with unified packaging and unified pricing. He also went to the industry and commerce bureau to register a trademark, making the brand of the Chunfeng Village Plum Association known. The plum trees grown among the rocks became the villagers' money tree.

Now, looking at plum blossoms blooming among the rocks all over the mountain, the people of Chunfeng who became rich first are grateful from the bottom of their hearts to their good leader Wang Jiayuan.

The rocky mountain has become a hidden paradise, and a 4A-level ecological scenic area is being created

Chunfeng Village has 3 groups in total. The villagers of Chunfeng Group became rich by planting plums, but Wang Jiayuan did not simply “clone” the successful experience. He calculated that Longtang Group and Zhongsha Group must take different paths, and that developing multiple varieties was the only way to avoid risks and achieve complementary advantages. In the end, these two groups adapted measures to local conditions, respectively planting flowers and nursery stock and building tea gardens, developing the economy and enriching the people.

Walking into Chunfeng Village today, you see gray bricks, black tiles, and greenery and flowers everywhere. The former karst hilly and mountainous area now presents a different kind of scenery, making people feel as if they are in a hidden paradise. Wang Jiayuan encouraged everyone to open farmhouse restaurants and develop rural tourism, forming an ecological sightseeing agricultural tourism brand of “enjoying flowers in spring, tasting fruit in summer, viewing scenery in autumn, and nourishing health in winter.”

In March this year, visitors came in an endless stream to Chunfeng Village to admire pear blossoms, and Wang Jiayuan was planning to join hands with a group from elsewhere to build Chunfeng Village into a national 4A-level rural ecological leisure tourism scenic area, and next year build it into a sightseeing tourism destination receiving more than 200,000 visitors annually, so that people traveling to Chunfeng Village can truly feel as if bathed in a spring breeze.