He stayed true to the silkworm room for 24 years, and became a silkworm master
Once Qingming passed and the weather cleared, the fields of Gaokuo Natural Village in Napai Village, Gangmei Town, Yangchun City, presented a busy scene, yet villager Li Mengxi was not among them. Twenty-four years ago, Li Mengxi threw himself wholeheartedly into the silkworm room to weave his own dream. Today, sericulture is still the main theme of his life, and many villagers affectionately call him "silkworm master."
Walking into Gaokuo Village, it is not hard to find this "silkworm master." When the reporter met Li Mengxi, he was in the silkworm room with workers, cutting mulberry leaves and feeding the silkworms. He spent the whole morning bustling about in this silkworm room of less than 30 sq m, which holds his 24 years of hard work and dreams.
Taking the lead in trying silkworm seedling breeding
Li Mengxi had dared to try new things since childhood, and was also the earliest young man in the village to go out to work. Li Mengxi did not fare well while struggling outside. After several twists and turns, Li Mengxi returned to his hometown and turned his eyes to the timber business, yet it also showed little promise.
As the saying goes: "A woman fears choosing the wrong man, a man fears entering the wrong trade." Perhaps it was precisely these repeated setbacks that proved Li Mengxi had never chosen the right trade. In 1982, the live pig market was rising, and surrounding farmers began raising pigs one after another, but this time Li Mengxi was determined that sericulture was the "trade" that suited him. At first, Li Mengxi's sericulture scale was not large, with only a few sheets of silkworm eggs and one silkworm room. The next year, Li Mengxi began formally breeding silkworm seedlings.
"Breeding silkworm seedlings requires even more technical skill than raising silkworms, but at the time conditions were limited, so I could only rely on slowly figuring it out myself." Li Mengxi was especially attentive and hardworking on his path of silkworm seedling breeding. Every morning he got up at 3 o'clock to feed the silkworms, and after a busy day he could only go to sleep at 9 at night. Faced with the harsh conditions, at first his family thought Li Mengxi would not persist for long, but unexpectedly, he kept at it for 24 years.
Crossing the river by feeling the stones
With no one to guide him, Li Mengxi could only cross the river by feeling the stones. In Li Mengxi's silkworm room, the reporter heard much about silkworm seedling breeding techniques. Not only the selection of mulberry leaves and feeding times, but even the temperature, humidity, sanitation and ventilation conditions in the silkworm room all have their particular requirements.
At first, the completely inexperienced Li Mengxi stayed in the silkworm room every day, watching his silkworm seedlings and constantly observing and comparing them, slowly figuring out sericulture techniques. "First raise them one way, then after a few days see how the results are. If the results are poor, change the method." In his early attempts at silkworm seedling breeding, Li Mengxi experienced many setbacks and took many detours.
"Failure is inevitable, but since something has already failed, it is enough to learn a lesson from it." Speaking of the setbacks he suffered, Li Mengxi mentioned a failure from many years ago. Because the mulberry trees used to feed the silkworms were poorly managed, wild silkworms bred on them, and the mulberry leaves covered with wild silkworm droppings were then used by Li Mengxi in his own silkworm room. Unexpectedly, this batch of mulberry leaves had already been infected with bacteria because of the wild silkworm droppings, and more than 70 sheets of silkworm eggs at home were lost overnight.
Li Mengxi groped his way through these failures and never gave up. Today, Li Mengxi's silkworm seedling breeding scale is second to none in Yangchun and even throughout Yangjiang, selling an average of more than 2,000 sheets of silkworm eggs outward each year, with annual income also reaching six figures.
Hoping to lead farmers to get rich together
In the early days of sericulture, repeated failures did not defeat Li Mengxi. Instead, he accumulated much experience from failure and became the "silkworm master" in the eyes of the villagers. Whenever they encountered a problem, they would come to consult this "silkworm master," and the warm-hearted Li Mengxi never stinted on sharing his experience.
Silkworm farmer Wu Huaquan, far away in Hekou Town, found that his silkworms were always thinner and smaller than others', and the anxious Wu Huaquan hurriedly called Li Mengxi for help. Upon learning the news, Li Mengxi immediately rushed to Hekou Town more than 20 km away without another word, and the experienced Li Mengxi spotted the problem in Wu Huaquan's silkworm room at a glance: the sanitation was too poor, and there was no ventilation window. "That time I really owed it to him, otherwise I definitely would have lost money." Even today, Wu Huaquan remains grateful for Li Mengxi's help.
Besides helping other silkworm farmers elsewhere, Li Mengxi also treats the workers in his own silkworm room especially well. "Now the daily wage is 150 yuan, higher than the pay I got when I used to work in the Pearl River Delta." Villager Huang Xiaomei, who works in the silkworm room, said she is no longer willing to go out to work.
"Reputation spreads through the mulberry garden everywhere, villagers rejoice in getting rich at ease." These are two lines of poetry Li Mengxi wrote himself, and also a microcosm of his sericulture dream. After becoming wealthy himself, he still wants to lead the surrounding farmers to develop together and live a good life together.