Growing grapes and raising mink: Laoting's Wang Yanping leads her fellow villagers onto the road to prosperity

When people mention Wang Yanping, a farmer's wife, the villagers of Guoxianyuan Village, Yan'gezhuang Town, Laoting County, all say: "This woman is no ordinary person! Growing grapes and raising mink, she is the one who leads us villagers onto the road to prosperity!"

In 1986, Wang Yanping, then 20 years old, married into Guoxianyuan Village, Yan'gezhuang Town, Laoting County. At that time, the village mainly grew field crops such as corn and wheat, and a year of hard work brought in very little income. Seeing that her own courtyard was quite spacious, about one mu of land, she thought she could use the courtyard to grow some high-value fruit trees. She successively planted peach trees, hawthorn trees and American sweet cherry trees; the American sweet cherry saplings were even bought from elsewhere through a contact, but all of them failed because her technique was not up to standard.

It was not until 1988 that Wang Yanping noticed that Kyoho grapes were large, sweet and sold well. If she could grow Kyoho grapes, she would certainly make money. Although at that time not a single household in the village grew grapes on a large scale, Wang Yanping still persuaded her husband and boldly planted 200 grape vines in their own courtyard. This time, Wang Yanping learned from her past experience and lessons. She not only read a large number of scientific and technical books on grape cultivation and management, but also went to other places many times to seek advice from farmers with grape-growing experience. She mastered grape-growing techniques, and with the careful management of the couple, the following year Wang Yanping's family had a bumper grape harvest and earned four thousand yuan. That was a big sum at the time and became the biggest news in Guoxianyuan Village.

From then on Wang Yanping became famous, and the villagers looked at her with new eyes, coming one after another to learn the "grape know-how", which Wang Yanping enthusiastically passed on without any reservation. Afterwards, Wang Yanping planted grapes on all of her more than 4 mu of contracted land, and the villagers followed suit one after another. Wang Yanping became the villagers' free technician, carefully guiding everyone in grape growing. Within a few years, more than half of the households in the whole village were engaged in grape production, and each mu of land could bring in nearly ten thousand yuan more than growing field crops. Under Wang Yanping's leadership, the villagers embarked on the "grape" road to prosperity.

In the autumn of 2009, Wang Yanping saw that villagers in other villages in the county earned even better returns from raising rare fur-bearing animals than from growing grapes. She carefully conducted market research, and after much deliberation, she was the first to raise 50 mink in her home courtyard, becoming the first mink farmer in the whole village. Under Wang Yanping's careful guidance, villager Liu Honghai also began raising mink that year, and that same year Liu Honghai's family earned more than thirty thousand yuan from mink farming, instantly transforming from a poor household in the village into a well-off one. From then on, Wang Yanping again led the villagers onto the path of specialty breeding, opening another door to prosperity for the farming households of this village.

Because of her high prestige in the village, in 2012 Wang Yanping was elected by the villagers as the village women's congress director and family planning officer. Since taking up the post, she has devoted herself wholeheartedly to the work of the women's federation and family planning. In order to strengthen the village's pregnancy and IUD checks, she ignored the fact that her child was about to take the college entrance examination and for more than ten days in a row, from dawn to dusk, went to the homes of married women of childbearing age in the village to do their thinking work, greatly advancing the village's family planning work.

After the village established its cultural facilities, Wang Yanping also became the organizer and leader of the village's cultural activities. She led the villagers in singing, dancing, holding study classes and publicizing family planning knowledge during the slack farming season, enriching the villagers' cultural life.

Last year, she led the village's sisters to take part in the county's "Boxin Cup" square dance competition, and organized a Mid-Autumn square dance performance called "Making Friends Through Dance". The villagers all say: "Yanping not only leads everyone to prosperity in material life, but also leads everyone to prosperity in spiritual life!"