Li Tingliang: Raising goats set him on the path to prosperity

At dawn, before the cool morning mist had dispersed, in Fengyi Township, Yibin County, villager Li Tingliang and his younger brother were together herding and catching wild goats. The voices of the people on site, the bleating of the goats, wove together into a wonderful melody of prosperity and escaping poverty.

A disabled leg, but still a pair of sound hands

Li Tingliang, now 45 years old, has a grade 9 disability. In October 2014, while repairing a mixer on the Neijiang-Kunming Railway, he suffered an accident that broke the tibia and fibula of his left foot, a comminuted fracture. From then on, he could no longer walk like an ordinary person, let alone do heavy work. All at once the whole family fell into despair, and even his eldest son, who later tested into a key high school, had to drop out and go out to work because of the family's financial difficulties.

But Li Tingliang did not give up hope. While recuperating at home, he thought of the 40 goats his father had left behind after his death. Why not go into goat farming? He began to plan his "grand goat-raising plan."

Goats released into nature unexpectedly bring back a "huge sum"

"I hear people nowadays like green food and like the taste of wild game, so why not raise wild goats?" Li Tingliang set his sights on the several thousand mu of barren slopes around the Guan River. These slopes could not be cultivated because they were too steep, but they had abundant forage, making them just the right place to graze goats. He decided to "release the goats back into nature." Li Tingliang said he only occasionally put out some salt at the goats' resting places to stimulate their appetite, and the rest of the time he just watched over them from a distance. The goats never came home; at dawn they went up the mountain in groups to find food, and at dark they returned to sleep in the caves by the Guan River, becoming truly "wild goats."

"This way of raising goats is itself a major feature of goat farming. The mutton raised this way is tender and firm, with a fresh, delicious taste. Whichever family in the village holds a wedding or a funeral buys from him." Speaking of Li Tingliang, Li Xiaobo, the village director of Puxuan Village, kept giving a thumbs-up.

According to Li Tingliang, he can sell more than 10 goats every year, and one jin of goat sells for 18 yuan, bringing in nearly 20,000 yuan a year. For this once-struggling family, this was undoubtedly a "huge sum." This also strengthened Li Tingliang's determination to escape poverty and become prosperous by raising wild goats.

As the business grows, a son of Sichuan and Yunnan hopes for broader sales channels

Li Tingliang's story of relying on himself by raising goats became a much-told tale locally, but having tasted success, he did not forget the people in his village. Instead, he took the initiative to contact some people with disabilities nearby to take up farming, selling his breeding goats to them at low prices or even giving them away for free, encouraging them to live optimistically, get out of hardship, and set out on the path to prosperity.