Leaving Office to Grow Citrus in His Home Village: The Entrepreneurial Story of a Retired Department-Level Official from Sichuan

His skin tanned dark and thick myopic glasses perched on the bridge of his nose - these two somewhat incongruous features appear together on Fan Jingchao. The villagers of Fanrong Village, Jiyi Township, Jingyan County, Sichuan, all call this rather odd farmer "Director Fan."

Before returning to his home village to become a farmer, Fan Jingchao's name had been preceded by many titles.

He left the countryside at 21, spent nearly 40 years in politics, and rose to the department level, yet he made a decision that everyone found puzzling or even opposed: he gave up the post of director of the Provincial Government Counselors' Office arranged by the organization and returned alone to his home village of Fanrong. This 60-year-old veteran cadre wanted to "do something big" - grow citrus.

After eight years of devoted effort, under Fan Jingchao's leadership the citrus orchards have spread across 19 administrative villages in 4 townships including Jiyi and Yanjing, covering an area of 10,100 mu, with fruit-bearing orchards yielding an average return of about 10,000 yuan per mu. But what makes him proudest is that "the villagers finally believe in me!"

Returning Home to Be a Farmer

The idea of giving up office to return to the village and become a farmer had been brewing in Fan Jingchao's mind for more than just a few days.

Fan Jingchao, who had worked in the Sichuan Provincial Department of Agriculture, the Provincial Department of Water Resources, and the Provincial Government Disaster Relief Office, had almost always dealt with "agriculture, rural areas and farmers." He had visited more than 210 county-level cities and counties at the grassroots level, and had also traveled to Japan, Israel, the United States and many other countries to study modern agricultural development, writing quite a few research papers on how to develop agriculture.

Compared with what he saw on his research trips elsewhere, the scenes he saw each year when returning to his hometown made Fan Jingchao feel heartbroken. "Back then the village roads were not built; on rainy days the mud covered your ankles. The labor force had all gone out to work, the fields were left barren, and empty houses and barren hills were everywhere. It felt like the gap between my hometown and the outside world was growing wider and wider."

As early as the beginning of 2007, Fan Jingchao had already made preparations to return to his hometown after retirement to pursue modern agriculture, and had asked his elder sister in the village to try things out first - raising ducks, rabbits and fish - but the results were not ideal.

A research trip to Renshou County, Sichuan, the same year opened Fan Jingchao's eyes. There he discovered a "skilled entrepreneur" named Xu Wenke. Under this capable man's leadership, the local planting area of a hybrid citrus variety called "Qingjian" had expanded to nearly 10,000 mu, with output value reaching more than 10,000 yuan per mu, and the fruit was even exported to Vietnam, Singapore and other countries.

"The story of Xu Wenke leading his fellow villagers in developing a modern fruit industry provided me with a real-life example of success." His exchanges with Xu Wenke made Fan Jingchao eager to try. "The climate, terrain, soil and other conditions in our hometown are very similar to those in Renshou County - why not give it a try?"

At the time, the organization was planning to arrange for him to continue contributing in his retirement as director of the Provincial Counselors' Office. "But I want to go back to the village and be a farmer." Fan Jingchao decisively declined the organization's arrangement, and after several rounds of communication he finally gained understanding.

In 2008, this "department-level official" got his wish and returned home.

Facing Heavy Doubts and Feeling Wronged

This veteran cadre, who had not done farm work for many years, went back alone.

"At the time my family all opposed it." During his years in politics, Fan Jingchao had frequently been transferred between regions and had spent little time with his family. "After retirement, instead of resting and enjoying a good old age, why must you run off to the countryside?" "If you go back alone, even your basic living needs in the village won't be guaranteed." His family opposed it strenuously.

For Fan Jingchao, who had no experience whatsoever in citrus cultivation, the resistance to returning home did not stop there. "You were doing fine as an official, and now you're willing to come back and be a farmer, and you say you've come to help the poor? You must be lying, right?" The villagers did not understand Fan Jingchao's move to return to the village and organize citrus planting.

Land transfer was the first unavoidable issue in building the orchards. Because the planting required roads, main industrial roads and water storage ponds, some fields would be paved over, which drew resistance from some villagers. Some even said, "You're ruining our feng shui by doing this."

"At the time quite a few people in the village thought: what if a 60-year-old man messes things up after two years? What happens to our money and our land? Everyone had concerns," said Liu Mingzhen, Fan Jingchao's neighbor.

In the face of doubts, Fan Jingchao went door to door to communicate with the villagers, constantly explaining the benefits of building the orchards: you can collect land rent every year without worry, there are jobs right at your doorstep, and the village's conditions will improve. Only then did he finally gain widespread support.

As for the road building, from planning and directing to coordinating construction, Fan Jingchao handled it all himself.

Seeing the roads gradually completed and the orchards taking shape, Fan Jingchao brought in 18 skilled workers from elsewhere who knew how to grow the crop. From then on he began a life of getting up at 5 a.m. every day to cook for the workers. "There was no natural gas, so we could only burn firewood. I'd add firewood under the stove with one hand while quickly stirring the pot with the other." After finishing the household chores, he would plunge into the orchards with the workers.

Since starting his venture, Fan Jingchao's habit of "walking at least 10 km in the orchards every day to solve problems everywhere" has continued to this day. "At first there were only 505 'Qingjian' trees; now the citrus orchard area has reached 10,100 mu, and we plan to add about 6,000 mu more in 2016, bringing it to 16,000 mu." Pointing to the slogan in his office - "A ten-year development blueprint, a hundred-village action to invigorate industry, a thousand mountains transformed into orchards, ten thousand people growing rich and building new villages" - Fan Jingchao excitedly told the reporter.

The villagers feel this change deeply. "In the past, the hills in the village basically looked 'green from afar, but worthless up close,' with abandoned fields everywhere," said 84-year-old villager Zhang Anchang. Now, on the road from Chengdu along National Highway 213 to Jingyan County town, the huge "Citrus Dream Garden" sign catches the eye, and following the sign all the way in, the fruit trees are laden with golden citrus wrapped in paper film.

After Fan Jingchao's citrus-growing venture in his home village was first reported by the media, along with much praise there also appeared quite a few doubts - "How did you get the project funding?" "He must have been a corrupt official when he was in office."

Hearing these accusations, Fan Jingchao felt very wronged. "The startup capital of more than 100,000 yuan was my savings. When the orchard expanded to 100 mu, I scraped together several hundred thousand yuan from relatives and friends." When the orchard expanded to 600 mu, Fan Jingchao again persuaded his family to sell the house in Chengdu and his father's house in Leshan.

"As a result, family relations became even more strained." Fan Jingchao's wife could only move in with their daughter's family, and only after retiring in 2015 did she move to the village to live with him. "She feels that because of those reports, what I did became a thankless task - I endured hardship and yet inexplicably smeared my own name," Fan Jingchao said with a bitter smile.

Encouraging More Young People to Return Home and Start Businesses

In 1969, Fan Jingchao graduated from high school and left the village, becoming a privately run teacher, later transferring to a public school teaching post, then working at a broadcasting station, and after that embarking on an official career, rising from the section level to the division level and finally to the department level. Although others found it puzzling that he had "finally gotten out of the village only to walk back in," to him it was a very natural thing.

More than once, Fan Jingchao mentioned the Red Flag Canal to the reporter. He had always regarded Yang Gui, who led the whole county in taking 10 years to build the Red Flag Canal, as his idol. "His sense of responsibility was truly remarkable," Fan Jingchao said. "Having worked for so many years, every time I go home I deeply feel how backward my hometown is. If I couldn't use my own abilities to change my hometown's face through exploring modern agriculture, that would be too much of a pity."

Speaking of the local development model, his thinking was clear: "Two-thirds of Sichuan people live in hilly areas, and the hilly regions have many people but few resources. In today's countryside, the scope is broad and the volume is large, and there are generally '3 major problems': traditional planting has low returns and cannot keep young people around; the rural labor force is increasingly aging; and more and more land is being left barren. My hometown is representative in all 3 of these respects. The way out of these problems is modern agriculture."

In the more than 8 years since returning home, Fan Jingchao has spent more than 300 days each year in the countryside. To help the villagers grow rich together, in 2011 he initiated the establishment of a hybrid citrus professional cooperative. Based on the concept of "developers develop, specialized cooperative organizations serve, farmers grow and manage their way to prosperity," the villagers contribute their land as shares and receive rent whether there is drought or flood.