Shibadong's Long Jilong Orchard Sets Free a Dream of Prosperity

Seeing the reporter arrive, Long Jilong, a villager of Shibadong Village, was not surprised in the least. "Tourists have been coming here in an endless stream these days, and quite a few reporters too!" It was precisely for this reason that he now dared to confidently expand the planting area of his orchard. "I'm actually not worried about sales at all now. It's a completely different story from when I first came back."

Before 2012, Long Jilong had already spent more than ten years working odd jobs in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places. He had done everything from decoration to masonry, and knew well the hardships of migrant workers far from home. In 2002, at the age of 29, he met a girl from Hefei. Because his hometown was deep in the mountains of western Hunan, at that time he did not even dare to bring his girlfriend home. "If she came with me and saw what my hometown looks like, she definitely wouldn't want to stay with me."

At that time, Shibadong Village was the most notoriously poor village in the area. In 2012, after years of drifting away from home, Long Jilong resolutely returned home to take care of his aging parents, preparing to start a fruit-tree growing business. "I had also studied in places like Zhejiang before, watching how others planted. Actually, when I first came back, I was quite discouraged. The investment is large, the returns are slow, and the key problem is that transportation is inconvenient. How would I even sell the fruit?"

Since he had already thrown himself into it, no matter how difficult it got, he had to grit his teeth and push through. On November 3, 2013, Long Jilong never could have imagined that General Secretary Xi would come to this poor mountain valley and set out the policy of targeted poverty alleviation. From then on, Shibadong Village became famous, and the idea of developing rural tourism gradually took shape with the help of the poverty alleviation work team.

"More and more people are coming in, the roads have been built, and the originally bumpy dirt roads have now become brand-new asphalt roads, so the good things from the mountains can also be transported out." Seeing that the time was ripe, Long Jilong simply took out a bank loan of more than 300,000 and, through land transfer, contracted more than 70 mu of land right by the roadside. Together with his family's original land, it totaled 79 mu. "I plan to plant 40 mu of peach trees here, and also plant some mulberries, yellow peaches, cherries and so on. With a variety of varieties, I can guarantee fresh fruit can be picked in all four seasons."

The news that Long Jilong wanted to build a "four-season orchard" spread throughout the village. Many villagers, seeing the encouraging changes in the village's poverty alleviation and development in recent years, also sniffed out a new taste of prosperity and put forward ideas one after another to cooperate with him on the orchard. "We simply set up a 'Jinhui Long Farmers' Planting Professional Cooperative.' Now 10 households have joined, and several more are still discussing it. This year, we're also thinking of expanding the scale, opening a few mu of fish ponds nearby, and running an agritainment business right in the fruit forest." Long Jilong pointed to a newly dug fish pond by the roadside and told the reporter.

When asked about the benefits, Long Jilong was full of confidence. "It takes two to three years for the fruit trees to grow and bear fruit. Last year, some of the mulberries had already borne fruit. I invited tourists to pick them themselves in the forest for free, and the results were pretty good. Now the village's tourism is doing well, and every day tourists come in an endless stream. The benefits should not be a problem. Our good days are drawing nearer day by day!"