Legless Brother Becomes Self-Reliant, Gets Rich Keeping Bees, Life Gets Sweeter and Sweeter

Zhou Jianchun tending his bee farm

Compared with many born in the 1980s, the life of Zhou Jianchun, a 33-year-old villager from Longche Village, Longfengqiao Subdistrict, Beibei, has been full of twists and turns: born with osteogenesis imperfecta, his legs are so severely deformed and atrophied that he cannot walk and gets around by pushing himself on a skateboard... Though fate has treated him unfairly, he has never complained. Because he "would rather die than lose face," he taught himself to read and write and learned to keep bees, and today he is a well-known local bee-keeping expert. Yesterday, having just finished following the honey flow in the wild, Zhou Jianchun brought his bees back to his hometown. On taking stock, this year was another bumper year, with bee-keeping income of nearly 60,000 yuan.

Keeping bees while sitting on a skateboard

One day in September this year, a reporter met Zhou Jianchun for the first time at a place called Baimiaozi by the Jialing River in Beibei. Less than half a meter tall, he sat on a skateboard cart, holding a simple wooden stool in each hand and pushing hard backward, so the cart slid slowly forward. This place is more than 10 km from his home; because the goldenrain trees on the back hill were blooming over a large area, in early August he moved his beehives here to let the bees collect the new nectar source.

Sitting on the skateboard cart, Zhou Jianchun cleaned the hives while checking the condition of the bee colonies. Speaking of bees, Zhou Jianchun talked on and on: "The Chinese bees I keep are smaller than Italian bees (also called Western bees) and produce less honey, but they are native, highly adaptable, and better than Italian bees at resisting cold and disease and pests. Chinese bees are also especially diligent and not picky eaters; they collect from any flower, so the honey they gather is especially good..."

Nearly 60,000 yuan in income in one year

Taking stock of this year's harvest, Zhou Jianchun said the weather was good this year, and with the little bees working hard, he harvested more than 600 jin of honey. Each time the honey was cut, it was snapped up by people who came after hearing of his reputation, at 80 yuan per jin. Add to that the income from selling bee colonies, and the whole year's income came to nearly 60,000 yuan, which has already become the family's main source of income.

When keeping bees in the wild, Zhou Jianchun often listens to music alone, watching the flowers all over the hills and the bees flying about. When someone occasionally comes by, he brings out honey for them to taste for free, and when he sees them give a thumbs-up, Zhou Jianchun's heart feels as sweet as honey. Zhou Jianchun said that in the process of keeping bees he has made many good friends and harvests sweetness and happiness every day; he likes living such a carefree life.

Self-Reliance

How a bee-keeping expert was made

Zhou Jianchun has a Grade 1 physical disability. If it were someone else, he might have spent his life resting at home, but Zhou Jianchun did not want to live that way. According to him, he used to drive a three-wheeler to carry passengers, and he also planned to go to the street to shine shoes, but his parents stopped him.

At the age of 20, his father picked up a swarm of bees in the wild and gave them to him to care for. To keep the bees well, Zhou Jianchun borrowed a bee-keeping book from a friend. "At the time the book had two or three hundred pages, and I took study notes at home every day," Zhou Jianchun said. After that, he put the theory into practice, and several years later he had already accumulated rich bee-keeping experience. In 2009, Zhou Jianchun used more than 10,000 yuan he had earned from working to buy back 12 colonies of Chinese bees. After several years of breeding, they have now grown to more than 100 colonies, making him a well-known large-scale bee keeper locally.

Inner Voice

"Be self-reliant, and life will always give something back"

"I would rather die than lose face and suffer for it; what I fear most is others looking down on me as a disabled person," Zhou Jianchun said. He would rather endure hardship and fatigue than fail to stand on his own feet and keep up his "face"; life will always give something back.

Due to the limitations of his physical condition, Zhou Jianchun is still unmarried. But wherever he goes, his mother Zhang Yongxiu, nearly 60 years old, is always by his side. Today's Zhou Jianchun also makes Zhang Yongxiu look at him with new eyes; she feels her son is very strong and even more capable than some able-bodied people.