Starting a business on barren hills: Xu Shangwei maps out a blueprint for prosperity
Building access roads on the tea hills, continuing to pave the road further up the mountain, managing the tea plants, interplanting ginkgo trees among the tea bushes... For days now, several hilltops in Daijiaping Village, Shixi Town, Qianwei County, have been bustling with activity. The man leading the villagers in this work is Xu Shangwei, a person with disabilities. Despite his disability, he has held firm to his aspirations, supporting a large family through unremitting effort, and invested more than 2 million yuan to establish the Qianwei County Shixi Senmao Tea Planting Professional Cooperative, painting a broader blueprint for prosperity on his hometown's barren hills.
Taro interplanted in the cooperative's tea fields is growing vigorously
Reclaiming wasteland in the deep mountains transforms the village
Recently, a reporter visited Daijiaping Village in Shixi Town, Qianwei County. Among the mountain slopes at an elevation of more than 500 m, a newly paved concrete road winds like a ribbon into the mountains.
The autumn air in the mountains is crisp and clear. On a hilltop beside the road stands a sign reading "Qianwei County Support Base for Persons with Disabilities," which lists the person in charge as Xu Shangwei, who has a Grade 3 physical disability. Standing on the hill and looking out, everything is verdant. The taro in the terraced fields is growing lushly, and between the rows of taro fields are the future stars of this land: tea plants. Since they were planted only a little over a year ago, the tea seedlings are still quite short.
Walking along the road into the mountains, one hilltop after another reveals large expanses of newly reclaimed terraced fields, all planted with tea seedlings, some also intercropped with winter beans, plum trees, gardenia trees and more, presenting a scene full of vitality. Along the way, some people are weeding in the tea fields, some are pruning the tea plants, some are building stone steps up the mountain, and some are continuing to pave the road further uphill... Xu Shangwei serves as the on-site supervisor among the road-paving crew. He walks with a slight limp in his right leg, yet speaks and works with brisk efficiency. The infrastructure construction before his eyes is a key step in the prosperity blueprint he is drawing for the mountain area.
"In the past, our village had no industry. The cultivated soil was used to grow traditional corn, sweet potato and rapeseed, and most of the land was overgrown barren hills. Before the road was built, the bamboo and trees on the mountain could not be hauled out to sell, and farmers' incomes were low," introduced Chen Lin, director of the Daijiaping Village Committee. Since early 2014, when villager Xu Shangwei returned home to develop the tea industry, these conditions have gradually changed.
Indomitable spirit builds up startup capital
At lunchtime, taking advantage of the workers' break to rest and eat, Xu Shangwei sat down to talk with the reporter. Xu Shangwei is 41 this year and currently serves as chairman of the Qianwei County Shixi Senmao Tea Planting Professional Cooperative, assistant to the director of Daijiaping Village, and chairman of the village association for persons with disabilities. He was born into a poor farming family in Group 3 of Daijiaping Village. At 8 months old, a high fever left him with polio. His parents spent everything they had and borrowed money from everywhere to cure him, but it left aftereffects: a lifelong disability in his right leg, with a severely deformed foot and the sole facing upward. When Xu Shangwei was 9, 12 and 14, he underwent three surgeries at hospitals in Chengdu and Leshan. His foot was turned back around, and he finally threw away his wooden stick and could walk on his own.
Xu Shangwei inspects the growth of tea plants in the field
After graduating from junior high school, he was admitted to the Qianwei County Secondary Health Vocational School. After 3 years of study and graduation, he set up a medicine stall at home to treat people. Because of his solid professional skills and the inexpensive medicines, more and more people came to see him. A year later, he opened a clinic and gradually helped his family pay off its debts. In the course of practicing medicine, when he encountered elderly people living alone or poor households, Xu Shangwei treated them free of charge. As competition grew fiercer, he closed the clinic and went out to work, pouring concrete and building bridges on the Gobi Desert. However, the heavy manual labor was unbearable for him as a person with disabilities, and after a year of work, Xu Shangwei had to return home.
"Life is hard, but it always has to go on." The hope in Xu Shangwei's heart has never been extinguished, and his steps in pursuing and creating a better life have never stopped. He successively opened a malatang restaurant in Muchuan County town, did business buying bamboo and trees in the countryside, opened a teahouse and a restaurant in Qianwei County town, and worked as a village chef. Later, he also taught himself legal knowledge and currently serves as a legal advisor for a coal mine in Qianwei, and even bought a truck to do transport business.
"I do business whenever I see an opportunity; as long as it's legal, I'll do it." Through all his struggles, Xu Shangwei also endured hardships and setbacks, and there were times when he felt discouraged. For example, once in the bamboo business, due to lack of experience and local transportation constraints, he lost twenty or thirty thousand yuan in one go. His rich and tortuous life experiences have forged Xu Shangwei's spirit of unremitting self-improvement and his indomitable character. In 2010, his financial situation began to improve, and his diversified operations allowed him to gradually accumulate substantial funds.
Firm of purpose despite disability, he holds up a whole sky
At present, Xu Shangwei's household includes his 90-year-old grandfather, his parents who are over 60, and his wife and children. The whole extended family is lively. "Although Xu Shangwei has brothers, whether in the past when the family was poor or now that things have improved, it is he who takes the initiative to support his grandfather and parents. I greatly admire this," Chen Lin said. For this, Xu Shangwei was named an "Advanced Individual in Filial Piety and Respect for the Elderly" in the village.
For Xu Shangwei, what he supports is far more than his own extended family; he has also driven the development of the entire village's industry. Starting in February 2014, out of affection for his hometown and fellow villagers, Xu Shangwei returned to his old home and successively contracted the village's land to plant tea, introducing two fine tea varieties, Mingshan 131 and Fuding Daba, for cultivation. In September 2014, with the support of the local Party committee and government, Xu Shangwei established the Qianwei County Shixi Senmao Tea Planting Professional Cooperative.
"Nowadays, many people grow tea, so we focus on quality and win through quality. What we grow is all organic tea. We don't use herbicides and adopt biological pest control," Xu Shangwei had long since figured out his way to win in fierce competition. Agricultural technicians from the county agriculture bureau and the township government also provided technical support to the cooperative, holding multiple training sessions and teaching tea planting and management techniques.
Up to now, Xu Shangwei has contracted more than 1,400 mu of land, mainly for planting tea plants, interplanted with economic crops such as plum trees, osmanthus trees and gardenias, and has built 15 water storage ponds, 2 fish ponds, 1 pig farm and 1 workshop. In the village, Xu Shangwei not only built and paved the roads needed for developing the tea industry, but also donated more than 400,000 yuan to help pave and build more than 3 km of village roads, benefiting all the villagers to varying degrees.
"Now more than 100 laborers work on the tea hills every day, including 40 people with disabilities from the village and surrounding areas, providing long-term employment for 150 nearby laborers, with an average monthly labor income of around 2,000 yuan," Xu Shangwei introduced. In addition to paying wages, he also gives each person with disabilities working at the cooperative a monthly subsidy of 100 yuan.
"As a person with disabilities, I deeply feel the Party and the country's care and warmth for people with disabilities." Standing on the hilltop, Xu Shangwei described his blueprint for future development: next, he will expand the industrial base, drive the whole village's industrial development, build a tea processing factory, develop rural tourism based on the tea industry, and build a new 100-mu free-range chicken farm. He aims to provide employment for nearly 1,000 people, including 300 people with disabilities, build his hometown into a more beautiful place, and help more people escape poverty and become prosperous.