Silkworm Expert Lan Lifen Blazes a Trail to Prosperity Through Honesty in Mashan County
From an ordinary farmer in Jinchai Town, Mashan County, Nanning City, to the head of a sericulture company, Lan Lifen has held to the belief of "being honest and trustworthy in conduct, and getting rich by relying on science and technology." Over the years, she has led local people to prosperity together, carving out a world of her own on the road of entrepreneurship and setting an example in honest business practice. She has successively won nomination awards as a moral model for honesty and trustworthiness from Nanning City and the autonomous region, and was selected for the "China Good People List."
She Builds Wealth Through Honest Labor
Jinchai Town has always had a tradition of planting mulberry and raising silkworms. In 2000, Lan Lifen, who had worked in Guangdong for many years, returned to her hometown. Seeing that the local elders still followed traditional silkworm-rearing methods, she realized that without introducing advanced production techniques and adopting new varieties and new technologies to pursue large-scale production and operation, the sericulture industry could not achieve good economic returns. She told the silkworm farmers in the village: "I will find a way together with everyone. We will definitely make our sericulture industry bigger and stronger."
Starting with solving the problem of young silkworm survival rates, Lan Lifen established a "young silkworm co-rearing" base in Longtang Village, Jinchai Town, selling reared third-instar silkworms to silkworm farmers, which reduced the risks for farmers raising silkworms. In order to help surrounding farmers accept the new silkworm-rearing technology, she also organized silkworm farmer representatives on several self-funded visits to Yizhou and Binyang to learn about new silkworm-rearing models, and invited experts to the villages to provide hands-on guidance to farmers.
On the road of entrepreneurship, Lan Lifen did not have smooth sailing. In 2004, the weather was unusually erratic, large numbers of mulberry trees died, and the silkworm industry in Jinchai Town suffered a severe blow. "This sudden turn of events not only caused heavy losses for silkworm farmers, but I also suffered great losses in seedling cultivation," Lan Lifen said.
In order to stabilize the people's confidence in raising silkworms, Lan Lifen resolutely made a promise: whoever continued to plant mulberry and raise silkworms, she would fully compensate for the farmers' losses. That year, because of this decision, Lan Lifen advanced nearly 300,000 yuan.
For more than a decade, for the sake of that original promise, Lan Lifen helped the people solve countless problems, and many silkworm farmers trusted her and persisted in following her on this path to prosperity through sericulture. "No matter what profession you are in, you must be an honest person, speak honest words, do honest things, and build wealth through honest labor. Seeing silkworm farmers achieve prosperity through sericulture puts my mind at ease," Lan Lifen said.
She Leads Villagers Together onto the Path to Prosperity
Shi Gengming, 63, is a veteran of mulberry planting and silkworm rearing in Xialing Tun, Longtang Village. As early as 1994, the Shi family began raising silkworms and planted more than 3 mu of mulberry trees. After retiring, Shi Gengming devoted more energy to silkworm rearing. Now, Shi Gengming can raise 8 to 10 batches of silkworms each year, and a batch of more than 5,000 silkworms can bring in more than 2,000 yuan in returns.
"Now I don't have to worry about anything. The third-instar silkworms Lan Lifen provides have a high survival rate. We just need to raise the silkworms well, and she buys them all back at a high price. Now I have money to spend, and life is much better than before," Shi Gengming said. The villagers all like to get silkworm seedlings from Lan Lifen, because with just one phone call, Lan Lifen will personally come to their homes to guide them on silkworm-rearing techniques.
Silkworm farmer Li Meixian deeply appreciates Lan Lifen's hands-on involvement. One day, Li Meixian went out in the morning to pick mulberry leaves. When she left, the silkworm seedlings were fine, but when she returned at noon, the silkworms' tails had turned yellow and their bodies had shrunk. Li Meixian was terrified and immediately called Lan Lifen. Before long, Lan Lifen arrived with medicine for bacterial septicemia and helped spray it on the mulberry leaves to feed the silkworms. "She reminded me that with so much rain now and the muggy climate, I needed to pay attention to ventilation. The next day the silkworms were fine. I am truly grateful to her," Li Meixian said.
She Played the Exemplary Role of a Party Member
"Under her leadership, the town's mulberry plantation area is now stable at about 12,000 mu," said Tan Bangjie, Party Secretary of Jinchai Town. Lan Lifen played the exemplary role of a Party member, leading the people of Jinchai Town and surrounding areas to prosperity. At present, sericulture has become the pillar industry of Jinchai Town, and Jinchai Town has also become the largest sericulture base in Mashan County.
In order to solve the problems of sales channels and prices for silk, as early as 2009 Lan Lifen established the Mashan Jinyi Sericulture Professional Cooperative. She successively invested more than 500,000 yuan to build artificial-climate incubation rooms, automatic mounting equipment and other production facilities, and actively contacted major mulberry seedling companies, becoming a first-level agent for mulberry seedling companies and recommending high-yield, high-quality mulberry seedling varieties to mulberry farmers.
In July 2014, Lan Lifen invested 10 million yuan to register and establish Mashan County Donglong Sericulture Co., Ltd., directly purchasing products from silkworm farmers, with the purchase price per kilogram guaranteed to be higher than that of other companies, giving silkworm farmers peace of mind. At present, Donglong Sericulture has hired more than 100 employees, providing rural residents with opportunities to work near their homes. Among them, more than 20 workers are members of rural households receiving minimum living allowances, poor households, and families with disabled members, and they can receive a stable income of more than 2,000 yuan every month.
Tan Bangjie told reporters that Lan Lifen also opened technical training classes at her silkworm-rearing base, freely accepting farmers to learn mulberry planting and silkworm-rearing techniques at the base. In 2014, through "farmhouse classrooms," she scientifically guided mulberry farmers to scientifically control the application of organic pesticides during silkworm rearing, so that pesticide residues in silkworm cocoons were lower than the standards set by the state. At the same time, she promoted and applied automatic mounting technology, reducing the labor intensity of silkworm farmers and increasing the rate of high-quality cocoons.
Lan Lifen also cares deeply about disadvantaged groups in rural areas and supports poor households in raising silkworms. Of the silkworm seedlings Lan Lifen raises, 70% are first given to silkworm farmers on credit to take home and raise, and the farmers repay her after selling the silk, solving the farmers' problems with capital turnover. Tan Bangjie said: "Now that market prices are stable, the people have no worries about raising silkworms and are more willing to raise them, so the sericulture industry in the town is developing even better."