Lingnan Englisch 8

People are not the production of the droughts, while the deserts are. People are the production of moist whether. It is the moist rivers, lakes, rain, and snowflakes that nourish people. There is a river—it originates from Xinfeng County Jiangxi Province, meandering through Nanxiong, Shixing, Qujiang County in Foshan City, as well as Shaoguan, Yingde, Qingyuan, converging at the Sanshui County in Foshan with the Xijiang River and finally flowing into the South China Sea. This river, with a length of near 580 kilometers, was called Qinshui in ancient times, but now, it is endowed with several names—from its source to Shaoguan, it is called Zhenshui or Wushui. After flowing through the Shaoguan, it is called Beijiang and after going through Sanshui County, it is called Zhujiang.

Zhujiang runs continuously with a splendid sight. What contributes to this eternally-running river to make it thrust into the South China Sea like a sword? This river, converged by Beijiang, Dongjiang, Xijiang, is the third longest river in China and the most robust artery in southern China. As Yellow River is to Yellow Plateau what Yangtze River is to the south of its lower reaches, so is the Zhujiang to the land of Linglan. Zhujiang is not a mere river but it also brings the word of “south” to China. Zhujiang builds up the south in its own way that finally spreads its influence far and wide across the world.

The significance of the Pearl River is embodied in the influence it puts on both shores when flowing from west to east, which in turn affects the geography, history, economy and humanities of these regions. When flowing through the entire Lingnan area with a tornado-like power, the Rive has helped to form a delta at the estuary. The area named the Pearl River Delta (PRD) has become one of the three most prosperous, active and influential core areas in China, along with the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region and the Yangtze River Delta region. The tides advance and the situations change. The development and vicissitudes of the PRD have witnessed an amazing growth thanks to the past four decades of reform and opening up. The land of urban area on the Delta accounts for less than 1% of the country's, while its GDP accounts for 13% of China's !

That is a river, a mighty river that moves forward ceaselessly despite obstacles! When it finally flows into the South China Sea, a huge wave like a thousand piles of snow surges high. Originally, a water droplet is the smallest, weakest, and most immature thing in the world. However, when thousands of water droplets gather together, they can break out breathtaking energy which seems to be able to push away all obstacles and create a bright miracle. As Mount Everest symbolizes Tibet and the Mt. Tianshan symbolizes Xinjiang，so does the Pearl River the symbol of Lingnan area endowed by the nature.From ancient times,people who live on both sides of the Pearl River have access to food, transactions and confidence from this river; they are well familiar with the hydrological features of the Pearl River, which makes their living habits quite different from those of people living in the plains or highlands. Trained and taught by these great rivers and seas, people there are more adaptable to changes, more innovative, more courageous to “be the pioneer”, and more willing to "give full play to their personal initiatives".

More than 1,000 years ago, Su Dongpo wrote "Spring exists in every household in Lingnan areas", while 700 years ago, Wen Tianxiang left the sentence "To sigh with loneliness in the sea of desolation". In July 1978, Humen Handbag Factory was founded in the Humen Town, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, and became the first enterprise for processing and assembling materials, processing samples and compensating trade in China, thus the reform and opening up started. Today, China has become a world leading country after forty years of hard work. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge spans the Lingding Ocean like a giant loong, igniting the confidence and dreams of the Chinese people. Nowadays, the Bay Area economy has become a national strategy, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area, located in the Pearl River Delta, will be developed into an international first-class bay area and a world-class city cluster, which will become the most developed area of China's market economy and an incubator and booster for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

The Holiday Inn along the river welcomes batches of guests every day, especially those middle-aged and elderly people who pay a visit by tourist buses. They marveled and then exclaimed at the orange-red yachts, dark green palm trees, azure swimming pools, and pure white beach chairs. At dusk, when you cross the Beijiang River from a small bridge, you will see a plank road, about 30 to 40 meters long, extending under the bridge with fifty or sixty small wooden boats crowded on both sides with many wooden poles. The wooden boats were small—some with an arch over the cabin, others so naked, like the canoes you see on the Yarkand River in southern Xinjiang Province. You can't see exactly what's in the cabin but only see vague round bundles piled up at the stern when the entire river faded into thick darkness at sunset. The yellow light radiated from the hotel's signboard made the dark river water look like that there are a handful of sparkling pearls floating on the water.

In the early morning, when you look down from the window of the hotel, you would find that most of the crowded wooden boats have driven away last night, leaving only a few scattered. The boat now looks like paramecium under the microscope, with its tiny body swinging on the green water. The picture of the scene is full of fairy tale color. All the sticks you see at night would be pulled up and put on both sides of the boat. You can see the fishing net and round bag in the cabin clearly, but you can't find a person. You can't help thinking that overlooking is like viewing the world through a frosted glass, and everything looks hazy and vague. To see the scene more and much more clearly, you have to walk downstairs, go through the town, enter the village, and stand in the field.

Chapter 1 Lianzhang Village Dictionary Lianjiangkou Town This small town called Lianjiangkou is located exactly between Qingyuan City and Yingde City. When you look down from the hotel window, the gray-blue river in you eyesight is the Beijiang River, rather than the Lian River. To see the Lian River, you'll have to start from Yanjiang Road downstairs from the hotel – instead of Yinying Middle Road with trucks roaring past – and walk north for 20 minutes. In ancient times, Lianjiang was called "Huangchuan" and was the biggest tributary of the Beijiang River, known as the "Little Beijiang". The river originates in Lianzhou City, Guangdong Province, running through Lianxian County, Yangshan, Yingde, and joins the Beijiang River in Lianjiangkou Town that stretches for 275 kilometers, vast and mighty. When it plunges into the Beijiang River without hesitation, the two rivers soon merged into a whole. In the end, the Beijiang River, integrated with the Lianjiang River, slowly flows by the hotel downstairs and also slowly through your sight; Eventually, this place where the two rivers meet is named "Lianjiangkou Town", with a total area of more than 300 square kilometers and more than 30,000 population. People living here mainly speak Hakka and eat river fresh.

As you wander around the town, there are always lightbox advertisements of all sizes in your sight - Zhang Tian Di's personal clinic, Li Li's wedding photography, Jian Wen's medical shop, Deng Xian Ying's dentistry, Liao Yong's furniture shopping mall, authentic water snake congee, local mountain pit snails, Qing Yuan walking chicken, cone bone seafood chicken, cloth belt chicken congee, tea scented squab ...... These shops always remind you of your hometown. There are also shops with plaques on the Grand Cross Street in Hami, Xinjiang - Guli Wedding Shop, Buybuyti Repair Department, Ai Buyti Bun Shop ...... You find that the most flamboyant shop in Lianjiangkou Town is the "River Food Restaurant "It is simply the town's golden sign. The Ai Minhao market, on the other hand, is located in the heart of the town, with various stalls selling all kinds of goods, with the river food, chicken, duck and goose in particular doing the most brisk business.

"For river food, go to Beijiang; for the best river food, go to Lianjiangkou." Next to the market, Lianjiangkou River Food Shop is an open-air place. Under a large shed supported by iron structure are plastic basins filled with small swimming fish. White fish scales dot the wet ground, and dark red blood flows in the ditch. People in rubber shoes are either pouring water from the basin or taking fish out of the basin. A man in flip-flops lifts a fish out of the basin—the fish was really bulky, almost as big as a baby. He threw it on the concrete pavement; then, a woman in plastic slippers comes over, raises the wooden stick in her hand and bangs on the fish's head. At first, the fish's tail is still flopping around her bare ankles, but soon it moves no more.

Dried fish are everywhere. And you, who comes from the Northwestern desert area, are overwhelmed by its huge variety. There are reminders in some stalls, white papers and red characters, reading"dried yellow-cheek carp in sale", with square, triangle, and bar-shaped fish hung on iron wires. In the body of the tricycle, there is a pile of dried fish the size of fingertips. A woman with a horse tail skillfully picked up dried shrimps and put them in her mouth to chew. She doesn't buy these dry goods to eat by herself, but bring them to the market in Guangzhou to sell. She said that people in Guangzhou liked dried fish here very much, so she went to this stall to pick it up all year round. She is a native and grew up eating dried fish here, so as long as she chews it, she will know whether it is good or not.

You have lived in the town for some time. Every time you stroll down the street, it will trigger a strong emotional shock- time seems to be going backwards and you seem to have returned to your childhood and your hometown Hami again. You have forgotten what a city looked like when it was an embryo. Now, this town is that embryo and is still in the transition period from an acquaintance society to a stranger society. Although at night, the street lamps are on, the crowd is swaying and the shops are opening, there is still a considerable distance from a real city. The roads here are wide, but some are full of bumps and hollows. On both sides of the street of the town, there are no garbage cans of uniform size - people throw garbage in buckets, whose mouths are open. In addition, you can usually see a pile of rubble and pools of sand on both sides of the tarmac and discover half-grown children wearing T-shirts and slippers all over the street. They are digging sand with shovels and hitting stones with sticks.

When people here say "market," they mean the only market in the town center; when they say “supermarket”, they are referring to the only supermarket in the town center. The most dynamic scene you can find here is the tricycle selling fruit at the intersection. The red and green fruit in the wheelbarrow is very pleasant. There is no Pizza Hut, no McDonald's, no KFC; there's no blaring music or spinning neon lights; there is no rush, no sense of stress or urgency. At night, when the trucks are gone, there are only few cars passing the street. The whole town was still and tranquil. The pedestrians appear not to be in a haste -- men carrying red plastic bags, women stroll with baby carriages. Only the students, wearing blue and white and red uniforms, rode past on bicycles, turning the corners like a school of jubilant fish.

One night you witness a surprising scene -- a large truck passing under a streetlight. Its rectangular shape is not something special, but the back of the truck is full of piles of logs, closely packed and visually massive. Who cut them down? Where are they going? Why are they seen on the hill with asphalt roads? Only when you reach Lianzhang village would you find out -- the wood must have been cut down by the villagers around the town and sent to the lumber mills. Clearly, Lianjiangkou is a town full of both urban and rural flavor. The details here tell a secret -- it is inextricably linked to the surrounding countryside. With paved roads, markets, supermarkets and stations, it is still far from a real big city.

In the southeast of Lianjiangkou Town, there is a small village named Lianzhang Village. This village epitomizes the Lingnan architecture style -- in the early morning when the clouds are wreathing above the green hillside, the houses with yellow mud and black tiles under the hill just like out of a fairy tale. What is even more amazing is that the clouds, the hillside, and the houses are all mirrored in the river below the hillside. As a result, the mountains and the river form a perfectly symmetrical picture, while the centered houses are like the pupils in a pair of big eyes. The central part shows up well against the grayish background formed by the sky above and the river below. Such a magnificent view, full of harmony and tranquility, is just a common sight for the people of Lianzhang Village.

You speculate that the word “Lian” in Lianzhang Village was derived from the word 'Lianjiang', but what about the word “zhang” ? In the early Ming Dynasty, Lianzhang was known as "land of heavy miasma", which said its dense forests, miasma filled, lack of human life. Did people take the word 'miasma' and turn it into 'zhang', which eventually formed the word 'Lianzhang'? Miasma is the poison gas generated after the decomposition of animals and plants in the tropical primitive forest. Because no one effectively dealt with the dead bodies of animals, coupled with the high temperature in the tropics, it created favorable conditions for the generation of miasma. This hot, humid gas in the mountains can kill. "Nanman Biography of the Later Han Dynasty" : "The soil and water in Nanzhou are warm and hot, resulting in the death of forty-five times." Miasma did not refer to any one disease, but to many. According to the season of disease, miasma can be divided into grass miasma, huangmei miasma, Xinwo miasma and Huangmao miasma. According to the manifestation and nature of symptoms can be divided into cold, hot, dumb. According to the plant name can be divided into osmanthus miasma, chrysanthemum miasma; All these miasms occur after the Qingming Festival and disperse after the Frost’s Descent Festival. When it breaks out, it has two manifestations. One is visible - like a piece of cloud or thick fog; the other is indiscernible -it either reeks or produces wired fragrance. For people who live in the mountains, getting into the mountains is very important and must not be taken lightly. Don't go into the mountains early in the morning, wait until the sun comes out. The night before entering the mountain you must abstain from lust and desires. In the morning, you must stuff your belly, and it will be better to warm your body by swilling down mouthful of grain wine, so that you can be potentiated enough to resist miasma. Miasma floating among the woods, it is faintly discernible just like a slowly flowing ribbon. Once a person touches it, his skin will fester, his face will turn sallow blue, and all his fingers will turn black. In some severe cases, it may even kill you. Even in a summer that is so blistering that one can’t stop shedding sweats, you can’t take off your clothes to enjoy the cool wind. At night, lying on your bed, be sure to latch the door. All these done to prevent miasma from creeping in. With a total area of less than 31 square kilometers, Lianzhang Village looks like a baby swaddled in wool. And it’s woodland area of 40, 000 mu is surrounded by lush green mountains. Lianzhanghe River flows from the southeast to the northwest of the village, like a soft ribbon, connecting more than 900 mu of scattered and small fields. During the reign of Chongzhen (around the 17th century), many families whose surnames are Lu(陆), Deng, Lu(卢) and Lin moved into the area one after another. The Xie family moved here from Fo Hummock, Yan Ridge. By the 29th year of the Republic of China (1940), it was called Lianzhang village. Later on, it has been called Lianzhang senior cooperative, Lianzhang brigade, Lianzhang village committee successively.

Geographic environment shapes the living mode of people and generates different personalities as well. The character of the people lived in Lian Zhang village is jointly shaped by great mountains, rivers and farm lands there. First of all, they are agile. Long before the people there has learnt how to employ different farming means to sustain their life because of the destitution of large tracts of lands and meager income from agriculture. They need know how to farm land and cut trees, and flexibly switch their roles between peasants and peddlers. Secondly, they are tenacious. Cutting trees and bamboo shoots requires much more toil, compared with farming. The mountain roads are bumpy and on rainy days, muddy and there are many more mosquitoes and bugs as well. All those make its harder to labor in the mountains. Carrying timbers and bamboo from down the mountain, which not only consumes strength but also requires skills, is of great difficulty and risk. Since that, to sustain, peasants are forced to master as many as skills. Thirdly, they are austere. Their life is simple but they are imbued with passion towards life. What they desire most is to live in a red-brick house, have milled rice to eat, send their children to school and have a job to support their life. The mountain road twists and turns. The 12-kilometer mountain road from Lianjiangkou Town to Lianzhang Village alone turned the small village into a “paradise”. However, although the small village is as far away as a paradise, it is not as rich as one. Deeply hidden in the mountains this village has always been sunken in the terrible “poverty trap”. As the only relatively impoverished village in Lianjiangkou Town, Lianzhang Village has 17 villager groups under its jurisdiction. Being rich in mountains but short in the land, many families have less than one mu of arable land, so the villagers are quite poor. In 2016, in this small village of more than 2,000 people, nearly 140 people have not been lifted out of poverty. However, under the guidance of the targeted poverty alleviation policy in the new era, by 2020, not only all the poor households in the small village have overcome poverty, but some people have also embarked on the road of becoming rich. In fact, Lianzhang Village has never been a so-called “paradise”--- in spite of its own conflicts and crises, it has its own ideals and hopes. Here, elements including climate, scenery, soil, lovely people and policy compose a new picture that you have never seen in other places and times. This village holds the entire future of human civilization. The "future" here does not refer to pure economic development, nor does it refer to sophisticated cultural forms such as technology and art, but refers to the humanitarian spirit of ensuring compulsory education, basic medical care and housing safety without worrying about food and clothing; It refers to the spirit of equality that "no one should be left behind in the pursuit a well-off society in an all-round way, and no one should be left behind in the process of eliminating poverty and becoming rich", and it also refers to the fraternity idea of building a "community with a shared future for mankind".

Smile

Every morning when the sky is still hazy, Lu Yihe, who lives in one group of Au Bei village, puts on his straw hat and goes into the mountains with a machete. He has to cut down the hemp-colored bamboo shoots one by one and sell them after transporting them down the mountain to support his family. He is not yet 50 years old, but his face represents unusual suffering. There’s nothing wrong with his features--on his square face are bushy eyebrows, thin eyes, a high nose, and a thick lip, which feature a good-man appearance. What dates him is that he is always dark-faced, frowned, sullen and uncommunicative. His neighbors said, "Hey! He doesn’t even smile a few times in a year!" His face was always cold, like a small part of the darkness; always with motionless features, he shows a stiff and awkward facial expression. It can be really exhausting to squeeze a smile out of that poker face. Like a person hidden in a cold storage, he has frozen limbs and movements. So it takes a long time for his smile to climb from his heart to his eyes corner. Sometimes, before the smile has reached the halfway point, it falls back to the origin because he gives it up. He doesn’t want to smile at all, as if wrinkles his smile brings to his face would leave a searing pain in his heart. Therefore his indifferent rejection darkens his face.

He was rather helpless and stressed in the economic plight with his elder father being inconvenient to move, his wife being disabled due to serious diseases and his three children being in school. All these led to his continuous sorrow and anxiety. For him, hope resembled a flickering candle. Yet it was snuffed out by a gust of wind, leaving him to worry, sigh and grief. His home was similar to a broken earthen house, and its critical pillar was him. At that moment, he had to contribute all his time, strength and skills to protecting the house from collapse. On one hand, he was in charge of his family; on the other hand, he was a long-term laborer serving it. He had to deal with the trifles and make important decisions at home and in the farmland. His wife could only shed tears as she could do nothing to relieve his burden. His elder father could merely heave deep sighs. And his children behaved scrupulously, not doing anything annoying him.

In most cases, financial problems of a household don’t result from the families’ idleness and folly but from a combination of too many adverse factors. Eventually the flame of impoverishment burned Lu’s home into a deplorable skeleton. It would have been turned into ashes without his perseverance. There is no greater tragedy than the death of the heart. He could hardly smile as a way to punish himself for the shame of being unable to get his loved ones out of poverty. Lu was actually trapped in the terror that he might be knocked down by the burden of livelihood some day and that his families might be driven to the last ditch. Now as the only laborer and pillar supporting his family, he had to devote his every second to his families’ well-being. He had to do farm work, dig bamboo shoots in hills, take odd jobs, and any laborious tasks. Nevertheless, they still scraped along in spite of his exertions. He had little courage to think of the prospect of casting off their misery, not to mention living a well-off life. It was quite difficult to reverse that adversity all by himself when he was no longer young and energetic. His father and wife’s fitness were going from bad to worse while his expenses on his children were mounting. He had to focus on the present, or waves of pain would attack as if an iron wire were to scratch on his heart. His inner anguish was transformed into a dark cloud brooding over his face.

Originally, he had no intention to be an remarkable person. However, he gradually found that it was not easy to be an ordinary person, because his family's financial situation is below the living standard of ordinary people——In 2016, his family was identified as a poor household. Just when he was in despair, a new policy melted his frozen heart like the spring breeze and rain. Under the guidance of the targeted poverty alleviation policy in the new phase, the village welcomed the resident poverty alleviation working team. The team , together with local enterprises, provided job opportunities for poor households to subcontract and manage Zhushan. When his family got another 18 mu fields on a hill, he gained the confidence to overcome poverty. In 2017, his family earned more than 20,000 yuan from only planting hemp bamboo shoots and greenhouse vegetables, plus over 10,000 yuan as a casual worker,subsistence allowance, subsidies for the disabled and his children's education allowance, he earned more than 40,000 yuan a year, which sustained his livelihood. Although he was still busy, the burden on his shoulders was obviously much lighter.

When General Secretary Xi Jinping arrived at Lianzhang Village in the afternoon of October 23, 2018, he saw that Lu Yihe's home was a three-story red-brick house with a spacious living room, a wooden sofa, a tea table, and a large screen TV at the top of the cabinet. Xi took Lu's hands and asked him about everything from the implementation of poverty alleviation policy to housing, his father's health and his children's education. The General Secretary was pleased and kept praised when he learned that Lu's housing was newly built with the help of government subsidies and individual premium collections. Xi kept holding Lu's hands while Lu kept smiling during the whole conversation. Before leaving, the General Secretary Xi delivered a speech in the village and Lu squeezed among the crowd. Lu smiled when he heard that "I couldn't rest assured until villagers get rid of poverty"; he laughed when heard:"Industiral poverty alleviation is the most direct and effective way to strengthen sustainable development in poor areas and also a long-term plan to follow the trend of local employment"; he grinned when he heard that "After finishing poverty alleviation, we will reach for prosperity and follow the path of modernization".

After the general secretary's visit, the neighbors found that the quiet man became talkative and loved to laugh. "He has particularly thick palms, which were warm to hold," he said. He also added: "He asked me whether the current policy was good or not and I said 'very well'." After that he suddenly had the courage to apply for a loan of 50,000 yuan from the bank and contracted 60 acres of land to plant mao bamboos! He said: "I have roughly estimated that the annual income of this mountainous area can reach 30,000 or 40,000 yuan!" And he sighed: "The current poverty alleviation policy is really good, but we need to rely on ourselves first if we want to get rid of poverty. Because only hard work can make us rich. If we do not try our best, then we would feel sorry internally and also disappoint our general secretary." Lu Yihe was the same one but somehow was different than before. He became more and more busy, bending down to enter the vegetable bases, slashing down bamboos, and always on his way heading for Lingzhi Park to work part-time. His face, somehow, always radiated with smiles which he could barely hide. By the end of 2018, his family's annual income had reached nearly 100,000 yuan, nine times as many as before 2016 and he was completely out of poverty.

The year 2019 was destined to be extraordinary. During the New Year’s Day, when Lu Yihe heard the general secretary Xi mentioning that “I talked with the poor Lu Yihe about the way out of poverty in Lianzhang village, Qingyuan city, Guangdong province” in his New Year’s message on TV, his eyes turned red and his nose sored. He told his neighbors: “At that moment, I felt so warm, so excited and so happy.” This year, Lu Yihe lived a busier life – during the day, he had to farm, cut bamboo shoots and work; in the evening, he attended an electrician training course – all of these were really busy works, without any exaggeration. The days of this year were like bamboo’s jointing, shooting up swiftly. He pondered and said, “Even though the price of moso bamboo shoots is low in 2019, we needn’t worry about the sales with the acquisition of processing plants. Especially after the construction of rural power grid, enterprises are willing to invest and build factories in our village. I’m confident that we can double our income by 2019.” He and his friends contracted 3 mu of land and were ready to plant herbs. They wanted to get rich from a startup. By the end of the year, his family’s annual income had exceeded 110000 yuan. He said: “General secretary, please rest assured that I have been lifted out of poverty, and I will strive for a well-off life.” The neighbors suddenly found that the face of that quiet man was no longer dark. After the face-to-face encounter, the face would break into a full, excessive smile. His eyes shone with crystal light, conveying great enthusiasm. He said hello to other people initiatively, with quite smooth expression and a quite calm face.” He said: “Now I feel stronger to cut bamboo shoots.”

One’s surname matters little while living in the city, but is of great importance in rural areas--It practically serves as one’s ID card while living in countryside! Only with this certificate can you find yourself an appropriate situation in a large group. From the villager’s perspective, one’s surname is sacred which cannot be altered randomly. If a person who alters his or her surname-for whatever reason-will be despised by the villagers. For a man, the surname is the root, the origin, and the beginning of everything. Changing surname means that one forgets his root. Likewise an adoptive children will always feel inferior to others--For his consanguinity is not authentic, direct or ancestral.

The people you met in Lianzhang Village, whether men or women, fat or thin, look different. However, the obvious word "Lu" indicates that they share the same secret gene. Elsewhere, "Lu" is a very common surname, but in Lianzhang Village, "Lu" is a big surname. Walking in the village and chatting casually, two of the three people named Lu. The surname "Lu" in the village means that you have had many relatives since you were born. Whether you like it or not, these people will deeply participate in your daily life. So, who was the first person surnamed Lu who arrived at Lianzhang Village? Why did he (she) come to the remote mountain? Everything is unknown. Now, the surname "Lu" has become a riddle. Nowadays, people surnamed Lu can be seen everywhere in the village. Every person surnamed Lu has the blood of their ancestors. So, are all people surnamed Lu very similarly? The answer seems to be no.

The origin of the surname Lu has a variety of sayings. One of them is - according to legend, Wu Hui served as the fire god Zhu Rong in the emperor Yao, his son named end, because in the area of Lu Township, so called Lu end. Some of his later generations took Lu as their surname and were called Lu; another saying is that during the Warring States period, Tian Tong, the youngest son of King Xuan of Qi, was labeled in Lu Township, Plain County, and got his surname from that; another saying is that during the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a state called Lu Hun, which was destroyed by Jin in 525 BC. After the destruction of the state, the surviving people will be Lu for the surname. There is a saying that "the world's Lu's all in Wu County" - to the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Lu's is already a big surname in Jiangdong, large numbers of talented people come to the fore. With the continuous outward migration, to the two Song Dynasty, the Lu clan has spread throughout the country. So far, the number of Lu surnames has reached more than 4.2 million people, which is a large surname in the 100 surnames. The population of Lu surnames is distributed in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangxi and Shanghai, accounting for 65% of the population of Lu surnames in the country. Some of the more famous people in the Lu surnames are Lu Ji, Lu Yu and Lu You.

By 2019, Lu Feiting was 72 years old. He spent his whole life alone. After he had tried many occupations, he finally chose apiculture. After he started keeping bees, he kept them for 30 years. He was familiar with every path in this village and knew well everyone that he encountered on the road. His door was always open, and there were neighbors chatting with him sometime. He was not lonely. "Folks living nearby shared the same family name and they all were relatives." "He smiled with some adolescent shyness. They knew each other in the village, so whoever told a lie others would know.” The countryside was an acquaintance society, where everybody could go around the bend to have domestic relation, while the city was a strangers' world. If you lived in a commercial and residential district for 30 years, you might not know what the people living opposite did for a living. The person who lived in an acquaintance society didn’t feel lonely, but there was no privacy. The city life seemed like an ocean, everyone jumped into it, they will consider themselves, and they have little thought to care for others. The city life is not as cozy as rural areas’ life, but the fashion was inexorable, more and more farmers came into the city.

Paddies were what villagers relied on. Without fields, farmers couldn’t be farmers. In fact, every piece of field had its owner, even the one covered with weeds. For the sake of field, two people sharing the same last name could quarrel. For the sake of field, a seemingly tender lady could curse. The "field" that the farmers frequently talked about was mainly "paddies", which referred to the arable land around ridges for growing rice. As recorded in the Tale of Ma Yuan in the Book of the Later Han, "Developing paddies and enabling people to cultivate crops and herd livestock, in this way the people can enjoy their lives." Wang Wei, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote, "Above the wide paddies fly egrets, and in the shady forests sound orioles." Zhang Binglin wrote, "Paddies were made from swaps, but now they are called paddies."

These paddies were divided into pieces, lying along the river randomly. Nevertheless, the folks of the Lianzhang village clearly remember their paddies. If someone dug mud in a woman’s paddy without telling her, she would curse him fiercely. And what that man had been murmuring was that his paddy had disappeared. When he contracted the paddy, the paddy was 8.8 fen (5.87 acres). But he remembered well it’s 1.2 mu (8 acres). He asked, confused, "What happened to the other 4 fen (2.67 acres)?"

The dietary staple in Lianzhang Village is rice, so almost every household knows how to raise rice. Even though it is convenient to buy rice now, the local people prefer rice grown by themselves. Those memories of living on porridge as lack of rice are deeply etched on their minds. Now, the fertile rice fields will give villagers comfort, on which everything favorable is rooted. It is the end of October, when the fields of rice are yellow and green, and the heavy ears of rice dropping in the air. Like several mirrors, the paddy fields are inset into the wilderness next to the creek, being the most dazzling patches of color in autumn. These fields hide the residents’ secret and miserable past which those who have never suffered from hunger can't understand. Raising rice is not merely a subsistence means, but a habit and an aesthetic sense. The fields in the village are too barren and fragmented to produce high yield. The yeild is just enough to feed a family and there was hardly any surplus to sell. Even to sell, the peasants could not sell them with a high price. But when villagers sow rice seeds in the fields next year, they still feel a familiar passion in their minds. Rice and rice porridge are not simply two similar things, they stand for completely different meanings. Eating rice means eating white and dry rice, how satisfactory it is! Who would like rice porridge ---- that soft food! Drinking a bowl of porridge can make one's belly round at that moment, but within four hours, he will be so hungry that his eyes turned green and he will have a keen sense of smell like a wolf, with skin hair upside down. The local villagers believe that the best life is to have dry white rice to eat, three times a day.

Encountering each other on the road, villagers in Lianzhang Village will ask, “going out?” When coming across in Lianjiangkou town, they will say, “going in?” In this place, “going out” means to go from the village to the town, and “going in” means to go from the town to the village. People omit the name of these two places due to both widely known to the locals. As there is only one path linking these two places, the destinations of the path are definite. There are no other choices which could be used in that sentence, so villagers tended to omit them. Effectively, as two sides of a coin, “going out” and “going in” were complementary to each other.

The phrase “going out” reveled the location of Lianzhang Village and its geographic boundary, referring a fact that located in the bowels of mountains, it can only connect to the outside world by going out. The destination for villagers in Lianzhang Village was Liangjiangkou town. For them, it also means to go out, as Liangjiangkou town is a far cry from their hometown. The significance of this initiative was comparable to the Northwest people going West, Shandong people going to the East and Guangdong people going to the South. A man once longing for going out means that he wanted to have a look at a totally different world. Despite for the distance of only 12 kilometers, success to walk out of the village required resolved ambition and remarkble efforts. The outside world was always attractive, but it is not always as favorable as we imagined. Hence, there comes another word: going in. Going in means to return hometown with which you are familiar, and it also means a crave for fresh air in the village and intimate family members and relatives. Thus, you go back where you belong despite long distances.

In fact, there is no "go in" without "go out"-they are opposites of one thing, both contradictory and unified. Every cloud has a silver lining. Only after one leaves home can he understands the real meaning of hometown. What would they see, hear and feel when people in Lianzhang Village leave for outside world? If they choose not to share, others won't get to know. However, it is well known that even though outside world is quite wonderful, a number of people decide to "going in". When setting foot in the same river for the second time, your eyes would become totally different- those fields, the river, the mountain forest that you used to be fed up with immediately brim with energy and vitality and are filled with magic. There Mountain road is right. Although it used to be bumpy and muddy, then was paved with stones and now is applied with asphalt, it is still a road. The appearance has changed but the distance-the hateful 12 kilometres-dosen't shorten at all. Its shape resembles a crooked rope which can always make people indulge in fantasy. Someone imagines that there would be another kind of good livelihood waiting for them after "going out". Nevertheless, witnessing that Lu Guolian returned after leaving, they became hesitant.

Sixty-year-old Lu Guolian still looks very young ---- he looks tanned but has regular face and alert eyes. Although he has moderate build, he is thin and flexible. He likes to laugh brightly which is very big enough to be called 100% laughter. You can notice his difference once he starts to talk - it's an unusually standard Mandarin; You can also find that he speaks in vivid words. It turns out that he once "went out".

In 1983, Lu Guolian left Lianzhang Village alone and married a woman in Shaoguan City. But five years later, he returned to the village alone. He confessed that he had a son, but the divorce court awarded custody to the child's mother. He attributed the failure of his marriage to his hometown. "Our village belongs to a mountainous area, where one hillside connects to another. It is difficult to earn money because of bad transportation." He frowned more tightly when he fell into past memory: "At that time, the family life was especially poor!" He has five brothers and sisters, and his parents and sisters-in-law, so it’s very crowded when they had a meal. He waved his arm forcefully: "At that time, no work today and no food tomorrow!" He sighed deeply: " Every day was very tired then."

In Lu Guolian's opinion, "at that time" and “now”, is completely different. Well, at that time! If Lianzhang Village was not wrapped up by mountains, if the road from the village to the town was not so rugged and long, if he could find a way to earn money in the village, would he " went out " then? Leaving from Lianzhang Village means leaving hometown and his familiar place. Whether he went to Shaoguan or elsewhere, he have left his roots. He did hesitate when someone introduced woman from Shaoguan City to him as he is a man with nice looking and sound labor. He was full of grievance and reluctance, but he was too desperate for “going out”. All villagers envied him and talked about his 30-yuan-wedding for a long time, while no one would know that he came back with nothing five years later. Lu Guolian showed up at hillside, riverside and wood piles again. His loud voice and clear laugh while working seems no difference from before, but he didn’t get married again. He never spoke about that 5-year-marriage and only left one sentence, “Tough woman is difficult to deal with”, to describe the past. Apparently, that five years is like a cellar, hiding deeply down in his heart. There is no window in that cramped little space, filling with darkness and coldness.

When Lu Guolian returned to the village in 1988, he was determined to get rid of poverty. Therefore, he grew rice on the field. He didn't have much land, but growing rice was quite a hassle - He need to spend money on fertilizers and pesticides and time in managing the paddies. After a year, the rice harvested was just enough for a living, and he had to find other ways to make money. He looked around - there was no choices but to make a living from the mountains. Although he has three pieces of lands in the mountain, it is not easy to go in—even the nearest one takes 10 minutes by motorcycle, and the farthest one takes 40 minutes. The mountain lands used to be planted with mandarine, and then switched to Ma bamboo shoots. It is so difficult to walk on the steep mountain road even in a clear day and let alone a rainy day. Chopping wood is extremely laborious, but which is even more disturbing is to haul wood. Every nerve in his body is tense when he thrusts a pile of wood of irregularity into the truck bed and then go down the mountain road carefully. After a day’s work, he felt tired all over pain in his temples. Extremely careful as he is, he still turned over one time. After falling over back-wards, he found his eyes dulled, brain disordered, and his head dazed as if the world would collapse. At that strange moment, he felt as if his souls had leaved his body and returned back when he struggled to stand up.

He breathed deeply and his heart beat like a drum, then he looked himself up and down to make sure he was still wholesome of limbs. The pain he felt at the time, just like a warm caress surprised and relieved him. Yes, he was the one who was loved! Yes, he had not been abandoned! His nose twitched and the sockets of his eyes became wet. He thought that he was luckier than the woman called Deng Chunhuo - her husband had driven his tractor into the hills to pull wood and had never been awoken to risen from the ground after it overturned. Everyone who met her asked with concern, "How are you? Is everything all right?" She grinned and waved her hand broadly.

He hadn’t remarried since he came back from Shaoguan. With unknown reason, he never found the right one. In the blink of eyes, many years have passed, but he was still alone. Although he was happily busy all day, apparently, working alone is not as good as working together. Diligent and indefatigable as he was, richness has never encountered him. On the recommendation of the poverty alleviation cadres, he became the village’s “traffic counselor”, earning 3,000 yuan a month. He enjoyed his work very much, for he grew up in this village and knew every road here like the palm of one’s own hand. When the vehicles coming and going twisted into a group during a big celebration, he would, seriously and conscientiously, be busy directing the vehicles and guiding the crowd. Knowing that this job was hard-won, he always tried his best to do everything well.

He knew that he was the beloved one, and that he had not been left behind. When he got home after a busy day, he, lying in bed, was still thinking about what to do tomorrow. The small cellar hidden in his heart gradually disappeared. In this village, there were people with disabilities of arms and legs or with feeble minds. Lonely as he was, compared with them, he felt a sense of happiness because of his nice body and his right mind. There were lots of things in want of him: rice in the fields, bamboo shoots in the mountains, the busy traffic as well as the noisy crowds. Then he closed his eyes with a satisfying smile and immediately fell asleep. The next day, he looked full of juice, just like a big fish in the water.

Mountain Road It takes about 20 minutes to drive from Lianzhang Village to Lianjiangkou Town. The bus "Rural Revitalization", starting from Lianzhang Village and ending at Yingde City, passing through Lianjiangkou Town, began service in 2019. The regular bus schedule is from 7 am to 6:30 pm. It has 15 stops and covers 40 kilometers for an hour, with fares ranging from 2 yuan to 13 yuan. To you, the mountain is an observation. You would feel that the mountain is so beautiful, and it adds up to a wonderful picture, just like you have seen in oil paintings or Chinese paintings. However, for people living in Liangzhang Village, the mountain is not only a towering building, but also a great barrier, which makes it very difficult for people to go outside. Because it blocked the view of people, people’s desire to leave becomes even stronger. But every time they had a glimpse of outer world, they fled back to the mountain and hid again. The mountain is like a wall of city built by the creator. Although it is difficult for people to get out, the threats from outside are hard to get in. What’s more, the mountain is the production source of Lianzhang villagers. They walk into the mountain, just as fishermen go out to sea, farmers farm, writers turn on their computers. Both men and women become extremely agile after getting into the mountain. They run up and down hills as naturally and easily as from one mall to another.

But you're not familiar with mountain route, which twisted and turned with no end in sight. When you took the first step, the second step followed. Thus, you just kept going. Suddenly, you were surprised to find that the clear ceramic sky is touchably close to you. Below the sky are hills and dendrocalamus latiflorus. And the dendrocalamus latiflorus grow all over the place. You were surprised by the babbling brook—it is multitonous! The stream winding down the hill was playing a duo, the high notes intertwining with the low. Walking closer on a grassy meadow you saw one or two fluttering wings, like a woman's skirt blew up by wind.

It turned out that two butterflies stopped you. One was a large black butterfly, flying low; the other was a small beige butterfly, flying high. One after the other, they disturb your vision and block your pace. The more you go into the mountains, the denser the mountains appear, the thicker the shadows are, and the more mosquitoes there are. Slender bamboo shoots overlap on the ground, making the soles of your feet prickly.The space formed by the bamboo forest is filled with a mysterious smell. You suspect that two hermits are fighting in the depths. The mountain is not quiet-the bamboo leaves sway from side to side, as if dancing to a certain melody. Time suddenly slows down here. When this time flows into your pupils, it becomes your own, private, inner time. You know, eventually, you will leave the mountain, but your pupils will take away the time of this moment.Mountains are no longer invisible and inaccurate things, but special substances with spots, smells and butterflies. Now, you go inside the mountain and try to see its depths more clearly.

Lu Huoqiu is 89 years old. Her figure looks very thin, and her hair is all white. On her face, wrinkles appear in the way of knife carving——long and short horizontal lines on the forehead and bridge of the nose, deep crow's feet on the corners of the eyes, and dense small grids on the whole chin. She is so thin that her eye sockets and cheeks are deeply recessed. She is enthusiastic——holding your hands tightly and letting the power flow from her fingertips. She holds them too long to let them go. I can see that she likes someone to talk to her. Her teeth are almost gone, and she is a little leaky when she speaks, but she loves to laugh. The light from her eyes is still clear and bright. She is less than 1.6 meters tall, wearing a red and black jacket and floral trousers, barefoot in black rubber shoes. Her hands are so big that they are out of proportion to her whole figure——they are such a pair of hands that only a person of 8 meters can have. Her hands have dark skin and thick joints, and she should have done much farm work. In her opinion, the most significant change in Lianzhang Village is the mountain road. When she was 17 years old, she married from the Xikeng Village Group to the Tangwang Village Group, walking on the mountain road for more than an hour. At that time, the mountain road was winding, with lush weeds on both sides, and it was hazardous to roll into the ditch carelessly. Fortunately, it didn't rain that day, which was a favor to God.

Now, the mountain road has become much broader and paved with asphalt. It only takes 5 minutes to drive from Xikeng to Tangwang. She sighed with regret, "The days at that time were bitter!" Her wedding room was a mud house, and she ate three porridge meals daily. The days could be equivalent to New Year if there were half a catty of pork. However, she was not afraid of a poor life. Since she was seven years old, she helped her family do farm work, so she has long been used to filling her stomach with wild vegetables, wild fruits, and rice bran. At that time, rice was the most precious thing. She went to the mountains to help people carry firewood, and she had to take 100 bundles to get three small cups of rice. The mountain road was winding; when going to the village for a meeting, one had to bring rice, vegetables, and firewood——people involved had to cook and eat in the meeting place. Those who did not bring vegetables and rice could get a small piece of fermented bean curd. "Only a small piece!" At that time, it took four hours to walk fast from the village to Lianjiangkou Town. "Now people grow up with sugar water!" After saying this, she laughed heartily. Her three sons were all married, and now she lives with her youngest, Lu Xinfa. After returning from the city, her granddaughter sometimes bought a few bags of milk powder for her- "sweet ah!"

Changes

Two different types of houses were built in Lianzhang Village – the old-fashioned yellow mud house and the new-style white house. Now, most people have moved to villas while mud houses were used as kitchens or warehouses. The villagers said: “In the past, the village was covered with ash on sunny days and mud on rainy day. But now it has been paved with asphalt and lit with lamps on streets. The village has become more beautiful.” It was October 2019 as you come to this village in the depths of the mountain. The autumn was crisp and the breeze was cool. A group of women were working in the fields-straw hats, plaid shirts, sleeves on their arms, black trousers tied in their rain boots. I saw that they were constantly digging the ground with the long-handle hoe in their hands, and there were dense flower beds on both sides of the ridge, and green mountains stood behind the ridge. Those working people seemed to be in an ink painting. As you walked past the ridge of the field, you could smell a special smell of dirt-a smell that you have been very familiar with since childhood.

The past two years have seen real changes in Lianzhang Village—— the renovated villagers' houses, the hard-bottom cement roads which used to be mud roads, the street lamps being luminous from the foot of the hill to the middle of the village, the new-built cultural centers, sports plazas, and star toilets, and the improved infrastructure such as water, electricity and Internet communication in the village. When reaching the village committee office, you'll find it's a separate small building with white and brown-red walls looking ordinary, on which hangs a particularly striking plaque: "Lianzhang Village Party Mass Service Center." The hall on the first floor is spacious and clean, and all kinds of things can be handled on the counter. The machine—— an all-in-one government service machine, given as a gift by the Qingyuan Government Affairs Service Data Administration Bureau, is an eye-opener for the villagers. Swiping your ID card, you can handle more than 100 businesses of 6 categories on the machine, with which villagers dispense with the traveling of 40 kilometers to the city to run errands. An extensive line of words is on the second floor's wall—— "Industrial prosperity, ecological livability, rural civilization, effective governance, and prosperous living." At 6:30 every morning, when the school bus stops at the entrance of Lianzhang Village on time, Lu Yibiao and his daughter will be there on time. Lu waved when he saw his child get on the bus. The school that his daughter is going to is 10 kilometers away. "There was no school bus before, which was a big problem for children to go to school." Now, the school bus comes through the flat asphalt road to the village, solving the most significant problem afflicting parents. In addition to the safe school bus, Yingde City has provided supplementary insurance in medical housing, transportation education, and other aspects through the combination of insurance functions and poverty alleviation work to offer comprehensive protection to poor households with filed cards.

With the coverage of targeted poverty alleviation policies, the idle school building in the village was transformed into a toy workshop for poverty alleviation, providing villagers with the opportunity of "working without going out". With a total investment of about 40 million yuan, Country Garden's Modern Agricultural Science and Technology Demonstration Park has built more than 70 acres of greenhouses to customize cherry tomatoes, Meiyue watermelons, cantaloupes and other fruit and vegetable varieties. This demonstration park adopts the world-leading control system of greenhouse environment and water and fertilizer integration system, which has a driving effect on modern facility agriculture in the entire northern Guangdong, and can also promote the optimization and upgradation of industrial structure as well as the combination of interests between industry and peasant households. Villagers who receive part of the income from land transfer can also work in the demonstration park to transform from farmers to industrial workers and then to small shareholders. In 2017, this base sold more than 25,000kg of vegetables with an income of 86,000 yuan. The average income of the 12 poor households who planted and worked in the base has increased by nearly 5,000 yuan; the village has also developed some planting projects, such as 1,500 mu of kumquat, with the participation of more than 300 farming families of 17 village groups; it has also built a high-tech demonstration park for intensive processing of the tea industry to promote the pioneering development of leading industries. Villager Qiu Huiling and her husband have been working in other places. After hearing about the national poverty alleviation policies, they discussed returning to the village for development. In 2019, the husband planted 500 Sugar orange trees, while the wife worked in the Country Garden's Agricultural Science and Technology Park. Life goes by well. Lu Changbiao is a "post-80s". When he returned to his hometown from Guangzhou, he planted over 100 acres of local agricultural specialty Magu (Yishenzi). He looked impassioned: “Present changes were unimaginable before. This is where I was born and raised, and I thought I could create a career if I came back home.”

Peanuts

After planting the rice seedlings, villagers of every household in Lianzhang Village would plant peanuts again, because peanuts can produce oil, and both rice and vegetable oil are the life necessities. When peanuts grow in earth, its branches and leaves look ordinary, just like the ones of peppers or eggplants. However, when you tug the green branches upward, you'll find a lot of chubby babies attaching to the roots--peanuts. Peanuts in Lianzhang Village are not too big—only slightly bigger than green beans—extraordinarily plump though.

On the streets of Lianjiangkou Town, there are many oil-pressing mills. What fills up those white plastic barrels is peanut oil—with a delightful golden color. On each barrel is written in black pen with the surname - either "Zhu" or "Chen".

Although Lu Xinfa is almost 50 years old, he still looks coy when he smiles. Sitting in front of the oil mill, he waits quietly. Through his red-blue-and-white short-sleeved T-shirt, black pants and black shoes, we can tell that he is not tall and very lean. His bare arms are slender, but his hands are particularly strong: broad palms, thick bones and pronounced joints. His skin is not very dark, with few wrinkles on the face, so his features are quite fine. However, his eyes and cheeks are so deeply sunken that you would be shocked—he is indeed unduly thin. Well, it is strange that you seem to have seen him somewhere. Suddenly, the 89-year-old woman comes into your mind. Oh, the younger son truly looks after his mother.

The owner of the oil-pressing mill is a rotund-armed young man, in a black T-shirt and jeans–- the kind of jeans you'll find so common in the city, but the people in Lianzhang Village seldom wear them. He handed a bottle of mineral water to his customer and stuffed a bowl of fried peanuts. Lu Xinfa, the customer, picked one from the pearl-like yellow andwhite peanuts, tossed it to his mouth and savored it. "Well, the freshly fried peanuts are relly tasty!" It is a very pleasant process——in the spring, he planted seeds on his one-acre plot; and in the fall, he harvested as scheduled. Then, he took the treasure-like peanuts to the town and watched as they were steamed and dried and then fried into a golden liquid. When he cooks at home, he pours oil into the iron wok with a sense of certainty——because he participated in the whole process of making the peanut oil which was environment-friendly.

The process of frying peanut oil is not complicated. That is: pour peanuts from a bag into a bamboo basket, move the basket to a large scale, then the accurate weight will be displayed on the electronic screen simultaneously. The customer nodded to sshow approval after the shopkeeper gave that number to him. The peanuts were first placed in a stout wooden bucket that is 0.5 meters high -- Lu Yiluo, a carpenter in Lianzhang village, specializes in making this kind of wooden bucket -- after the peanuts were steamed to a half-cooked degree, they were fried in a large iron wok -- that’s not an ordinary household iron pot, but there’s a device installed above the wok which allows a shovel-like object to rotate in the wok and automatically stir the peanuts inside. Fried peanuts poured out of a gate at the side of the stove and fell into the large basket prepared. When the peanuts were poured into the oil press machine, we can see a magical separation process -- the mouth at the front of the machine will spit out some droppings, like pieces of crumped paper, also like pieces of fish, which are gray and white with a lot of brown and yellow particles; the liquid coming out of the mouth at the side of the machine was caught by a large iron barrel, which was a mixture of earthy crumbs and white foam. The liquid has to be precipitated and filtered before it turns into golden peanut oil.

You’ll find that the life that villagers of Lianzhang village live is poetic-- which is full of lyrical meaning; while the life of more ordinary people is fictional-- which is full of suspense. It’s quite easy for a city dweller to buy a bucket of oil from the supermarket -- whether peanut oil, canola oil, or salad oil -- but he doesn’t know where and on which land the raw materials of the barrel of oil are grown, or what the farmers growing the crops look like, or what kind of terrible weather the crops experience during their growth...... No, this long process is all blank for him. Modernized life has condensed him into a simple consumer. He just needs to swipe his mobile phone at the supermarket exit, then he becomes the owner of the barrel of oil. However, there’s all kinds of suspense between the barrel of oil and him. As such, “the novelist” has emerged. It’s a special career -- when a novelist realizes that people are full of doubts in their hearts, he is determined to find answers to those doubts. It is only in the modern life that novelists will emerge, while the traditional life is full of poets everywhere.

The Fruit Fly

The Fruit Fly, namely the Bactrocera dorsalis, is similar in appearance to but smaller than the fly, and is golden yellow with black markings. It is called as “the number one killer” of fruits due to its rapid reproduction and great harm it does. Normally, the adult insect lays its eggs inside the fruit, and the larvae will eat the fruit to grow from inside, which leads to fruit rot and premature fruit drop. The hawk-billed peach, which tastes sweet, juicy, fresh and crisp, is one of the relatively delicious fruits in Guangdong Province. With a variety of amino acids, vitamins, crude fibers and trace elements contained, it helps nourishing the stomach and intestines and preventing iron deficiency anemia. This fruit also has a unique effect on women——it can replenish the qi and blood, and nourish the yin and promote fluid production. The yield of the peach is extremely low, with a tasting period of only 15 to 20 days in a year. With extremely high requirements on its habitat, only those grown in northern Guangdong are considered authentic, and those produced in Qingyuan can be called as “the best of its kind”.

Before 2015，Lu Xinfa had no idea about how harmful the fruit flies could be. This year, he planted 300 hawk billed peaches and was full of hope for a certain income that those peaches would bring, only to find that the fruits to mature fell to the ground one by one. It turns out that there is a kind of pest called the fruit fly (Coquillett), who likes to eat sweet things. When the fruit is pricked by the needle of the fruit fly, it will rot and drop. From then on, Mr. Lu began to pay attention to the knowledge related to the fruit flies and summarized a lot of experience in fighting against them.

In fact, there are different ways to kill the fruit flies. For example, we can destroy their overwinter sites. In winter, the flies will parasitize on fallen fruits, the soil under trees and the dead bark of trees. Therefore, during the garden clearance in autumn, it must be ensured that fallen fruits and dead tree bark have been cleared away and the land has been ploughed deeply. Besides,it is necessary to irrigate for two to three times and sprinkle quicklime in winter to kill the larvas. What is more, during the generation peak of fruit flies, five traps can be hung in an orchard of one mu to trap and kill males, so as to reduce the number of insect sources in the orchard. Spraying pesticide according to the growth stages of the pest can be another choice. The best effect would be achieved if spraying is finished at adult stage, or pesticide can also be sprayed during two periods from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., since the fruit flies usually have activities then. What is more, yellow sticky plates can be used to trap adult flies since they like to lay eggs on mature yellow fruits. Last but not least, to protect fruits from being harmed by the insects, bagging fruits from the early development stage also works, but the mouth of bags should be fastened.

As the youngest son of Liu Huoqiu, Lu Xinfa was unable to go out to work because of illness, so he wondered how to earn some money in his village. Seeing the favorable income of planting peach with a pointed end like the beak of eagle in the next village, he also wanted to try to do the same thing. Now, he thinks about that "Maybe the management is not in place, and the prevention and treatment are not timely." with a puzzled frown. Planting peach is not as simple as it looks, but it is actually very complicated. At the first glance, the fruit fell from the tree, but if we carefully thought about it, there were many suspicious things that can lead to that result. Lu finally realized that the prevention measures he summarized were simply "a tip of the iceberg". The pest is very cunning, and so far, there is no such a good way to completely cure this disaster, due to different terrain and climate from place to place. He hoped that the village could send an expert and leave his contact information. "Otherwise, those peach trees will be planted in vain."

2012 was unforgettable for him - all the bad things were squeezed into one year. This year, his elf father fell ill, and the medical expenses cost 40,000 yuan, which swallowed all of the family's savings; Also this year, the cost of the elder daughter's college was 20,000, and the cost of the younger daughter's middle school was 10,000, that made he feel that his home has completely become empty; Still this year, his family's new house was built, whose cost was 110,000 yuan —despite the 30,000 yuan subsidized by the government, he had to borrow 50,000 yuan from his relatives. In the years that followed, the family saved money just to pay off their debts. His family had 1 mu of land on which they grew rice and peanuts, but it was only enough to feed themselves and cannot be sold for money. He said ashamedly: "The main income of the family then was the wages of my wife's part-time job in Yingde City, which was about 2,500 yuan a month." Lu Xinfa was regretted that his body was not contending, he couldn't do heavy workload, and he was very distressed to see his wife leaving early and returning late every day. However, since 2016, his family's life has changed since the enactment of Targeted Poverty Alleviation policy. His younger daughter could get a living allowance of 3,000 yuan a year, which can be regarded as helping him solve a big problem, and he was constantly thinking about how to earn money in order to get rid of poverty earlier.

When talking about 2019, his eyes sparkled with tears because the most difficult time for the family has passed. This year, the first daughter, who studied business Japanese, has graduated from college and began to work, earning 3,000 yuan per month; In the same year, the other daughter was admitted to a preschool normal school and could earn 1,500 yuan a month; Still this year, he borrowed 30,000 yuan through the "poverty loan" project to run an agricultural machinery maintenance station. Although the probability of tractor accidents has decreased because there are fewer people going up the mountain to cut firewood, making the business not as good as expected, people only get to know how to do it in the process of doing it. In addition, he wondered if he could set up a homestay or farm, due to the wonderful scenery around his home which is just off the mountain road. He wanted to take the time to go to a nearby town someday and do a survey to see how other people manage homestay. All in all, no matter what, always keep doing. Only by doing can there be hope.

sugar orange

In the eyes of villagers in Lianzhang Village, sugar orange is a plant in the old days. This kind of plant is actually made up of both branches and shadows -- and when its branch is cut or burned, the shadow would not immediately disappear, but lingers in its place for a long time. Where there are shadows, there is a strange smell -- the smell of ripening oranges under the orange trees. As long as the villagers stood where the orange trees had been planted, they could smell it and know that the shadows had not gone away. In midwinter, the weather in Yingde city is still very warm. The hills on either side of the road were green, and the orchards were orange -- a uniform color of sugar-orange. In your view, sugar orange is just a fruit rich in vitamin C, calcium, fiber, a little protein, fat and abundant glucose, fructose and sucrose. However, to the people in Lianzhang village, sugar orange is gold. When the orange trees were full of fruits, the villagers were not yet trapped by poverty, but full of fantasies. However, here it came - Citrus yellow shoot! It is not a disease, but the brightest and sharpest knife in the world. The knife had fallen asleep in a dull, rusty sleep, but when it woke up, shiny and bright, it surprised the villagers by cutting down all the orange trees, one by one, and then burning the trunks.

Villagers all know very well about how to build plantations, how to cultivate sugar oranges, how to arrange the density of plants and how to fertilize rationally. Each of them has their own ways to eat oranges--don’t tear out the tangerine pith, because it can dredge the channels and collaterals and dissipate phlegm and activate blood circulation; don't eat more than three oranges a day, which is bad for your teeth; don't eat radish while eating oranges, or it will cause goiter; don't drink milk when eating oranges, or you will have abdominal distension, abdominal pain, diarrhea and other symptoms. But people have no ideas about the Citrus yellow shoot. Once being infected by this disease, not only the single tree will be completely destroyed, but even the entire orange plantation will be spoiled. No single one will remain, because this kind of disease is contagious. In the very beginning, villagers found that the leaves turned yellow. Afterwards those leaves fell off and the whole tree crown became sparse. After one or two years, the tree will gradually die. Therefore, once a tree is found to be suffering from the Citrus yellow shoot, it should be dug up immediately, and then burn in a centralized manner without their stumps left.

Since the middle and late of 1990s, sugar oranges have been planted in a large scale in Lianzhang village. Oranges here, embracing thin skins, mature late and adapt to the season, which are very popular with the townspeople. It is obvious that oranges are associated with this place by destiny—This village, located in the north central part of Guangdong Province, is a transitional area from the tropic South-Asia zone to the tropic Middle-Asia zone, where blows south wind and southerly wind in Spring and north wind and northerly wind in winter, forming the characteristics of warmth and humidity, abundant rainfall, and long frost-free period.

This location is quite special- it can avoid the cold disaster in the north, as well as the typhoons in the south. Meanwhile it can also take advantage of the showers brought by the typhoons to alleviate the drought in summer and autumn, which is very suitable for the growth of orange trees; The soil here, consisting largely of yellow soil, red soil and lateritic red soil, boosts rich organic matter, high-level natural fertility, good soil aggregate structure, thick arable layer, which allow the trees to grow exuberantly; it is close to the north and has convenient transportation conditions, so those fruit wholesalers from Shanghai, Zhejiang, Henan or Liaoning Province are willing to come here to purchase.

There were at least 30 thousand mus of sugar orange orchard at its peak in Lianjiangkou Town. At that time, orange trees were almost planted in Lianzhang country in every household. Trees in the orchard came to grow once spring came. Buried in the soil, their roots sucked water, wetting the trunks and branches. With water circulation and dilation, as well as the slow but mild photosynthesis, the orange trees finally became languid pregnant women instead of young girls. When it came to the harvest season, the orchard turned into red. Compared with other kinds of orange, sugar oranges were as small as red eggs but perfectly round instead of oval. Their bright red skins were so thin that they could be peeled easily, and their golden pulp was juicy without residue and sweet with a honey flavor, making them unforgettable.

When the orange trees were getting ripe, those little oranges were sparkled with orange-red luster and full of fragrance. Looking at those little oranges, people couldn’t stop the thoughts in their mind. Though they seemed to be very clam standing under the trees, their hearts were surging like the sea: to them, oranges represented gold and gains, pleasure and prosperity. At that time, villagers thought that orange trees would always exist like blue sky and white clouds, and they would always have such a good harvest. Yet this dream had its end. Upon the storm of Huanglong disease, orange orchards were in horrible chaos.

“You know what? My family’s 600 sugar orange trees once gave us an annual income of 200,000 yuan!” The brick house where Lu Guoxiang now lives in was built in 2013, at that time he and his brothers hadn’t separated yet, and they raised money to build it. It cost them 200,000 yuan——half of the money was saved from selling sugar oranges, and the rest was borrowed from their relatives. The 600 sugar orange trees on the 10 acres of land were too great a contribution to the family, as the eldest brother’ son and daughter went to college (more than 30,000 yuan per year for each) with the money made by selling oranges. Unfortunately, the orange trees got Citrus Huanglongbing and became fruitless later on, so they couldn't earn money by selling oranges anymore.

2012 was a horrible year. The whole villagers' hearts were tore by a pair of invisible hands, hurtful but could not do anything. They could only watch the leaves turn yellow. Within two or three years, the orange trees on the whole hillside had been cut down. Without the orange trees, there was no income, but the bill for the house had not been paid. What to do? He was determined to buy a tractor to haul wood in the hills. Cutting trees and pulling wood were very tiring, but he can still earn 20 or 30 thousand yuan a year. The fields must be ploughed! Whenever there was no work in the fields, he went up into the mountains to cut down trees. He was such busy and dared not have a day free. That's how he survived. 'It's finally 2016,' he said with a smile. With the poverty alleviation policy, life is much better now.

Dendrocalamus latiflorus To the people of Lianzhang Village, the dendrocalamus latiflorus is a "nowadays" plant. Although the plant is now playing the role of a successor, it is still some distance away from real success. It must not only establish the dignity of its rhizome, but also of its shadow, before its authority is truly established. The dendrocalamus latiflorus, also known as sweet bamboo, big green bamboo, wani bamboo, is a rare domestic species of flesh-eating bamboo shoots, known as the titile of "the treature of Lingnan mountain", and is called "first green health food" by domestic and foreign people. The bamboo shoots are up to 30 centimeters tall, with hollow nodes and large, alternate leaves. Dendrocalamus latiflorus likes hot and humid weather, and they grow rapidly in temperatures above 30 degrees and are very productive. Dendrocalamus latiflorus is an edible vegetable that can be served in cold salads, cooked or stewed, with lots of fiber and can be made a variaty of dishes. Since the Ming Dynasty, Lianzhang Village has been in the habit of growing bamboo shoots and refining dried shoots. The bamboo shoots are characterized by thick and tender flesh, smooth and tasty, and fat-free. The dried bamboo shoots here were once sold to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. The bamboo leaves have both medicinal and edible values, which are a good raw material for making dumplings. It can make the dumplings fragrant and refreshing, with a long aftertaste.It also means the good meaning of "bamboo for peace". The color of fresh bamboo shoots is light yellow instead of creamy white, which makes them very crisp in the mouth. Dried bamboo shoots are best boiled in rice water and soaked for a day before being used in pork or chicken stews. When the dried bamboo shoots are impregnated with the flavor of the meat, the taste will be extra fatty and juicy.

Dendrocalamus latiflorus contains a white nitrogenous substance, which gives the bamboo shoots a unique fragrance, and is able to tonify Yin, clear heat, and unblock the body. It can also promote gastrointestinal peristalsis, make feces soft, and have the function of promoting appetite and digestion. Dendrocalamus latiflorus also has the characteristics of low sugar and low fat and is rich in plant fiber, which can reduce excess fat in the body and eliminate phlegm and blood stasis. The contents of plant protein, vitamins, and trace elements in dendrocalamus latiflorus are also high, which can enhance the immune function of the body and improve the disease resistance ability. For office workers living in cities, work and life are very tense, which is easy to cause stress constipation. If you can eat dendrocalamus latiflorus twice a week, it will promote digestion, absorption, and defecation. Eating dendrocalamus latiflorus during the Spring Festival means good health and a life better and better as bamboo grows notch by notch, higher and higher. Bamboo shoots grow in knots. When buying bamboo shoots, you should look at the distance between the knots - the closer the distance is, the more delicate the bamboo shoot flesh will be, and the better the taste will be. When you buy bamboo shoots, you also need to look at the shape of the bamboo shoots - the bamboo shoots with large upper parts and small bottom parts are better. Such bamboo shoots have fewer shells and more flesh. After the bamboo shoots are peeled, the tenderer and whiter the bamboo shoots are, the crisper they will be, while the green bamboo shoots taste very astringent.

Dried dendrocalamus latiflorus has a sour taste, which is nothing to villagers in Lianzhang Village, but is super huge and obvious for outsiders of the village. This makes them frown and feel confused—is it that people in Lianzhang Village have a poor sense of smell? However, after you eat fresh bamboo shoots fried with pork slices and dried bamboo shoots stewed with pork in the village, you will know that their tongues are not numb, instead, very sensitive. They know that dendrocalamus latiflorus is sold wholesale from town to the village, not being dried by the villagers at all. Lu Guoxiang said, “At the very beginning, I got itchy the time I cut bamboo shoots. But as I cut more and more, I get used to it.” A bamboo shoot weighs 25 kilograms but only weighs 5 kilograms at most after pealing. In 2019, dendrocalamus latiflorus sold for 1.6 yuan per kilogram, 0.6 yuan higher than that of last year. Cutting bamboo shoots is hard work and the fuzz on the leaves of bamboo shoots can make people feel itchy all over. When dendrocalamus latiflorus grows to 1.2 to 1.5 meters high, it’s time to cut it. You chop it with a knife, break it with your hands, pile the chopped bamboo shoots together and finally carry them down the mountain. It’s difficult to cut old bamboo shoots since you’ll have to cut several times; to break off tender bamboo shoots, you only need one cut. Lu Jianguo can cut more than 300 kilograms of bamboo shoots a day and then pull them down the mountain with a tractor. It’s clear to him that citrus shatangju is completely destroyed, and now he could only rely on dendrocalamus latiflorus. In 2017, he strained to spend 4000 yuan to hire an excavator to open a mountain road. In the past, bamboo shoots had to be carried down on shoulders, but now, you only need to put them in a tractor truck and they’ll be chugged down the mountain.orus is delicious. They also know that some dendrocalamus latiflorus is sold wholesale from town to the village, not being dried by the villagers at all.

Fertilizer

Lu Guoxiang spent all his days working in the mountains. Instead of cutting bamboo shoots, he dug pits here. Some neighbors whispered, "he is so stupid!" It turned out that he dug a pit at each root of the bamboo shoot, and then buried the fertilizer in it. In this way, he dug one shoot after another, and his back was so sore that he couldn't hold it straight in bed at night.

He was not willing to scatter the fertilizer into the fields and leave it. "It rains a lot in the mountains!" Whenever it rains, the fertilizer will all be washed away - "thousands of Yuan will be wasted!" He bugged his eyes out and said: "The funds from the government is also money!" When it comes to Dendrocalamus latiflorus, he talked about it like it's a treasure. Over and over again, he counted all his shoots - all 1,500 of them! These shoots were planted more than ten years ago, and later replanted some more.

After the sugar orange got sick, the government encouraged people to plant bamboo shoots, and also gave subsidies. In 2017, the poverty alleviation task force helped his family with more than 2,000 yuan of fertilizer; it helped with 4,500 yuan of fertilizer in 2018.

The neighbors were so lazy that they scattered the fertilizer into the fields in the mountain. "That's just like scattering flowers in the sky, it doesn't work!" He did not want to do that. During that half month, he went up the mountain every day to dig holes, and then buried all the fertilizer. Speaking of those cadres who help the villagers to alleviate poverty by delivering them fertilizer, he grinned with his mouth open. He said that he understood what they were thinking - "If we earn money, they will be happy."

Mountains are speechless and seasons always resolve. It was in the vibrant country land where this man had learned that pains and gains are proportional. We shall not deceive lands or mountains, and fields could bear fruits only if we crouch ourselves down and let the drops of sweat spill into the soil. We don't have to marvel at the world created by God, just as the mountains never look up to the blue sky overhead, the streams never admire the overlapping sound of the flowing water, and the butterflies never praise the black or yellow colour on their wings; everything just peacefully runs in a set pattern. Therefore, we don't have to marvel at our being; all we have to do is work hard, and then we will always get what we want. Working in the mountains was very hard, indeed, with mosquito bites, stuffy air, pearls of sweat on the forehead, and muscles so sore that felt like they were detaching from the bones. However, his heart was full of joy. As he descended the mountains at night, he saw that the moon had already risen overhead. The moonlight treated everything in the world fairly; it brought brightness not only to the stream, to the leaves, to the mountain path, but also to his shoulders. He bent down to the stream, washed his hands and feet, washed the mud and sweat stains off his face, and then slowly walked back to the village. Like a sword, he got rusted at work, but on the way home, the stream and the moonlight made him pristine and shiny again.

Lu Guoxiang had known that his family was poor when he was a kid. There was no workforce except for his parents, and five kids who were able to help their parents were waiting for meals. The village was surrounded by mountains leaving little chance for making money. Day by day parents worried about their children’s food. It was just in that adobe house where whole families sat together having nothing else but porridge and cassava. He choked with emotion, “We barely had rice more than once a week, let alone meat.” In this warehouse full of stuff, he opened a swollen bag, grabbed a handful of white scraps, and showed it. It looked just like sawdust. He seriously explained, “We used to eat this kind of cassava, but now they are fed to chickens.” “Well, cassava is cassava, and it is not sweet potato at all.” It turns out that cassava is a kind of perennial subshrub and also called wood potato or wood sweet potato which originate in tropical America, with more than 4000 years of cultivation history. It was introduced and cultivated in China in the 1920s, and it mainly distributed in the Huaihe River, Qinling Mountains, and the south of the Yangtze River basin, with the largest cultivated area in Guangdong and Guangxi. Fanshu(sweet potatoes), also called Hongshu, Shanyu, and Digua, which originated in South America and were introduced to China at the end of the 16th century. Today, in addition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, sweet potatoes traveled everywhere in China.

In a village, a house is not only a building or a place to dwell, but the embodiment of wealth and capability. Now, though Lu Guoxiang’s family simply own a plain brick house, it is totally different from an adobe house------it’s a safe, spacious and dry house with television, stereo, fridge, rice cooker and disinfection cabinet. It also has individual bathroom and kitchen, and the cooktop with three burners is huge. The adobe house was a nightmare for the husband. Every time someone sets him up, he is excited but nervous, with his heart beating fast. After those women who came to his home saw his house with cracks creeping all over the walls, however, they stood still like a sculpture. In fact, the time that they stood in front of his house was short, but it seemed that one second is equivalent to many years for the man. He knows that these women are wondering whether they can accept everything in the house when they open the door as the wife of the man. The answer is no. Thus, when they turn around and give an apologetic smile, he gets a hint that the blind date fails again.

On July 1, 2010, he registered his marriage. His wife is Lu Haiyu, born in 1983. The woman had short, thick black hair, yellowish skin, a round face with two thick black eyebrows, and a high nose and thin lips under her single eyelids. "She was at first a fish in the sea, but now she suffers in my family." the husband said, grinning. The wife’s lips curved in a nice smile at this. There was a tacit understanding between the couple. The wife's eyes were full of understanding and love as she looked at her husband. You might think they were married on the basis of free love, but in fact, they "met and got married within 10 days”. At that time, he was already 42 years old. So when Lu Haiyu's aunt fixed him up with someone, he quickly nodded. First, he believed that his aunt would not cheat him; Second, he thought, "I'm too old to be a crabber."It doesn’t mean that he didn't want to see someone until he got married in his middle age. In fact, he said, "I've been looking for a partner since my 20s, year after year, but I haven't found the suitable one all the way." "Suitability" is a very strange state -- for a very short period of time, both men and women are trying to figure out if the other person is exactly like the person in their imagination. It only takes a second to realize that the other person is not the one you expected. Attending blind date every year but failing every time, he gradually came to his sense after these humiliating experiences.

When Lu Haiyu’s aunt first introduced Lu Haiyu to him, she told him abundantly clear -- Lu Haiyu suffered from polio, and had some problems with her hands. He then met Lu, who was of moderate size, having a nice look with a shy smile on her lips. He quickly agreed -- the world didn't leave him many choices. The wedding was simple – there was only a bride price of 6,000 yuan and a wedding feast of 8,000 yuan. After marriage, he found that his wife could not do heavy work in the fields, but some light housework. Sometimes, it was even difficult for her to do some simple household chores – when she poured boiling water from the kettle into the thermos, she would burn her feet for failing to point the top of the bottle. But his wife was meek and always obedient to him. The day passed uneventfully. After tangerines were sickly, he put all his hopes on bamboo shoots. He carefully buried chemical fertilizers on the roots of each bamboo shoot — he was not burying fertilizers, but burying hope! He knew how clumsy the way he dug the hole bit by bit was. He also knew how the neighbors laughed at him behind his back. Yet he kept going up the mountain from day to day. He observed the leaves of the shoots as if they were the hair of his own child. After those tiny particles dissolved in the soil, the leaves would change. Sometimes he dug for so long that he felt dizzy and would fall over when he raised himself up. He quickly put a hand in front of his forehead against the sunlight, took a few deep breaths, and then recovered gradually. He slowly looked around the bamboo forest within sight — the bamboo forest that belonged to him — as if he already saw his future self, who was raising a knife to cut down the bamboo shoots. The bamboo shoots were carried into the bucket of the tractor, and then they were pulled to the bamboo shoots processing plant.

He would go outside to find some odd jobs when not cutting bamboo shoots. He had a tractor and his driving skills were good. He can help others to deliver wood and sand, which pays him 350 yuan in 8 hours within a day if he paid the gas money by himself. Except for 50 yuan of gas money and the cost of machine wear, he could earn 200 yuan a day. This job was not easy to do for he needed to sit on the tractor all day long and kept climbing up and down the hill. Because the mountain road was rugged, one who needed to do this job must be extremely careful. In this small village, it was not rare that someone became disabled even died for the overturn of tractors. He decided to do that stoutly though knowing the danger. “I must to work without any retreat.” Now, he is a father of three children—a 11-year-old boy, a 8-year-old daughter, and the second daughter is only 6 years old. In the past, his parents worried about feeding their children. And now, he was anxious about children’s schooling. However, he sighed with emotion immediately, “the national fellowships which started in 2016 was a kind of timely rain.” Now, his son and the first daughter each can receive a fellowship of 3000 yuan annually, which means that the great difficulty in their education was overcome thoroughly. His mother， Lu Simei, an 87-year-old grand old woman, is still healthy. When hearing someone talking, she will walk in slowly and sit in a deck chair. This elderly lady with gray hair wears a kindly smile when raising her corner of the toothless mouth. You are astonished at her wrinkles-those horizontal ones from the forehead downward, and vertical ones from the chin upward, and they meet and gather on her temples, while those on her hands are like slashes. If you say hi to her, she will answer you with nodding. When hearing that she could even cook by herself, you would be so stunned that you let your pen drop on the floor. Alas! Though there are sound medical conditions in cities, some who are in their sixties or seventies would pass away. Looking at this elder, she even can cook by herself!

After having eaten hawthorn peaches in Lianjiangkou town, Lu Guoxiang found that the peaches were not only delicious, but also could be sold for more than ten yuan per catty. He thought to himself- if I could grow out such peaches and sell them for seven or eight yuan per catty.That would be great! So he did it immediately! He spent 3,000 yuan to buy 450 seedlings of hawkmoth peaches from Heyuan City and consulted the seller on how to grow them. In 2019, he planted 10 acres of hawkmoth peaches. He was always excited to go to the filed to weed and water, looking forward to a good harvest after three years. "Growing peach trees is like raising a child, you have to think big and make long-term plans." He believed he could grow out hawthorn peaches successfully. In the past, his family had a record of good harvests of sugar oranges for 10 consecutive years. In the highest yielding year, he even made a profit of $200,000 RMB. "It's true! The whole tree was full of fruit!" He remembered the glory he had created, just as all Mongolians will never forget Genghis Khan. Now, he is obsessed with the thoughts of making money and getting rid of poverty. He knew that the village cadres were doing their best to make our lives better. Recently, he was appointed as a mountain patroller by the village with a salary of 3000 RMB per month, and he took it very seriously. This job involves patrolling the mountains and rivers. Every day, he went out early in the morning - to see if anyone was lighting a fire in the mountains or digging sand in the rivers. Once entering mountains, his eyes became as sharp as the bird's; and by river, his body became as smooth as the fish's. He was born in this village. Although he suffered much there, he loved this place with all his heart more than any other places in the world.

The wood processing plant

When you enter a wood processing plant, it seems like you’ve come into the interior of a large stereo, your eardrums cut by a rumble of noise. However, the two young men who were sawing wood, but as if with earplugs can not hear anything. A thick log was laid out on a case and pushed up by one of the men into the teeth of a spinning saw. With the sound of giggling, the log was transported across the room with a straight strand cut off its side; When it was pushed back again, the other part of its body was also separated from the strand. Thus, in the course of this pushing and transporting, it was transformed from a round log into a pile of slender strips of wood. Two other men - one an older man, the other a middle-aged woman - were binding the wood. They also look like they are wearing earplugs and can't hear any noise at all. They put the wood in a long machine to gather it into bundles, beat it neatly with a hammer and tie it up with wire and plastic string. The air is filled with wood splinters, which glisten in the sunlight like the noise's best buddies.

This is an oil painting created by the artist ——the two men in the picture are pushing and pulling logs, while another man and a woman are binding strips of wood. The line of the spine, arm, wood and cutter are the most important elements in the painting. You can feel that the artist was very happy while drawing these lines, because the lines are immersed in the sunlight and full of energy. These lines are very smooth.

Labor is both hard and gratifying. Those logs were cut from the mountain beside the side. In such a close distance, the wood had turned into strips of wood.When you walk into this picture, your heart is full of fantastic feelings.You feel that the rough skin of the cut wood is life - yes, life is not Tiramisu cake, but something like this rough skin!Every piece of wood is so rough, so naked, so strong and powerful. This wood are the original state of everything.The wood used to be a sapling thinner than a human finger. They grew up alone in the mountains.Every day and night, they vigorously opened their leaves to absorb all sunlight, water and nutrients.They grew according to their own genetic genes, and finally grew up to look like their parents. They are the mountain's real sons. They know about streams, butterflies and love breezes.

The fate of a felled tree is like the fate of a married woman. The wood is to become a table leg or a ceiling, which is its fate. But, it is still the same tree, the tree on the hill. The lumber yard is the wood's wedding - in a violent transmutation, the wood becomes something else that it does not even recognize, stepping on another path with an unknown future. And so another ethereal sigh wafts through this image. As these trees are divided into small pieces, something new is born - grace and civilization.

In 2016, after the village's land integration, Deng Chunhuo was able to get an annual dividend of 2,300 yuan from her family's vegetable shed and 2,000 yuan per year of the rent of two acres of land. And her son also received a living allowance of 3,000 yuan a year. Obviously, life is getting better. However, it's not enough. So, she went to work as a handyman in a woodworking factory-After her husband's death, she was the only one left working in the family, and her daughter was at university, so how could she not be anxious?

The woodworking factory shows this woman a lot of truth - the truth of what happens when a woman has no one to rely on. Once in this rumbling world, the woman has to concentrate all her energy, keep her eyes wide open, hold her breath and get to work with her heart pounding. Here, the most powerful protagonist is the cutter. Everything is born out of it, spun by it, and disintegrated by it. It was small planet with fire coming out that never seems to go out; it filled the space with a huge amount of dust, which floated wildly like a parachute in the light of the golden sun. It emitted a choking, pungent smell like a spilled bottle of chili pasta in the kitchen; it made this place like the heart of a giant, which was always uttering an appalling rumbling sound that never stopped for a moment.

On the first day in the processing plant, Deng Chunhuo found she had made a horrible mistake which is too late to correct. Dust tormented her nostrils and noise destroyed her eardrum. With cooperation of hands and feet, she kept moving, bundling up and transporting，struggling with the wood. There were splinters all over the wood that made her palms bleed. After finishing one day’s work in the plant, she slammed herself onto bed as if she was drunk and didn’t want to move anymore. She was tired and worn out after exerting all her strength. However, she could not hate the wood. As is known, due to the winding mountain road, they villagers had no way to contact with the outside world, so there were few jobs nearby. As a consequence, it was trifles to be plagueded by the dust and noise, or to get hurt. The 2000-yuan salary every month was a huge content to her.

This is the relationship between villagers and mountains. When they were born in the mountain, they did not understand the horror of this relationship: They depended on mountains for survival, but the mountains sometimes, in turn, devoured them. When her husband drove his tractor down the mountain, the mountain burst into anger -- it would never listen to any explanation from the man but overturned his car. As if in revenge for the mountain, the women finally came to work for a wood processing plant, which specialized in dismembering the children of the mountain. In this place, wood, the corpse of big trees, was everywhere and nowhere. Now, this woman spends all her days observing the wood. The longer she spends, the more isolated she feels. She keeps pumping herself up to hold on and not to crack. She has to sharpen herself to be a pillar at present, so as to support the whole family.

It triggered our sympathy when we saw the woman came down from the mountain with a load on her shoulder. Although she wore a straw hat, it was obvious that she was very short, less than 1.6 meters tall, which made the basket seemed even heavy.However, she kept moving on as there was a generator installed in her body. The bamboo seemed like a pile of small cannonballs in the blanket, which could be launched out imposingly to blow a hole in the field. Been placed one by one, these cannonballs made the blanket became heaver and made the woman walked more hobbled in the meantime. While the woman was extremely self-esteem to made each step steadily. It could be seen that she was very sensitive to protecting her dignity. She just walked down step by step, from the rugged mountain road to the village.People met her were all speculated about the weight of the blanket-- it has at least more than 100 pounds? Or about 120 pounds? Well, it should be 130 pounds? By 2019, Deng Chunman has got 50 years old. Although she was short and had a tan skin, she looked very healthy. There were some white adored in her hair, and wrinkles at the corner of her mouth. But the small dimple on her right cheek made her still like a shy girl when she smiled. Her facial features were pleasant: light eyebrows, long and thin eyes and a wisp of stubbornness from the mouth pursed. Her hands looked even more vicissitude than her face. Those were the hands that work all day long.

Three particular years were the most important ones in the woman’s life – In 1995, her daughter got born; In 2002, her son got born; In 2013, her husband passed away. Grown in poor, she as the fifth daughter in her family had dropped out of school after reaching the 4th grade. As she was 26 years old, she introduced to a 31-year-old man in Lianzhang village for marriage. “At that time, there was only one room, one bed and one desk.” She sighed and said, “We cooked with a large stove and burned the firewood.” When it came the second round of land sharing in 1999, her family with four people got two acres of land. She planted peanuts and rice, busy all year around for hard labor work. However, the family could only “feed themselves and have nothing left for selling” – stayed away from hunger though, they saved no money. Life was tough for the couple, but they still worked hard to save money. Finally in 2005, they were able to build a new house with tiles on the floor, wooden table and soft sofa in the living room and wooden bed and closet in the bedroom. They also borrowed 10,000 debts when they built the house, because the old one was too shabby to live. But after her husband passed away when he drove a tractor to pull wood, this family lost its backbone.

Much of coverage of trees grow on the mountain. In order to cut down the trees, people winded through the trail into the mountain. The paths were rough and bumpy. Sometimes they were comfortable for walking like laid with a carpet, while sometimes they were difficult for walking like growing bunches of swords on it. Though the husband knew exactly about the horror of the “swords”, but he still walked forward. However, he closed his eyes forever before he could tell his wife what had happened on the mountain road. As the woman saw the terrible and pitiful appearance of her husband, she was covered with great pain. His soul, lifting to the air, watched his wife crying and could not do anything except worrying. His death may just a trivial matter after dinner for others, but for his family it was an earth-shaking event. After that, the short woman often stayed on the hillside, wiping away her tears – she was full all grudge in her mind. When other people’s sugar oranges have already been sold for a lot of money, her orange trees have got the disease of Citrus yellow shoot after bearing fruit for only two years. She had no choice but to cut the trees and dig its roots. During this, she was burning and shaking, like lying on the operating table without anaesthesia. She felt that the falling branches were her arms and thighs. It was 2012, a terrible year for her. She thought she had reached the zenith of heartbreak, however, the next year, she met an even greater disaster! As her husband passed away, she cried so much as if losing her arms and thighs, it's like losing her heart .

Though her husband passed away, but she can feel that he still lingered in the room and hoped to do some housework for this family. His wife had a strong feeling of his existence, therefore, she spared no efforts to sort out the family. One day in the future when she meets his husband on the other side, she could make a comprehensive conclusion about her contributions to this family. But now, she feels that she shoulders too heavy a burden by herself alone. Now, every day seems to be extended too long for her and every coin seems to be too hard to earn. Every morning when she waked up, though being tired out, but she still forced herself to work. In 2014, her daughter was enrolled into Guangdong Technology and Normal University. However, such a pleasing thing brought difficulties for this family, because she needed to pay 20,000 yuan for tuition and fees, in addition to that, she also needed to pay 10,000 yuan for her son’s tuition in the middle school. She lay on the bed, managing to think out a solution, finally she made a resolution of borrowing more than 40,000 yuan in order to help them to further their education. Since then, she was burdened with debts and every step she made was like neither the swiftness of lark nor the swallow but more like a snail that struggled to move forward. In 2005, one day she took a look in the mirror, finding that her hair gradually turned grey.

Her life has taken a turn for the better since 2016 - the year when the targeted poverty alleviation policy was introduced throughout the country. By 2018, she even had the courage and confidence to contract 10 mu of mountain land thanks to the "supports" given by poverty-alleviation cadres. "Good! good!" Looking at the bundles of saplings and bags of fertilizers, she smiled from ear to ear with the dimple on her right cheek even deeper. In the first place as regards whether to "contract mountain land", she has always been hesitant about it -the money in investments of seedlings and fertilizers was at least 10,000 yuan. Besides as a mother, she has to support the family on her own, so every penny should be invested cautiously! However, with the supporting policies she felt secure when doing it. When she signed the contract, her hands did not shake. "This is a 25-year contract!" Her eyes flashed with delight and hope, like a flashlight glowing with new batteries. The harvest season for mahogany shoots, the busiest time of year, is between June and September. “I go to the mountains to pick weeds and harvest bamboo shoots when time is available”. It takes more than half an hour merely to go into the mountains, and cutting down those long, hefty shoots and lugging them back in baskets require both strength and patience. Each bamboo stem is about 2 meters tall with broad, plump leaves that rustle in the breeze. The shoots grow continuously throughout the entire summer. As she cut down the shoots, she could smell a mixture of grass, stream and earth. In 2019, she only earned 2,400 yuan from the sale of her shoots, but she was not discouraged as the shoots would be sold for at least 10,000 yuan in 2020. She did the math: a pound of bamboo shoots was 45 cents in 2018. A year later, the price had grown to 90 cents. What would the price be in 2020? Her lips curved into the shape of the moon.

Introduced a work in the village committee by a poverty alleviation cadre, she agreed right away back in 2019. In spite of good monthly salary worth of 2,600 yuan, the job wasn’t easy. Specifically, she needed to work at 6 o’clock every morning, cooking breakfast for more than 20 people. All the rooms on the near two and a half floors had to be cleaned before noon. Lunch and dinner were the hardest part for they required a balance of meat, vegetables, and soup. After lunch she walked home for a short rest and then came back to make dinner. By the time all the dishes were cleaned up, it would be dark outside. The moment she got home and washed up, she was exhausted to fall asleep immediately. She often slept through the night without a dream. Another same day began when she woke up.

She was skillful at cooking after many practices. However, the difference lied between cooking at home and at the village committee was that she didn’t need to serve meals on time at home while she had to be in a rush at village committee. Once in the kitchen, with apron and sleeves on, this woman instantly became the queen of the room. All the pots and pans, the gas stove and rice cooker, become her soldiers. She sketched out a battle plan in her head and then implemented it diligently: cooking rice first, cutting vegetables into cubes and soaking them in a red bucket; cutting the chicken hard and marinating the pieces in salt and pepper; then preparing the minced ginger and springing onions for cooking.

The kitchen is a spot where she forgets her pain and finds her own value. The ingredients at kitchen such as rice, soybeans, peanuts, chicken and duck are all stuffs she is quiet familiar with. She conveyed her infinite affection of ingredients when touching those stuffs with her fingertips. She loves these stuffs—this is a kind of purest human sympathy; and those ingredients also accept her love frankly. They completed their transformation, ending up being freshly cooked delicacies. She always felt life difficult when she was not at the kitchen. However, once she entered the space, she felt that it was the plants and animals at kitchen that were more difficult than herself. The moment her husband left, she thought she had completely lost the ability to love. However, when she entered the kitchen, she would automatically arrange the positions of onion, ginger, garlic, rice and chicken, which made her felt that she had her love ability back. And most importantly - there is a fire in the kitchen! The firelight made her feel so warm to be alive. This warmth prevented her thoughts from always wandering in the dark and cold area—she had struggled there for a long time. When her husband passed away, she felt like she was stuck in a swamp, struggling all the time.

During that time, her eyes became dull, her arms and legs stiffened, and her whole soul felt like it had broken away from her body and flown out of the window. However, despair, sorrow and pain did not overwhelm her, and she pulled through. As she made her way to the kitchen - a place where there was a fire - and re-entered her role as a mother, she became confident. As time went on, she experienced a joy in the midst of her busyness. In this joy, her days were more fulfilling than usual. After experiencing Huanglong's disease and the car accident, she thought she would never survive, but who would have thought that her life would turn around and become what it is today. Now she is radiant and glowing, like a flower in full bloom, and in 2018, after graduating from university, her daughter is working for a trading company in Guangzhou, earning a salary of over 5,000 a month. With the help of her daughter, she has completely paid off her external debts and has a small surplus. Everything was looking up. She waved her spatula hard, a smile on her lips.

Mochi (Rice patties) To make mochi is tricky - first wash the rice and glutinous rice, soak them in water for 10 hours or more, then fill a large bowl and steam for 15 minutes; pour the hot rice into a thick-bottomed pot and pound it hard with a rolling pin until no grains are visible (or put it in a stone trough and pound it with a stone hammer); let the pounded glutinous rice ball be rolled in a mixture of peanuts, sesame and sugar for dipping The dough is then rolled in a mixture of peanuts, sesame seeds and sugar for dipping. Making mochi is a physical task - the cooked rice must be pounded until the grains are invisible to make it sticky. The peanuts and sesame seeds must also be pounded to make them tasty. On one occasion, the 18-year-old girl was upset when Lu Yongmen saw her grandfather sneak a bowl of mochi to his cousin. When she muttered, "Mum and dad are working in the fields and haven't had any mochi yet", a dark cloud piled up on her grandfather's majestic face. A sharp scream was heard as he glared up at the girl with two sword-like glances. The gaze was so overpowerin

g that it split the girl's mind and body. "I'm mad!"

Looking at the woman who is no longer a girl, you are amazed by the cheerfulness carried in her tone: "I'm insane." There isn't a hint of sorrowful feelings. Her fate was thereafter changed by a bowl of ciba.Now, as a middle-aged woman and with a long history of illness, she fixes her attention on that bowl of ciba when she remembers the first half of her life! To Lu Yongmen, Cibai is more than just cooked rice crushed and dipped in peanuts, sesame seeds and sugar, and mochi tastes more than just fragrant, sweet, sticky and glutinous. No! Mochi is the most delicious condiment in the simple life, and its flavor is as gorgeous as a flame. When chewing Ciba, an unspeakable pleasure rises up in her heart, and that soft and sweet flavor will appear in her mind repeatedly. It's hard to imagine Lu would often recall the word "ciba" after being mentally ill at the age of 18. The complaint is that the Ciba is too delicious, and the taste is too deep in her memory. When a certain feeling exceeds a certain threshold, it is like a river overflowing over the dam, and everything becomes uncontrollable and overflowing. So, she said, "I went crazy." Their worldview got a great shock. They thought that one would go crazy rarely under certain circumstances before, for example, being hit by lightning or spring thunder. How can it be a bowl of Ciba (glutinous rice cake)? After the girl lost her mind, she would talk nonsense, and scold others with a tremulous body and heavy pants as if she was controlled by another person and full of destructive energy. She was supposed to be a strong and beautiful girl. However, for a moment, she turned out a female monster with arms and legs. All night, she stared with her sparkling eyes and couldn't fall asleep. What was she waiting for? Nobody knew. However, staring her eyes, she still waited hour by hour. Being utterly confused and unconscious, she was unable to fall asleep though she was exhausted. At that time, her lips whispered a word again and again - Ciba! Ciba! Ciba!

Joy

On that day, Lu Yongmen was chopping bamboo shoots on the mountain. Suddenly, her hand shook and the web between her thumb and index finger bled. This accident made her nervous and she felt that something bad was going to happen, and it must have something to do with money--her hand was bleeding! Sure enough, as soon as she came back home, she saw the abominable scene: Eleven ducks were placed at the door, all neat and tidy. The ducks had been killed by her dog, so the ducks’ owners were venting their grievances at her door. Her neighbors, who were unceremonious-claimed compensation of one hundred yuan for each duck. They even took photos with their phones and said that if she refused to compensate, they would ask the cadres of the village committee to do something about it. She trembled all over after hearing what they had said--it’s only 50 yuan to buy a live duck in the market! However, she had no other choice. After all, it was her dog that killed their ducks. “Compensate!” After she had taken out eleven 100-hundred RMB bills, she tied the dog up.

She was in extreme sorrow -- not only for the eleven 100 RMB bills, but also for the sarcastic remarks. Some of the neighbors were jealous when they learned that she had received the allowance, and began gossiping – “His family is rich as soon as the wind blows.” “They are not afraid of going into the hospital.” Lu Yongmen shouted, “They have no idea what it's like to be in a hospital. It's not easy.”After her family was classified as low-income family, one person can receive 251 yuan a month in terms of subsidies. They also receive 770 yuan subsidy for her and her husband’s disabilities and 3,000 yuan a year for their children's schooling. Now, her family is no longer in short of money and even has a little bit of savings. In her early 40s, she had a dark face, a bulging belly, thick legs and swollen hands. She was wearing a grey short-sleeved T-shirt, dark blue trousers and pink slippers. She had short, dense black hair and was always smiling and cheerful. Although she spoke in a resonant voice, she would pant after a few sentences, for her body was weak. However, the bigger problem for her was not physical, but spiritual.

She announced the conclusion loudly – “I’m insane!” The doctor gave a more professional diagnosis – “schizophrenia”. When the disease attacked, she would suddenly fall on the ground and become unconscious, cramping and screaming until her face was livid, her mouth foam, her pupils dilate and her body convulse. The doctor said, “The attack of this disease is irregular, but you should pay special attention to it in life, do not induce it.” If she had a cold and fever, or ate irritating and hot food, it would make the body uncomfortable and trigger an outbreak of the disease. The doctor warned her not to eat beef or mutton, or anything spicy. At the age of 20, she went to Shenzhen to work as a nanny for a family in Luohu District. At that time, she thought the medicine would put her disease under control. However, it was within a month that she ate something bad that triggered the disease again. Returning from Shenzhen, she went to the hospital again. It took more than a month to get it under control with the help of medicine.

After that, her family did not let her go out to work, but only herd the cattle instead. She got first married at 22 and gave birth to her son in the following year. But when she was 29, her husband fell into water and died at the age of just 41.

On her second marriage, she married Deng Xinjian. When the man was introduced to her, she didn't mind his deaf ears. "I chased him!" she announced cheerfully. He was a decent and well-built man of moderate size, with thick black hair, good features and light beard on his lips. He looked quite handsome in a yellow short-sleeved T-shirt and blue jeans. However, the condition of his family was ordinary - although he owned farmland, he had no savings, causing troubles for finding a wife. She did not despise him and regarded him as a soft-hearted and kind person. While she was talking to you, her husband sat next to her and looked quietly - he fully trusted her. Apparently, after remarriage, she was quite satisfied with her life. The following year, she gave birth to her daughter. By 2019, her daughter was a 12-year-old sixth-grader. She complained that her daughter was "average in reading", "who always worries about how to do her homework", and "her English is not bad, but math is not very good", and other things liked that. Now, her eldest son is in his early 20s, who installs security doors for others as his job.

In 2018, she earned more than 10,000 yuan by chopping trees and 2,700 yuan by chopping bamboo shoots. In 2019 she was well-off, but not rich. In the summer, when the family bought a thin quilt, she and her husband fought to use it - "Oops, That’s the only bed quilt !" Her husband was already deaf, while he had a traffic accident in 2014- he was hit by a motorbike and fell from midair. When he was taken to Yingde Hospital for emergency medical treatment, his entire face was distorted, his nostrils were split and his stomach was perforated. Although the perpetrator paid 4,000 yuan in compensation, they also paid a lot of medical bills by themselves . Her house has eight lots, half an hour by motorbike. The fields used to grow sweet potatoes, but now they grow rice. "I harvested the rice before the end of October," she said proudly. "I'm afraid I can't harvest it after the heavy rain." Now, she is still in poor health and often suffers from insomnia. Sometimes, she can't fall asleep from 11pm to 5am. By 5.30 am, her husband wakes her up and says she can prepare to go to the field, but she has actually only slept for half an hour. She has taken so many medicines that her hands and feet are swollen and sometimes itches all over. In addition to deafness, her husband has heart disease and stomach illness.

She enthusiastically invites you to visit her parents' house. It’s right near here. It is a whitewashed brick house with a small plaque on the steel-framed iron door which read "Harmony at home brings prosperity." Push the door and step in, you will find their living room has cement floor and the wall is limed, but the wall skin is yellowish tinged. There is a white mosquito set in the bed room and various clothes are hung from a steel pipe. The hearth in their kitchen is so great and has three fire holes. Beside the wooden table sits a gas stove. The living room are equipped with a wooden sofa, a wooden coffee table, a TV and a refrigerator. Obviously, in Lianzhang Village, this is what the most common and normal home like. She cheerfully shows you around the house where she was born. It is a mud-brick house. On either side of the closed wooden door are couplets written in black on a red background. By the door piles a neat bundle of firewood. Open the door and enter, you will be drowned in darkness, feeling everything in the room is black. She said the old house was now abandoned except for Grandma cooking here. The stove is so cramped that in the small stove there should be firewood burning. The reddish yellow glow leaks out, giving the space a single beam of light. Her 96-year-old grandmother is cooking! You are ossified into a statue.

The old granny is trying to put the enamel pot in the electric cooker. She walks tremblingly, seeming about to collapse in no minute. But she steadies herself, closes the electric cooker and switches the button to set the time smoothly. You see the rice soaked in the plastic tub, the stained towel hung on the steel string and the wall as black as daubed with ink. You may amazingly find your eyes are adjusting to the darkness, and the soy sauce bottle and vinegar bottle on the wooden cupboard, clothes hung on a wooden stick, short or long, thin and thick, all turns out to be clearer before you. The old granny has greyish hair, sparse teeth, light eyebrow and large blocks of senile plaque creeping on her forehead and cheek. She is cladded in a greyish purple blouse, deep blue trousers, and is bare-footed in a lake blue slipper. She hobbles with a cane. Having seen she had to cook on her own at such an old age, a surge of bitterness rippled in your heart. What shocks you more is that there should be a tap and running water available in such a decrepit kitchen.

The room next to the stove is where Lu Yongmen was born. Here, everything is dim except for the skylight on the bed that leaks from the roof. There was a strong musty smell in the house because no one lived there for a long time. The smell seemed to be materialized like a stiff brick that hurt your nostrils. in the hall stacked old wooden chairs, a series of spare farm tools and bulging bags. This woman was born here and grew up in the brick house next door. Having gone through so many hardships, she was still outgoing and able to burst into laughter. All of this makes you sink into mingled thoughts.

Low-rent Room Lu Qunshi, born in 1958, is a five-guarantee household of the Tiantang Village Group. Wearing a grey long-sleeved T-shirt with black dots, black trousers and black leather shoes, he has short hair with thick eyebrows and narrow eyes. His voice is a little hoarse. He has an expressive face and is always waving his hands. Compared with those who have lived in the countryside for a long time, he has seen much of the world. He's very skilled at making tea. On the glass table are three cans of Red Bull, a type of energy drink - his ashtrays.

He was the only child. His family had very few fields when he was young, bringing them merely 2,000 yuan a year. In 1999, when his father died, he gave his family’s land to relatives and became a decoration worker in Lianjiangkou town. He also helped out when the town government built an office building and he found a job as a janitor after the completion of the building in 2002. He kept doing it for 20 years. Rising from 300 yuan to 500 yuan, his salary reached 1,500 yuan currently, with meals and accommodation provided. He was among the five guaranteed households in Lianzhang village for which the government also subsidized more than 900 yuan per month, so he was living reasonably well. But talking about his life experience would turn him into an aggrieved teenager, his eyes suddenly reddened, his voice choked, and his tears almost being down. He lamented his rough fate--when he was 3 years old, his parents got divorced and his mother remarried. Three years later, he saw his mother from afar during a village event, but she did not show any intimacy toward him. After that distant gaze, his mother never appeared in his sight again. He felt that his love for his mother was like a piece of fermented dough, mutating as it continued to expand. Finally, he chosed to forget that love when it was evolving into hatred.

Therefore, his father took on the dual role of father and mother when he was growing up. “It was really hard for my father to bring me up all by himself.” They clang to each other and developed a close relationship over the decades. Hence, after father fell ill, Lu took care of him with scrupulousness. His father contracted tuberculosis and coughed day and night. The disease had been torturing him from seventy something to over eighty. For more than a decade, he looked after father by himself despite all the troubles and expenses of hospitalization and nursing. That was his dear dad! Dad was his only kin in the world who could only rely on his son. After father’s death, Lu did feel like an orphan. He burst into tears due to the loss. Yet when his mother left him at his young age, he could hardly feel being discarded .

Now he lives a regular life. He works in the town government all year round and seldom comes back to his village. He doesn’t own any house in Lianzhang village but lives in a housing which was built for poor households in the town. “It’s about thirty square meters...” he said with gesture. “It’s not a large amount of money but... the annual rent of the house is only 50 yuan.” How did he manage to rent it? In 2006, when local government planned to start the housing program for poor households, he had no hesitation in preparing 2000 yuan for rent. Later, one of the first houses was allocated to him. Although he usually lives in the janitor's room at the ground floor of the town government, he would come to his little house during festivals. After all, he is about to live there to spend his remaining years in comforting. In 2013, continual rainstorms in town led to the swelling of the Beijiang River. Water spilled out of banks and even drowned the staircases by the gate of the government. His tiny house was also not spared. After the ebb-tide, he went to scrutinize it. When he saw it was in a mess, tears welled up in his eyes. He renovated its roof and repainted all the edges of its walls damaged by water. Until finishing all these, he felt quite content.

Lu had wholesome limbs, regular features, sharp eyes and clear speech, but he never had a fere. He sighed, "I was into one who was not attracted to me." He said he used to live hard, but now his living condition is getting better day by day. When the dead of night, he would have become sentimental, so he suddenly felt lonely. Now, he wants to own a late wife and spends his remaining years in comforting with her. He doesn’t have a sense of inferiority, "I'm a man with housing which was built for poor households!”

Families with Only Daughters At dusk Lin Jindi was making preparation for dinner, but she stopped her busy work again. She was overjoyed when she saw her younger brother and her eldest son-in-law came home. Since her husband was dead, she has been falling into depression, so she talked to relatives which could relieve much sadness! Lin wore red sweater and black trousers, with short gray hair, yellow skin, coarse eyebrows, exquisite eyes and thick lips. She looked clean and neat, but there were deep wrinkles on her forehead, around her eyes and mouth. Although she made moderate speed of speech, you still didn't understand what she meant, because she couldn't speak Mandarin. Therefore, you could only communicate with her through translation. In this small village, few people couldn't speak Mandarin. Apparently, her frequency of contact with the outside world was very limited.

She was a hardworking woman as the beige floor was clean, the tea table and dinner table were covered with colorful tablecloth, food was covered with a cap and even the clutters on the stairs were piled up neatly. She was 65 years old with three daughters who had all been married.The order which she gave birth to her children was that she had her eldest daughter at 23, second at 27 and youngest at 30. With the birth of three daughters in succession, her husband's face became darker and darker since he wanted a son more.

Her husband, who was the main labor force of the family, earned money from building houses for others. In addition, she also made valuable contributions to the family, such as rearing children and doing the household chores while working on the farmland at the same time. The family lived an ordinary life as usual. However, in 2013, her husband suffered from a stroke due to high-blood pressure. After a craniotomy in the hospital, he was completely unable to take care of himself. Five years in bed cost 120,000 yuan in medical expenses, half of which was covered by public medical expenses, but the family also had to pay half. The family had already lived on the breadline. Where to raise 60,000 yuan? Having no alternative choice, she borrowed more than 10,000 yuan from her brother and more than 40,000 yuan from other relatives to scrape together enough money. Her husband, who not only can't earn money, spends lots of money on his follow-up visit to Yingde Hospital every month. It's not a small expenditure as the fare and the catheter change cost more than 100 yuan and his medical charges cost hundreds of yuan. She did the best she could to take good care of her husband, but he still died in 2016.

Lin Jindi's eldest daughter married a native of the village and had two children -- the older one was 19 years old, working in a restaurant in Guangzhou; the younger one was 11 years old and still in primary school. After her husband's stroke, her eldest daughter and son-in-law took care of him the most because they lived closer to each other. The eldest daughter's family was not rich. The eldest son-in-law said that his house was always leaking and was planning to renovate it. "I need to build a temporary shelter first, and then I will tear down the old house and rebuild it." But the price of construction materials had increased so much in recent years that even a temporary house cost 60,000 yuan. By the time the whole house was rebuilt, it would cost at least 200,000 yuan. He said with a smile, "The labor is very expensive now. Hiring a worker one day needs 300 yuan, which is too expensive. So I will learn and do it by myself."

Lin Jindi's family originally had 4 acres of land, mainly growing rice and peanuts. The income from the fields was small -- in addition to feeding the family, the money from selling peanuts had to be used to buy fertilizer and pesticides. Now, after 2 acres of land was leased, the annual rent had reached 2,000 yuan.The other 2 acres of land was expropriated with a one-time subsidy of 67,000 yuan. She got 200 yuan a month from the subsistence allowance and 140 yuan from the new rural social pension insurance. With the help of her three daughters, she could get by. But she was too enterprising to sit at home, so she always worked on construction sites, earning 120 yuan a day.

After her husband died, she felt quite lonely. She used to talk with her husband at home, but now she had no one to talk to. During the Spring Festival or festivals, her three daughters would come to visit her with sons-in-law and grandchildren and the atmosphere was especially lively. But after they were gone, it became very quiet again. She grew increasingly uncomfortable in the silence. As she grew older, her health got worse – she had already suffered from lumbar intervertebral disc and later had a surgery for kidney tuberculosis. After the surgery, the doctor told her to rest quietly to recuperate and couldn’t do heavy work. She usually watched TV while doing housework at home. She watched news broadcast, weather forecast and TV plays. She watched TV not to pay attention to the content, but hope that there were figures and sound moving in the house. She always took a rag in her hand, wiping everywhere. She could always see the dust on the cupboard, table and steps. However, the dust was wiped today and would fall down the next day.

In occasional leisure, she would think of those experiences in work-which was hard but she felt time fleeted like the vibration of a butterfly’s wings. However, time passed at a snail’s pace now. Sometimes she sat on the edge of the bed where her husband had slept and stroked the sheet full of bitterness. She did not know that the birth of her three daughters caused such a heavy burden on her husband. He had already become withdrawn but still put on a cheerful face. Finally, this man collapsed by a disease like an avalanche. Lin Jindi was the oldest of five siblings. After her husband’s death, her younger brother often came to visit her on a motorcycle and looked like her very much-their eyebrows, eyes, and corners of their mouth were nearly identical. Whereas, her brother had more tanned skin and was more conversable. When her brother talked about the days when his brother-in-law was ill, he was filled with a thousand regrets. Obviously, he had a visceral love for his eldest sister. Although they always talked about trivial matters at home now, Lin Jindi would become extremely relaxed after every conversation. She had to learn how to forget, for she could live comfortably only by doing so.

Poverty Alleviation Workshop

In the evening, Kuang Qiugui is preparing to cook dinner. However, the space in the kitchen is too small to put down the steel pot, so she moves the pot to the open space outside the house to boil water. She builds a stove with several bricks, and then puts two thick wooden sticks into it. The sides of the steel pot have been blackened by fireworks, and only the lid of the pot shines brightly in the setting sun. Kuang Qiugui's hair is very short - from the side, she looks like a little boy. She is wearing a brown T-shirt inside and a lake blue short sleeved shirt outside. She wears a pair of black cropped trousers and barefoot slippers. Her face is very delicate: light eyebrows, small eyes, thin lips; She speaks in a quiet voice, which seems gentle and moderate. In 2013, she spent 40000 yuan building this house - her own money was not enough, so she borrowed some money from her parents. The area of this house is extremely limited, which is almost like the single apartment in the city - about 30 square meters. Because her homestead is such a small area, when building a house, she had to make the house as simple as possible. When entering this room, you feel extremely crowded - there is a small kitchen at the door, but it is too narrow to hold a big pot. The slightly larger space in the house is a bedroom plus a living room, where various urea bags, rice cookers, electric fans, quilts and kettles are stacked. Various plastic bags are stacked on the sofa, the white mosquito net is hung on the bed, and various clothes are hung on the iron wire.

Because of the limited space in the house, she moved some things outdoors to do. For example, she boiled water in an open space; for example, she tied a ladder with wooden sticks so she could climb to the roof to dry vegetables. The side of the house was a barren field full of thatch, and she dug out a palm-sized vegetable patch and planted a dozen small cabbages in it. Because of the fear of the surrounding chickens, ducks, cats and dogs to destroy, she also set up a wooden stick, surrounded by a black wire mesh. She is just 54 years old, but her face is a thick cloud of sadness. She had only studied in the second grade and knew some simple Chinese characters in a cursory manner. However, for a country woman, the amount of literacy does not cause substantial harm to life. For them, the most important thing is marriage. Like other women, she was married at a young age. She had children and was divorced. The main reason her husband wanted to divorce her - she gave birth to two daughters. She didn't want to, but there was nothing she could do. After three years of separation, the court pronounced that she and her husband were officially divorced: the younger daughter lived with her father and the eldest daughter lived with her mother.

When she was divorced, she was distributed was one mu of paddy fields and three pieces of mountainous regions. Peanuts and rice were planted in the paddy fields. The harvest also could only save her from hunger. She had acute hepatitis before and had spent a lot of money on injections and pills. Because she was too weak to do heavy work in the mountains, there was no other income at all. In the villages, if a woman had a weak body when she began to grow old, and had divorced and no son to rely on, then her circumstances were as vulnerable as a straw. In fact, choosing boys over girls in the countryside was still very severe—a wife giving birth to a girl would always be disdained by her husband. At the same time,“a married daughter was like split water”. In 2013, when her eldest daughter married, she began living alone. Her daughter gave birth to a son after marriage, and her days were also living on a tight budget, and she had little time to visit her mother. Guang Qiugui was now in an awkward situation—she was only classified as a poor household, but she couldn’t be assessed by the family enjoying the minimum living guarantee. On account of the state policy, people with children couldn’t be classified as subsistence, and the government-subsidized pension (about 150 yuan a month) could only be received after the age of 60. So she was not only very lonely, but also very ascetic. In 2017, poverty alleviation cadres recommended her to work in the “poverty relief workshop” of the toy factory in the countryside. She worked more than 8 hours every day and got paid for piecework. In this way, she earned between 2200 and 2700 yuan a month. When she sat on the assembly line’s seat for the first time, she felt very uncomfortable — not only the backache, but also always felt brightly colored before her eyes and could not see anything. She bit her teeth and held on. And she was a proficient worker now. Whether it’s packing, stringing or assembling...... she could do all of those. There were 70 people in the workshop, most of whom were women in their 40s. They felt time passed very quickly when they chatted together during the break.

Jiabaoguo In 2019, when Jiabaoguo(Jaboticaba) was planted in Lu Yifang’s field, many villagers were rather worried. What was Jiabaoguo? Is it different from the planting of sugar oranges and bamboo shoots? Would it attract bees after it yields fruits, which will ruin the fruits and disappoint the farmers? However, Lu Yifang planted over 200 seedlings anyway. One seedling will cost 60 yuan. He was lack of money, but the seedling seller said, “You can pay me after you harvest the fruits.” So, he took those seedlings. “Whatever the results are going to be, I should give it a go,” he added, “I cannot dwell on the past. I must move on.”

Jiabaoguo, also known as Zhenbaoguo (golden fruit), is similar to grapes in appearance and taste, which was why it’s also called “tropical grapes”. The Jiaguobao tree grows very slowly, but it could grow up to 10 meters. After the pedals fall to the earth, baby fruits will poke their heads in groups. They turned from green to red, then to purple and finally to black-purple. What’s remarkable was that the tree could put forth flowers, yield fruits and get ripe at the same time, thus making a wonderful picture of “in the midst of flowers are fruits and in the midst of fruits are flowers.”

Plinia cauliflora, about 1 inch in diameter, grows on the trunk and main branches of the tree. With one to four small seeds in it, jaboticaba is a succulent fruit, with a round shape like grapes, having smooth touch and plump flesh that is juicy, translucent, sweet and nutritious . It can be eaten raw and can also be made into preserves, jams, fruit juices and wines. It is extremely easy to cultivate, as it is highly-resistant and it seldom suffers from pests and diseases. Moreover, pesticides are rarely used during planting. However, during its fruiting period, it is prone to gain exposure to bird damage. Clever fruit growers learned a lesson from this that they can cover the surface of the trunk with black nets or bag the fruit with a double-layered newspaper.

Lu Yifang, born in 1971, is almost 50 years old. He looks normal with medium height and a strong physique. His appearance is easy on eyes, with thick eyebrows, double eyelids, high nose, thin lips, but a slightly high hairline. He wore a red, gray and black T-shirt and a black and yellow vest with the four characters "Jiao Tong Shu Dao (Traffic Persuasion)" printed on the chest part. Like most men in the village, he got married and had children, becoming a husband and a father of two girls. However, he was more anxious than others because the burden of life on him has not been eased. He was born in a poor family with 5 children and he was the youngest one.

He dropped out of school in Junior two. At that time, as he had a foot injury and could not walk, he stayed at home to recuperate. Later, when recovering, he felt that he had missed too many classes to make up for them, so he simply left school and helped his family work in the fields instead. He can do anything— ploughing the land, cutting wood and bamboo shoots. In the 1990s, a wooden strip could sell for 2 yuan, while 50 kg of firewood could sell for 3 yuan. So he went up the hill to cut wood every day which can be sold for more than 20 yuan. At that time, these money was overwhelmingly important to his family, which could be used to buy meat, vegetables and seasonings. Also, his family had 3 acres of land planted with rice and peanuts, so there was no need to buy rice and edible vegetable oil. After 1990, there were hemp bamboo shoots on the hills, so he began to cut bamboo shoots up the hill and then pull them down to sell.

He had never had a girlfriend. As he worked in the fields, he had limited opportunities to meet young women. Seeing that he turned to 27, he was anxious about this. He and his wife met each other through a blind date and it only took five days from meeting at his wife’s home to getting a marriage certificate. His wife lived in a low bungalow in a nearby village and her parents prepared pork fried vegetables and white rice to treat him. Her family had nine children, with three men and six women. The girl who was introduced to him was the youngest one, who was tall and with a little black skin. But she was of regular features. So he accepted this marriage.

When he prepared for the wedding, he borrowed 3,000 yuan -- 1,000 yuan as a bride price and 2,000 yuan for a banquet. After getting married, he was intent on paying his debt. but the road in the village was muddy, 12 kilometers from the town, and there was no other way but to find money in the fields. Another troublesome thing happened in the wake of his worry.That is, he found something went wrong with his wife. A few months after they were married, everything was normal. But when she had been pregnant for over 3 months, she always said that she was headache and dizzy, failing to fall asleep for whole night. After receiving check in the hospital, she was diagnosed with mental problem. As soon as taking medicine, his wife would fell asleep, lasting for several hours. After giving to baby, she still suffered from headache and could only do some light jobs at home. The doctor warned that she should pay special attention to diet and don’t eat hot or spicy food- these things could bring about pathological changes.

His family only has more than 1 mu of land, where rice was planted. Except daily diet,there was little income. Now, his family's main income comes from Dendrocalamus latiflorus -- more than 10,000 yuan in 2018 and 20,000 yuan in 2019. Every day he went to the mountain to cut bamboo shoots, He worked for 4 hours without rest. It was tiring, but he knew it was the family's main source of income. The mountain road was curve and bumpy, even wetter and slippery after the rain. That time, his car turned over before he noticed- because of the fracture of cervical vertebrae, he had to stay in hospital for 3 months. The medical bills were more than 6,000 of which he paid 10%.

The main problem of his family was that there was too little labor--in fact, he was the only one who made money. His wife is not only unable to work, but also has to take medicine, which costs about 200 yuan per month; both of his daughters are in school--the elder one was studying in Zhaoqing College and the younger one was in Yingde High School. Fortunately, his children did not drop out of school because of a government subsidy of 3,000 yuan for each one per year. He knew better than anyone else that only by letting his children go to school would lift the family out of poverty in the end. His family lives in a building, where have two bedrooms, one living room and one kitchen. He didn't want a son: "Well! It's a bigger burden to have another child." He said his two daughters were very docile and would work in the fields after school. In 2019, the cadre in charge of poverty alleviation introduced him to be the "traffic counsellor" in village, which has monthly income of 3000 yuan and can alleviate his poverty. He breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that his elder daughter would soon graduate from college and that bamboo shoots would soon ripe and can be able to earn money. He had survived the most difficult days with the help of various support policies.

When a man is born into this world, his mother doesn’t discuss it with him beforehand, he just starts growing up knowing nothing. Suddenly one day a question pops out from his head----Who am I? Where did I come from? How did I become like this? Many people went through this exploring period by various kinds of methods and their lives will be frank and open like the Yellow river entering the ocean after twisting around in the land. However, for some other people, this exploration become more painful as it goes. Because they will find out that they are not so pretty, not so smart and even not so healthy compared with others. If there is a creator, isn’t he too unfair to those people? But Darwin overthrew this viewpoint. He found out that a big worm in the tree has a lot of natural enemies----at least 400 kinds of birds and 200 kinds of rabbits; However, a rabbit has 37 kinds of natural enemies including carnivores like eagles, hounds and wolves; But a cheetah or tiger has nearly no enemy. So Darwin’s conclusion is that weaker creatures have more natural enemies and get more harms.

Darwin published the “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. He discussed two issues in the book - species are variable and creatures are evolutionary, natural selection motivates evolution. In his opinion, creatures have the tendency to over-reproduce, and the living space and food are limited, so they have to "fight for survival". In the same species, those who could adapt to the environment would survive, while those who could not adopt to the environment would be eliminated. For you, there is no problem with Darwin's findings as an academic research. However, isn’t it too cruel for people to shout "survival of the fittest" in the society? For you, the help for the patient, the solicitude for the old, the care for the young, and the consideration for the pregnant should be standards in a civilized society.

Lu Yilin, a 49-year-old man, often wore a white T-shirt, black pants and a pair of liberation shoes. He was physically wiry and athletic while his appearance was unforgettable which looks older than his actual age. On his skinny face, one can see heavy eyebrows, small eyes, a high nose and wide mouth. However, his horizontal stripes on the forehead, vertical stripes in the middle and wrinkles on the cheek had shown silent anxiety and resentment again and again. Born in Yang Meikeng village, He grew up, get married and became a father just like his peers. However, a dark bank of cloud always loomed on his face. In 2001 when he was 31 years old, he got married. The next year he felt exhilarated that his lovely baby girl entered the world. But it was not long before he found a terrible thing—something unfortunately happened to his wife.

Superficially, she was quite normal, however, in some certain time, she seemed to be hit by a magic stick, and just immediately being abnormal. The woman in that state was really terrible - she could not hear any voice from the reality, just like a room suddenly cut off from water and electricity. The duration of the state is not long - about only ten minutes - but the time in that state seems to be very long. The wife was diagnosed as "brain dysplasia" after various examinations in the hospital. He wondered, "Why did she get this disease?" The doctor explained that the disease was mainly caused by impaired development of the nervous system. The answer left him totally confused. The doctor further explained that there are congenital and acquired causes of this disease. If the child's parents have a family genetic history, or have been addicted to alcohol for a long time, or have been exposed to harmful substances and radiation, or under the side effects of drugs, it may cause brain hypoplasia of the baby; If the mother suffers from diseases such as diabetes during pregnancy, premature infants suffer from asphyxia and hypoxia during birth, and the child suffers from encephalitis or hypoglycemia, it may also lead to brain hypoplasia. The doctor told him to keep an eye on his wife's health, because the attack of this disease is irregular. People with this disease have significantly lower intelligence than their peers, and poor mobility. In order to cure his wife, he has been to Yingde, Qingyuan and Guangzhou, and even to Beijing - how he longed for a miracle cure from experts. However, his wife's condition was not improved significantly, but the family has already posted out more than 100,000 yuan. Now, his wife has to go to Guangzhou every month to see a doctor, and her medical bills are around 500 yuan each time. His daughter, who is already in high school, spends 1,000 yuan a month on food and pocket money. Therefore, he is the main labour force in the family and is always racking his brains to think of ways to earn money. In the first half of 2019, he went up to the mountains to cut mahogany bamboo shoots and sold them for more than 10,000 yuan; in the second half of the year, he went out to do odd jobs and earned more than 6,000 yuan. In October, he was introduced by poverty alleviation cadres to work as a village forest ranger, with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan. The ranger works three days off and eight hours a day, mainly patrolling mountains and rivers. Although the position is only given to poor households who can work, there is a three-month probationary period. "You have to be responsible and work hard to keep signing up."

As a low-income household, his family receives a monthly allowance of 750 yuan, plus his wife's 350 yuan disability allowance, for a total of 1,100 yuan. In the past, he had lived in a mud-hut, where the corners were blackened and looked precarious due to years of disrepair. Now, he lives in a red-brick house built in 2017, with two bedrooms and a living room. There are yellow-painted wooden windows set with bright glass, the bed roofed with a white mosquito net. In the living room is a wooden bench, a slate coffee table, and a TV and dishwasher on the counter. There are also an electric kettle, electric rice cooker, induction cooker, pressure cooker, gas stove, even a townspeople's kitchen can be comparable. The house was subsidized by the government for 40,000 yuan, and he only paid a few thousand. "Without the subsidy, I would not have been able to build such a house at all!" He said frankly.

In the evening, when you arrived at the Qiuchong village, the whole village has fallen into a deep black hue. Against the boundless darkness, the light filtering from windows was as faint as distant starlight. When the car stopped, not knowing wherr to go, you could not even move one more step, for everything blurred with the overlapping shadows. You have been used to the life surrounded by street lamps without seeing such inky black. Suddenly, there was a light around you. It turned out that the poverty alleviation cadre who accompanied you turned on the flashlight. Oh, the flashlight! You haven't seen it for over 30 years! With its yellow light, you saw a meadow under your feet, in front of which were two rows of houses--the lower one on the left, and the higher one on the right. Suddenly, the poverty alleviation cadres stopped you. He hurried to the front and blandished the flashlight on the grass like a machine gun as if he was looking for something. When he came back, he said with relief that there was no dogs ahead. It turned out that all the dogs in the village are off leash. Staggering on the grass you continued your way--you cannot remember the last time you walked through the country at night. Lu Shelai's family were having dinner in the kitchen. In the dim light, you could see a small dinning table, the mud walls blackened with smoke, plastic buckets, pots, and spoons stuffed in long cabinets. an open iron pan laid on the stove and in the corner some firewood heaped up. The earthy roughness thrilled you. You seemed to have seen this scene before. You recognized that's the Potato Eaters by Van Gogh depicting such a scene. Although the highlight of the painting was the lamp hanging from the rafters, the wrinkled face and the bony figure drawn by the artist were very similar to this scene.

Mr. Lu, 67, is a wiry man with sparse gray hair, brown and blackened skin, dark eyes, deep, eviscerated cheeks, and a long-sleeved gray-blue T-shirt that is too baggy and wrinkled. On the board behind him were cigarettes, staplers, face-rubbing oil and bottles of medicine-a pulmonary heart disease. The family lived in a house across from the kitchen - bright lights, red bricks shining clearly, with bright yellow wooden tables and benches. The light seemed to have a magical effect -- all the dullness that had appeared in the kitchen was smoothed away in the brick house. She has only 1 mu of land and rents it for 1,000 yuan a year. In order to support his family, he went to the mountains to cut wood. As he was nearly seventy years old, his strength was not as strong as that of young people, and the wood he cut could only sell for about 1,000 yuan. The two sons were officially separated -- he and his wife had lived with the older one. The three of them get 750 yuan a month in subsistence allowances, plus 340 yuan for him and his wife. You saw the younger son in the family kitchen: a big man with a loud voice. He, who has a family and a son, used to drive a mud truck in Guangzhou. "I earn 5,000 yuan a month, but it is very hard." This man was like a dark tower, exuding a vital power that filled the space with a sense of richness and fullness. He was unhappy with his situation, but there was nothing better to do. In a few days, he would work 100 kilometers away to "earn some money hard to get." Watching his parents grow old and considering his child needed nurturing, he felt the burden on his shoulders was not light. The city was like a black hole, sucking up all the young people in the countryside. Far from the past, when three generations of grandparents worked in the fields simultaneously, the countryside now looks bleak and desolate, for many people in the village are forced to leave for work, such as Lu's younger son. In fact, if there are more opportunities for development in the countryside, they will prefer to stay in their hometown.

When you leave this house, you are not so afraid of the darkness around you-God says there is light, and there is light. Although the light of the flashlight is weak, it has been navigating warmly ahead. You hear a long sigh-a sigh blown by the wind.Hit your eardrums — you're startled. It turns out that it is your own sigh. The surroundings are extremely quiet, the imaginary dog has never appeared, the grass under his feet has been rising and falling, and the night is like a huge and dark ocean.Long after you leave the village, you can't forget the scene when you step into the family dinner. It's a moment that startles you — the same people whose faces warm and warm again as they lead you to the brightly lit red-brick house, in the dark, dark kitchen, where you see a raw life that is hard to analyze and hard to explain. How important the light is-where there is light, there is hope. Though 55 years old, Lu Yimen is a bashful man. Despite a robust figure, he is plagued with conspicuous defects on his face——his left eye is bigger than the right one that is invisible. He says his mother has two children. He suffers from some disabilities, but his little brother is healthy and married. A little bit fat and white-haired, his 75-year-old mother is in a purple long-sleeved shirt and black trousers, wearing red slippers without socks. She moves quickly, cleaning up the dishes and chopsticks on the table before pouring the water in the plastic basin into the pressure cooker. He lives in a broad brick house with his mother and brother. The living room is laid with pale-yellow tiles in which there is an ultra-thin television on the TV cabinet, a ginger wooden sofa, desks, and chairs. Everything is in an appropriate way, be it floor or furniture. At the end of the house sits his room, where turmeric and bright yellow curtains hang on the window, a summer sleeping mat covers the wooden bed, and a desktop electric fan and torch lay on the wooden desk. He invites you to sit on the wooden stool beside the end table, where he makes and pours tea deftly and then procures you a cup of tea passionately. Not only is he thoughtful and attentive, but he is adept and humorous in speech. Now, he has monthly subsistence allowance of 510 yuan and a disability allowance of 200 yuan, and his mother gets a pension of 150 yuan every month, so their life can go on. He has 3 acres of land, which was used to grow rice and peanuts. Now they rent it out, with a rent of 3,000 yuan a year. He has been single all the time. "I can't find a wife," he said with a sigh. "I dare not go on blind dates. "A few days after your interview in Lianzhang Village, when you waited for a bus next to the bus station in Lianjiangkou Town, I came across him once again. Most of the old men who were waiting for the bus wore yellow rubber shoes or a pair of slippers barefoot; the old women tied their gray hair in pink hair loops and wore water shoes on their feet; the young women had dyed yellow hair and wore slope-heeled leather shoes. People carried vegetable oil and rice, buckets of vegetable and rice cookers in plastic bags. You saw Lu Yimen in this crowd because his appearance was so special! When you waved to him, you realized that his first reaction was to dodge, but there was nowhere to hide, so he had to nodded sheepishly. He asked you, "Are you going back?" Seeing you nod, he opened the freezer, took out a bottle of mineral water and put it into your hand, and said solemnly: "It's too far. Drink water!" A warm current surged in your heart, but you still pushed the bottle away: "No need, thank you, thank you." When he insisted that you take it, you took out the water glass in your bag: "Look, I brought water." With a slight regret, he put the mineral water back in the freezer. After saying "goodbye" to you, he invited you to come back to the village again and waved his arm at you. When you sit in the swaying bus, you felt both strange warmth and a strange sadness. All these things that Lu Yimen did showed that he is a man with keen observation, a kind heart and cultivation. In fact, he is quite stout and has sound limbs---except for the eyes. It's hard to imagine the pain he would feel when he looked in the mirror for the first time as a child. He would have fought to shatter the mirror and then thrown himself on the bed and lay for a long time unable to get up.

You speculate that he must have wondered who was responsible for his fate of being instantly excluded to the bottom of the biological chain just because of his unusual look and being alone for his lifetime? From this perspective, Darwin is cruel. If people believe that everything in the world is created by the Creator, then some people can blame the Creator for his unfairness to themselves; if there is no Creator at all, then on the process of evolution, you have to face this cruel question - why are you the one who is reduced to be a defective product? You speculate that in despair, Lu Yimen must have shed big teardrops. Later, however, he got out of bed and started to eat and walk around. When he saw others in the village, he had a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. At that time, he no longer cared about the hint of mockery in people's eyes. That intense feeling of pain would grow dull as time went by - he had gradually adapted to others, and others had gradually adapted to him. If this was his destiny, he must accept it frankly. He thought that the Creator probably existed – he had many children, some of whom were spoiled and pampered since birth; while he was the silent, timid, unappreciated one. However, since people have come into the world, each one has the right to smile. Part 19 At noon, Deng Chengxian is sleeping. She is suddenly startled awake by the sound of neighbors dragging bamboo around behind her house. What others might hear as "shua shua shua" is amplified through her eardrums and heart into the "crackle" of firecrackers bursting. The sound is so violent and powerful that it makes her tremble in her bed and feel like the end of the world is coming. The only thing in the world this woman is afraid of is sound. Any sound makes her uncomfortable -- the sound of a man putting a cup on the table in a TV show, the sound of a nurse putting an official seal on a piece of paper in a hospital, the sound of a gurgling in her throat when she swallows. It makes her heart beat faster and the hairs stand on end. It scares her and makes her wiggle.

Deng Chengxian wore a ginger long-sleeved T-shirt, black pants, barefoot with a pair of slippers, and a ponytail. Her new home was built opposite the old one — the brick house has a whitewashed exterior wall, moisture-proof bricks on the floor, and wooden sofas and coffee tables in the living room. You'll also see rice cookers, kettles, televisions, and sterilization cabinets. It can be said: this home has all the electrical appliances. Sunlight came in through the open doors and windows, making the whole room look very bright – the brightest you've ever seen in the village! You sigh unconsciously: "The lighting in your house is so good." But the hostess immediately said: "It's sunnier in summer." She speaks very standard Mandarin and has excellent expression skills. She always cooperates with her eyes and gestures when she talks, and the whole person seems vivid.

Her family has 3 mu（Mu is a unit of land area under the Chinese municipal system. Fifteen mu equals to one hectare.） of land, where they grow rice. When she was young, just like other women, she “ran all over the hills and did as much work as she could without feeling tired.” But after she was 46, she found that her body seemed to be not as flexible and vibrant as before. She was always in a state of tension and anxiety. She always felt that her heart beated violently, her body was like a balloon which was about to burst, and that there was a blasting fuse over her head. What’s worse, she was tortured so badly by a weird sound. Sometimes, she could hear a loud noise outside while she was working at home, which sounds like music coming from a boom box. However, when she went out of the door, she could hear nothing. But when she returned to her room, she heard that loud sound again. Her husband was always coughing. And the more he coughed, the worse it got. When he went to the hospital for a checkup, it turned out to be lung cancer. During the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, she took her husband everywhere to see doctors. They spent more than 60,000 yuan on medical bills -- once, they spent 20,000 yuan for a single visit to a hospital in Foshan(a city of Guangdong Province in China). She felt so miserable seeing her husband get weaker and weaker day after day, but there was nothing she could do. In October 2010, her husband passed away in the torture of his illness.

She said that it was from then on when she felt very uncomfortable physically. The initial symptom was the acceleration of heartbeat, which could not be controlled at all. She sighed, "I worked very hard before. After finishing the work in the field, I would continue to work in the mountain. Though running all over the mountain, I didn't feel tired." Once, she carried bamboo shoots back to the village. When she was about to cross the river, the water suddenly rose and flooded up to her waist, almost washing her away. But she still got up with the bamboo shoots. Previously, she was able to shoulder 120 jin（A unit of weight used in China. One jin is equal to 500 grams） bamboo shoots. But now, she could even not carry 90 jin bamboo shoots. "The legs can't bear that weight."

The age of 46 is a watershed of her life. She remembered very clearly, "It was from that year on when I started going to hospital." She felt that her body condition became worse and worse. She always sweated——sweating all over her body, especially in her chest sockets. "Well, taking a nap, I would wake up soaked with sweat, which could make half of my bed board wet!"; She always felt pain everywhere ——sometimes her yaoyan（EX-B7, an acupuncture point located at the bottom of the middle part of the waist）on both sides hurt so much that she couldn't stand up straight; Sometimes there was a tingling feeling in her chest, like a sword passing through; She could also felt that the blood flowing from her heart to her arms was blocked. She described the changing of the inner part of her heart as " darkening slowly like a light bulb, setting bit by bit like a sun". Then she stared straightly at you with widened eyes, "The inside of my heart is black and dark!" However, at other times, the heart seemed to be suddenly electrified, and the heat flow surged out of it, right down to her toes, making her kneel down uncontrollably. Sometimes,she would suddenly be awakened around three or four o'clock at midnight, and found that she had lost sensation in her lower right leg. So, she would hold her leg, threw it hard to the ground, and then slapped on the leg continuously with her hands. And finally, her sensation in the leg could recover slowly.

There was no bus in the village at that time, so she asked relatives to drive her to the Yingde People's Hospital. As soon as she saw the doctor, before she opened her mouth to say about her condition, tears could not help but fall. Though with sound hands and feet, she was living a really hard life. The cardiovascular doctor asked her - "Is your life too stressful?" - but she shook her head. After various examinations, the doctor told her that she had a "cardiac neurosis" and that she was also suffering from hypothyroidism, menopausal syndrome and depression. On the advice of her doctor, she began her hospitalisation. However, her life in hospital was "just horrible" - the sound of a man with a broken head gasping for breath made her miserable; the sound of a nurse pushing a cart running and tapping on the floor made her miserable; the moaning of a patient pulling hair out of the throat made her miserable; and the sound of someone who could not sleep in the mid-night scratching the nails against the wall also made her miserable. So, she strongly requested to be discharged and go home!

She took the medicine and relaxed as what her doctor told her, but her condition got worse and worse. For example, when she heard that she would go out of the village by car the next day, her heart began to beat faster with anxiety. When she was sitting in the car, she still could not calm dowm with her heart beating hardly than before. For example, sometimes when she lay down to sleep, she always felt that a pair of big hands are pressing on her neck, so that she could not move. In the end, she had to struggle hard to wake herself from the dream. She suffered from insomnia. And sometimes she tried hard to fall asleep, but then she was awakened. Such experiences made her condition become worse. When she went to the hospital again, she chose the psychology department to examine. The psychologist asked her about her family in great detail. She confessed that she has 3 children - the eldest daughter is 28 years old and gets married; the younger daughter is 26 years old and has been working outside for 10 years; her son, 25, majors in accounting at a university in Guangzhou and is now looking for a job. Her household is supported by the subsistence allowance of 753 yuan per month. The doctor advised her to relax herself by going out and around and trying to do more work, so that she could adjust herself slowly. The sleeping pills prescribed to her by the doctor were imported, and one tablet cost 50 yuan. "It's very weird! I fell asleep after taking that medicine!"

When sleep improved, another condition flared up -- hypothyroidism. The disease was characterized by dizziness, headaches, ringing in the ears and poor memory. So she added levothyroxine sodium tablets to the pile of pills. She often forgot to turn on the electricity when cooked in a rice cooker at home -- only to find that uncooked rice with water at dinner time. She was very afraid of open flames -- there was a gas stove at home, but she only used it once or twice, because she always forgot how to light it; but when she cooked the soup on the induction stove, she would let it boil because sometimes intoxicated. She developed a deep fear for her body, so she became very dependent on the pills. When she saw a TV advertisement about a good medicine in Beijing, she believed it. The medicine cost 1300 RMB a box, but she bought 30,000 RMB altogether. When her relatives heard about it, they stopped her immediately: "You've been cheated! Stop buying any more!" She rummaged through the cupboard and found a small book with the address "Chaoyang District, Beijing". She stared at you suspiciously: "Beijing couldn’t sell fake goods." "But I really feel better after taking them!"

Deng Chengxian took you to her land that she plant peanut. A land that little larger than the round table along the roadside. However, it did not prevent her from staring at it with motherly love. The field was irregular in shape, with three rows of peanut seedlings, less than ten meters long and scattered in different positions. The leaves of those plants were yellowed and out of spirit, as if they were not quite as energetic as weeds. Deng Chengxian long-winded: "Peanuts, like people, start out green and then turn yellow. When they're almost ripe, they will develop dark spots like age spots." She seemed to dislike them: "Look, they haven't been collected yet!" She gathered up a handful of peanut stalks and with one forceful pull out the roots. There was a lot of mud stuck to the little oval objects, like mucus a newborn baby. As she gazed down at the little ones, her eyes, brow and mouth grinned. She shook the roots and brushed the dirt gently for fear of dropping a peanut.

The house she living in now was built in 2017 which cost 120,000 yuan. "Without the 40,000 yuan from government subsidy, the house would not have been built at all." During the Spring Festival, poverty alleviation officials will bring a big red envelope containing 300 yuan. The kitchen of the old house is on the other side of the new one,with a hole on the roof tiles and the exterior walls are dark and green. Inside, it's like entering into a cave: from the walls to the roof, it's all black. The kitchen is filled with a large pile of bamboo baskets and a pile of firewood, as well as various kinds of pots, pans, washbasins, and buckets. She has no regrets about building a new house, even though she borrowed 30,000 yuan to build it and 26,000 yuan to buy the doors, windows, and rebar. Obviously, the new house is different after all -- it's brighter, drier, more hygienic, and more convenient! She often took baskets to the roof to dry vegetables, imagining that she could save enough money to add another floor. Encouraged by poverty alleviation officials, she plans to plant vegetables and watermelon bars in the field, which she can sell to earn more money. Now, her younger daughter and son both work outside of the home, earning about 50,000 yuan a year. She took you with her to the roof. From this vantage point, she could look around the house and see that life was getting better and better. Part 20

The carpenter. From the Zhongxin village to the Yangmeikeng village, not only should people pass a winding mountain road, but also cross a narrow bridge over a river. The bridge seems to just for a car passing——a slight turn on the steering wheel by the driver would lead the car to fall into the river immediately. After crossing the bridge, the driver zigzags several times, and finally stops the car in front of a brick house. It is Lu Yiluo’s house surrounded by a stream separated by cement slabs in the front it. A dozen of hens strolls over with chirps, and the T-shirts and towels hangs on the wires.Entering into the room equipped with furniture like a television, refrigerator, disinfection cabinet, and teakettle, you would see a neat cement floor, wooden sofa and a wooden square table. In 1961, he was born with a healthy body. At the age of 2, he was struck by poliomyelitis. Now, he is sitting before you, dressed in a dark blue long-sleeved shirt, blue trousers, and a pair of black leather sandals.

He had pretty regular features—embracing thick eyebrows, deep eyes, strong nose and thick lips. His skin was a little turmeric instead of swarthy. In spite of some thin wrinkles on his forehead and corners of his eyes, his face showed that he was in the middle age. He had a low voice and didn’t speak very fast. However, it was obvious that he was a man of quick mind, whose eyes were sharp and alert. He raised his fingers and said with upset, "It annoys me that I am not able to do anything because of the wounded hand." He was the person who wasn’t willing to have a rest even for one day, because in his view, working wasn’t simply for earning money, but was condensed with all the meaning of his life.

When he walked with a stick, he tightly grasped the head of it with his left hand and held the middle with the right. He attached all his weight to the stick, which seemed like his body was hung on that wooden stick. In this way, he took a hard step forward and then another step, but the speed wasn’t slow at all, which was almost as same as the speed of a normal people. His spine bulged outward and formed a big bag, the one making his upper body unable to stand upright. His legs were also weaker than ordinary level, so his body seemed very short.

He regretted that he had only been in primary school for two years, because it usually took more than one hour on the mountain roads to school. In the morning, he had to take his lunch with him for he couldn’t go home until evening. Sunny days would be fine when he walked on the mountain paths, but it would be extremely hard when it was rainy. He was very clever to learn anything new, but he still chose to give up school later. When Lu was 20, it hit him to be a carpenter instead of doing nothing but wasting all his life. However, neither could he climb mountains to chop wood or bamboo like others, nor plant rice or peanut in the two mus of land of his family. Therefore, leaving the land to his brother, Lu began to think about what he could do for a living. Choices for him were very limited because of his disabled legs. After a few days of consideration, he decided to learn to be a carpenter.

However, mastering wood working was not easy—Lu could not find a master to teach him because his family lived in the distant mountains and he couldn’t afford the payment. So he bought raw materials, studied different sizes, and worked on carpentry himself. Initially, Lu tried to do some simple products. Later, he began to focus on more complicated items. In this way, he had slowly fumbled for more than a decade before he felt like a skilled hand. There was a square table in his house, seemingly dignified and heavy—the brown table top was extremely flat, four table legs were unusually stable, what’s more, the top and legs were finely articulated together. Yet this table was significantly different from the ordinary table— the table legs were visibly shorter. Apparently, it was custom-made for himself; it was not only an object of the owner, but also one of his exhibitions.

Speaking of what he was best at, he was a little proud— “wooden tables, of course!” “But...” his voice lowered down, “Nowadays, many people buy tables in the market…” He was also good at making round wooden barrels—during the process of making peanut oil, people have to steam the peanuts in a wooden barrel first, and then fry them in a big pot before pressing the oil. You had seen the kind of large barrels in the oil press in Lianjiangkou Town—they were more than a meter high, and bulky around the waist, though only sold for 100 yuan each, they still didn’t sell very well. He opened the side room's door—this was his workshop. A yellow-green painted machine appeared in front of us—it was a desktop flat-pressing planer multi-purpose woodworking machine, model MLQ342. This machine was brand new; the poverty alleviation officers begged alms for him through all kinds of approaches. The round sticks piled up in the room needed to be cut into wooden boards by this machine so that he could make various boxes or barrels. He stroked the machine with his fingers, and a loving smile came out of his eyes. He kept exclaiming, “This is different from the old one! This one has many more functions!” As he sat down at the machine and began to work, his whole being looked radiant, like an actor on stage under the chasing spotlight—his shoulders, arms, hands all matched his gaze, letting the boards to be pricked and chopped. Everything seemed so tact, deft and swift. In the presence of this machine, he gained a kind of dignity.

Now he mainly made beehives. Due to his good reputation, no matter the beekeepers in Lianzhang Village or around the village would come to him to customize beehives——and Lu Feiting’s beehive was made by him! A beehive sold for 60 or 70 yuan, which can net about 30 yuan after cost and labor. He could make two or three a day and earn 60 to 100 yuan when in high efficiency. The size of each beehive is different, it depended on the rule of beekeepers. Every year there were about 50 people came to him for beehives, and these people could bring him more than 10,000 yuan income. Making a beehive seems easy but in reality is quite complicated. He picked up a wooden frame, waving it and saying, “It is not easy to make a high-quality beehive.” Cedar was necessary for making beehives instead of mixed wood as cedar was relatively light to carry; in the hive, four of five clapboards with gauze were also needed.

He was not married, “I dare not call a matchmaker, how can I do that?” He said with a sigh. He has a monthly low income benefit of 460 yuan and a disability benefit of 150 yuan. However, he did not want to be idle at all. He was willing to work, even if it is hard and tired. Because “there is income only when you work, not when you don’t.” Sometimes he hurt his finger while working, the doctor told him to rest, but he was walking around the room, and felt uncomfortable. Suddenly, a burly man walked in the door and said he had come to deliver the wood. It turned out that the village’s poverty alleviation cadres had contacted a nearby farm and presented him with 5 cubic meters of cedar wood. He immediately walked towards the outside with his crutches. Although he had to work very hard at every step, he still walked so fast, so anxious, he set his heart on seeing the wood look like. He passed the pile of chattering hens, the house covered with black tiles, and the red banner with “I love you China”, and finally, he came to the bend in the road. His head was only a little higher than the cane when he stopped with his body leaning on it.

Of course! The hopper of the walking tractor was full of thick and thin round wooden sticks. So he instructed the driver to reverse the car into an open space. His voice rose a little: "Down, down, down again! All right, all right." The driver came down from the tractor and pulled out the two upright sticks on the hopper of the tractor, then the sticks scattered. The driver returned to the cab and raised the front end of the truck hopper to form a 40-degree angle so that the pile of sticks could slowly roll down. When the driver pulled the tractor forward slightly, a lot of brown and yellow logs were left on the gray-green grassland. You see the light in the carpenter's eyes. He seemed to have seen these woods become pieces of boards. Under his command, the woods have become various objects through splicing and inlaying. Those who use those objects know that they are made by Lu Yiluo.

He never felt ill-fated and never yet complained about his parents. He could understand deeply the hardships and difficulties of his parents— “My parents didn’t desert me even in that conditions. I’m really grateful to them.” He said he had to walk four hours’ mountain road to the town from the village when he was young. So when he got ill, the hateful mountain road really influenced his treatment. However, he was reassured soon: “Now is good! It only takes me 20 minutes to the town!” On the surface, he was a very poor person—so short and so hard for every step. Nevertheless, you would find him an extremely resilient man after you got along with him. He was originally a “registered poor person without ability to work”. But now, he not only makes himself useful through labour but is also filled with understanding and sympathy for others. The brilliance of human nature glistering from the hardship of his life is so splendid. Part 21

People in the city often divide honey into the winter honey and the spring honey, but Lu Fei Ting, a beekeeper, always calls them the winter sugar and the spring sugar. He always says, "Alas, the winter sugar is expensive and the spring sugar is cheap."

You will then find out that the word "sugar" means both honey and pollen to him. Furthermore, you will also find out that "sugar" is not only his obsession, but also his hope.

As you walk through the houses built with yellow mud and black tiles in the village, you may be amazed at how they can remain standing up like old men in their nineties. However, the walls of the houses are cracked, like the Gobi Desert in a long drought, and the windows are like deep black holes. The ruined houses are rickety and no longer fit for habitation. If you poke your head in, you'll find them long empty.

In contrast, the red brick building in which Lu Fei Ting lives looks particularly imposing; it is not only high but its scale is also large. There is also a banner hanging on the balcony on the first floor - "Top pure rice wine, freshly steamed and ready to buy, tasty and not causing headaches, feel free to taste". As you enter the living room, you will notice that the red brick walls of the house are painted with a white plaster, imparting it with post-modern 'industrial' elements.

The living room is very spacious with jars of old wine stacked up, some are sealed with red cloth, some are covered with plastic, and some are pressed with large baskets. Lu Feiting, however, is not the owner of the wine - he keeps these wines for his relatives - his main business is beekeeping.

Lu Feiting is not very tall—about 1.6 metres tall, and he is very thin but strong. He always dresses neatly and his clothes are always clean. He has short grey hair and wears a light grey long-sleeved shirt with no wrinkles and a pair of dark grey trousers. His has a small face with delicate features on it. Looking at his face closely, we can surmise that he was once a clean-cut young man, yet time flies and he is now an old man. Although he now lives alone, it is clear that he is a man of tidiness. In his house, the wooden sofa is covered with felt, while the coffee table is cleaned and his cigarettes and tea are placed in an orderly manner. He lit a cigarette and smiled lightly at us, politely and decently. He had a sense of openness and calmness that shows us he had seen the world. He was grateful that his new brick house had been built in the winter of 2016 - he said that he had spent $50,000 on it and if it isn’t for the government grant of $34,000, he would still be living in the old, dilapidated house.

It can be noticed that Lu Feiting has a pair of scrawny and black-skinned hands with blue veins on them, and it seems that he wears a pair of black glove. He is 72 years old, but you may regard him as 92 years old after seeing his hands. The pair of hands absorbs the endless tiredness of life and it has a much older look than the man’s face. He looks thin in that shirt. He has that placid smile and never talk fast. He spends his whole life at this pace. He has 266.68 square meters of rice paddy, which basically can meet his own food needs. As a person who is provided with food, clothing, healthcare, shelter and funeral, with monthly subsidies of 700 yuan from the government and 170 yuan from the new agriculture insurance, he has enough to live his life. But he insists to keep bees. Retirement? No, he does not intend to retire which requires him to live on the subsidy and do not work. He loves keeping bees and he is very good at it. Then why did he stop? Because for him the joy of keeping bees is not only the money. Keeping bees is the most important thing in his life and the best thing he can do. So he keeps working while he is still capable. Now, as technology advances, people can use their cell phones to purchase all kinds of products, which makes him feel like he can’t keep up with the times. But no matter how times change, queen bees remain to be queen bees, and worker bees remain to be worker bees.

When he was young, he did quite a few jobs—he once worked in a forestry center, a tea factory and even a breeding farm. But finally, he only left one option in his career planning—beekeeping. He started his beekeeper life at home after customizing a batch of beehives from Lu Yiluo, a carpenter. Surprisingly, he spent half of his life on it. Now, his garden is home to more than 20 beehives. He is proud to say, “ I owned over 60 beehives at most.” These beehives bring him over 20,000 yuan per year. Although his life seemed tedious, especially he only did one thing within 30 years in the latter part of his life, he had great passion for this job, that is, beekeeping. To brew quality lychee honey, he brought beehives to Conghua where lychee is abundant. There was no direct road for buses to shuttle between his village and this place, which was far from his home, so he asked around and wanted to carpool with others. A round trip costed 600 yuan. After setting up a tent under the lychee trees in the orchard, he spent a whole month with his bees together. Owners of those lychee trees smiled to him when seeing him, “ Oh, I’m so glad you are here.” The reason behind it was that if “sugar” or pollen was too much when lychee trees bloomed, flowers would die. Sugar produced in Winter should be picked between December and January with a small quantity, so one jin of this valuable sugar can cost 50 yuan or so. Sugar produced in Spring should be picked in April each year, with the price of 15 yuan per jin, and even 10 yuan or 8 yuan when the market was sluggish.

He would keep a little “sugar” for himself, which was in a plastic bottle of Sprite. When he unscrewed the cap, the golden flowing liquid slowly blended with the black tea, making the latter sweet and mellow. At that moment, he smacked his lips, 100 percent satisfied inside. He stared at you, “Drink it! Drink it!” So, you picked up the plastic cup. The honey -- or “sugar” – which was made by him was so mild that the sweetness could only be tasted on the tip of the tongue, which loomed like a glimmer of light outside a hole. When guests came to buy his “candy”, he never raised the price at random -- his “candy” was his daughters, so he hoped “the girls” would marry into good families. Seeing a female customer, he looked her up and down suspiciously, and then told her in a low voice, “You can't drink it if you're pregnant.” The bees he was keeping were taken from the mountain hive by hive. “If you want to keep bees, you need to understand their habits. Otherwise, ‘they will flee en masse.’ ” He smirked again when he saw you wide-eyed. He said his experience was built up little by little. He found that bees are the opposite of most animals that hibernate -- they rest during the summer. “Don't move. If you do, they will run away.” he said in an increasingly gentle voice, “Bees own a lifespan of mere 40 days!” He could tell the queen bee at a glance -- “her body was a little black”. When a swarm of bees meets another swarm, one of the queens is doomed to be killed.

Some wooden boxes were covered with Styrofoam, some with red bricks, and some with towels -- was it because bees didn't like bright light? As he opened the hives, his rough swarthy hands seemed full of tender. He carefully pulled out a partition to show you -- the hives consisted of rows of tiny holes with round yellow apertures, but all covered with bees. The bees were yellow and black, one on top of the other, gently wriggling their whole bodies, humming in a low voice. You might reckon that it was a terrifying sight -- you finally knew what trypophobia sufferers were afraid of. It was like you being on a 50-story building overlooking an intersection, where there was a dense wriggling crowd. You always couldn’t help but wanted to jump over the railing. The other scene was more surprising – when Lu Feiting gazed down at the wriggling little ones, holding the partition with both hands, a wide smile spread across his thin face. He was like a father holding his firstborn and his eyes were full of love. Needless to say, this love could be seen at only one glance. Following his gaze, you finally discovered another world -- the bees were squeezed together, but through the cracks, you could see a bright world of gold below.

All of bees put their heads to those holes and keep working with mouths and feet. Under the sunshine, their wings look like miniature raincoats, warping their black-and-yellow body. Their heads are black, as if wearing a small helmet which is special-made and matches with those yellow holes on the bottom. Hence, a yellow hole buries a black helmet. Those holes are one next to another, connecting densely and covering a large space. If some of them want to fly out, which is possible—for there is a hole on the bottom of each wooden box, though blocked by a piece of wire, bees are able to fly out. Three or four of them buzz and fly around the smaller hole, but soon they get into it again. You wonder why they go back again, while Lu Feiting is calm for that. He explains that “That is their home! They need to go home!” When elders say the word- “home”, we must show our respect. Suddenly, you feel shame for your ignorance. Alas! You know nothing about the bees, let alone the feeling of bees to its home. In your knowledge spectrum, bee’s home is never considered as an important thing. After he erected the plank, a miracle happened -- all the bees clung tightly to the nest without changing their ranks at all. And even more shockingly-- when he puts the plank back in the hive, you can see three or four more similar partitions inside, each with a swarm of bees clinging to its front and back. One furry layer is followed by another, and the layers are connected. At last, when he had stuck the plank firmly against the box, the bees disappeared into the dark, as if hiding into the night. He gently covered the top of the box with plastic film, then taking a frame of muslin and fastened it to the plastic sheet and covering it with wood and a towel. While he was raising bees, he grew to rediscover himself. At first, he saw himself as a small and weak man without much money, as common as the leaves on mountain roada. Later, he found that he could interact with bees -- he could read the minds of the little bees better than anyone else. If they want to switch from resting state to active state, all they have to do is flaping their wings, then he could receive their message. He was proud of it -- he felt that those bees were so obedient to him, and he became their ruler.

He stared at the dead queen bee for a long time. After a bloody struggle, the soul of the queen bee had left its flesh. That “winged little plane” was unable to flying any more, turning into a warmless model. Others could not see the soul of the queen bee, but he could. He knew that the little shadow kept swirling around his physical body and eventually, the shadow flew away like a mist. As the ruler of the bees, he was powerless to stop the battle for the queen bee. Although he had known that small, crowded world very well, at times he still felt bewildered and despondent. He experienced tenacity and sadness from that world. It's not that he hadn't thought about getting a wife after all these years of living alone, but it was too hard for him, even impossible to get one. He said he was so ugly and poor that no one wanted to marry him. When he was young, his family was too poor. There were five siblings in his family, and he was the fourth child. When eating, a table crowded with more than a dozen people, at most once a month can only eat meat. He said that he was so poor, feeling too inferior that he even didn't dare to look at women at all. Whenever a woman looked at him, he felt like he's wearing an inappropriate dress and couldn't breathe. He was so flustered that scared away the women who looked at him.

When he was 40 years old, a woman from out of town came. After a short relationship, the woman left the village in the end. By the age of 50, he gradually did not want to get married. The village of Lianzhang under the sunset has a fairy-tale scenery - the rice fields turn from golden yellow to rusty red, the turquoise fava leaves turn from vivid green to dark green, and the red brick houses and its shadows gradually melt into one. The fresh air is like a piece of gauze, mixed with bird calls amidst the barking of dogs. Lu Feiting walked straight by the ridge where he was born and where he had lived all his life. He was so ordinary and simple, and so sincere and plain. He has dedicated his life to the land, and at the same time, he has gained a share of "sugar" that belongs to him.

Tianhe Passenger Station It only took more than an hour for the bus to arrive at Guangzhou Tianhe Passenger Station from Lianjiangkou Town. From 7 a.m. to 6:40 p.m., there is a shuttle bus from the town to Guangzhou every two hours. The fare is 50 yuan. The bus driver took the steering wheel and drove the bus quickly, like an ice skater. The bus overtook constantly. In the twinkling of an eye, it had left the big trucks and cars far away.

When you got off the bus, you felt dizzy -- the station is not only tall and full of people, but also full of noise, which made you extremely uncomfortable. When you went to the nearby Tianhe Xintiandi, you found that many of the bunks inside are empty. At the cinema on the top of the building, the ticket price of <Better Days> was 70 yuan.

You sat downstairs in the McDonald's and noticed the young people around you, mostly wearing white T-shirts, black ankle pants and white sneakers. Whether they were eating fried chicken legs, drinking cola, or tasting McFlurry, they were all eating and checking their mobile phones. Everyone was not concentrating on eating, but on their phones. There seemed to be a big whirlpool in the mobile phone, which could attract all eyes to its center.

You could see the girls passing through the window when you sat by the window. When you saw a white gauze skirt floating past, you thought that this style of skirt had never been seen in Lianzhang Village.

You know, in fact, that the Tianhe Bus Station looks very old - the grey facade dangles with brown rain streaks, the blue canvas on the awning is sunburnt, and the cinema in the mall and the fried chicken in the fast food restaurant are just the common things of city life. But when you imagine yourself as a young person who has just left Lianzhang village - the daughter of Deng Chunhuo, for example, or the granddaughter of Lin Jindi - would they not find everything in front of them magical? Wouldn't they find the music singing in their ears so beautiful, the colours waving in front of them so glorious, the rivers of people undulating so voluminous? This is the city. It's full of young people walking around, full of job opportunities, full of surprises and wonders.

However, Lianzhang Village is still the same, a small village deep in the mountains. It's one of the quietest places in the world. It is made up of relatives, mountains, trees, streams, moonlight and butterflies. In the village, each thing is deeply grateful to the other, because no one can exist alone. Connected with each other, the world is becoming more rounded and more beautiful. Part 22

Chapter 2 - Days and Nights in the Village of Xie Zhou Strange! It was pouring! It was the night on June 12, 2019. It was weird as hell - the rain splashing down from air that turned into little clusters of arrows struck the vast fields, the huddled rooftops, and a winding road. The rain, like the yellow river, poured down with impunity, like there were no gates to stop it. The windscreen wipers swung swiftly, one moment to the left, the next to the right, but the road ahead remained hazy and indistinct. The rain had turned the floating soil into mud, melting it into a thin, sticky and slippery porridge that clung to the wheels. The man in the car, Qi Yunliang, was a middle-aged man of medium height, with a pretty face. Now his body was burning, his legs were numb, and his eyes were as wide as copper bells and his heart was hanging in his throat. Alas! He was running late at night on a rural road in northern Guangdong, in a rainstorm with no one and nowhere to turn for help and in the dark night unable to find a smooth road. His sense of time and space is completely disrupted, which is a far cry from his previous regular life routine. At that time, he was sitting at his desk in a white coat, reaching out to take a pulse while carefully observing the patient's face and then asking about his condition in a pleasant manner. It was as if he was a leading man in a TV drama, always able to get patients to open up and reveal their hearts.

Why would he be trapped in such a stormy night? Because on that day he came to Shaoguan City for official duties. However when he about to return to Fuxi Town he realized the two major traffic road leading to the town were both blocked temporarily.So he decided to take a detour from Baishi Ling. However things turned even worse then. He was forced to stop again when he was three or four kilometers away from the town. There was a large truck overturned in the middle of the road.Got off the car, he found the truck has Gansu license plate. Although the driver was not injured seriously and the police had been called, the road was still blocked that he couldn’t go ahead. He could only turn around and drive toward the Jinjiang River on Provincial Road 246.At that time, the rain became more majestic, just like water tap kept pouring. Staring out the window with wide eyes, he endured the bumpy road along the way, fearing any fail. There was suddenly a poem appeared in his mind “ the pale sky, the vast wilderness.”All the experience in the first half of his life were used for dealing with diseases. While now he just like a schoolboy, trying to answer the current issues. He prayed the God could make the rain become less heavy, that he could return to the town as soon as possible, and then went into the old house in the village.

However, God intended to against him deliberately. The car came to a screeching halt again after 40 minutes of driving – it was just 8 kilometers far from the town. There was a landslide on the provincial road that caused a large pile of mud in the middle. Frowned tightly, he got off the car to check the situation and call the police. There was no village or town around, while the rain floating down from the thick ink-like sky showed no sigh of stopping. Qi Yunliang felt his skeleton was about to crack, he slumped in the chair. Although he was old enough, his hair was still dark and bright, and he always felt there was an inexhaustible energy in his body. But at this moment, he was a bit discouraged. His stomach flushed with vomiting after having driven such a bumpy road, just like there had a hand keep scratching it. He frowned and thought that it was God against him for the road that had been blocked twice and the rain kept dropping at night. Is that God intended to test his patience and perseverance with a paper? And at present, the world was suspended with a button that all the roads were blocked inexplicably. What to do now? It’s impossible to go ahead, but if I encounter a new landslide on the road turning back, how to do at that time? He felt that solar plexus tightened for a while and the churning brains slapped against his skull, making a surge of pain continuously. Finally, he made a choice desperately: back to the county!

And again the wheels spun, splashing the mud around. The people in the car became too nervous to breathe. The wiper swayed rapidly. Hold on! Hold on! Hold on! Qi Yunliang cheered himself up in mind: Don’t give up! Never give up! Never, ever! It went on like this until 12:30 at night. Seeing a light in distant, his taut body softened: He knew he arrived the county! After he found a hotel and he laid on the bed, he was as soft as a shrimp without a shell – his body was powerless like a pile of mud of meat. With such a tough text of life and death, he finally passed! Closing his eyes vaguely, he seemed hearing someone shouting at him “secretary Qi” and others calling him “doctor Qi”. Alas! Since when did he change from “secretary Qi” to “doctor Qi”? After thinking about it, he figured the “Changing Day”-May 13,2019.

Part 23 It was his first night in the countryside at Northern Guangdong Province. For the ordinary people, it was merely a normal day, but for Qi Yunliang, it was his “tipping day”, because it was his first day here in Xie Zhou Village. In the forenoon of that day, he set forth from Fenggang Town, Dongguan City, and took four hours to arrive at Renhua County, Shaoguan City. The conference held in Renhua Local Government was the first conference of poverty reduction he ever engaged in. From this video conference on Guangdong Province's poverty alleviation policies, he heard all kinds of unfamiliar new expressions, new terms, and new policies. While taking notes in his notebook, he diverted his mind from the world of medical terminologies like a radio switching channel. Although before this day, he was a doctor, working as the deputy director of the community health service center in Fenggang Town, Dongguan City, while now he is the first secretary and poverty alleviation captain of Xiezhou Village in Fuxi Town.

Qi Yunliang remembered the scene very well—it would be engraved on his memory forever—when arriving at the Xiezhou Village in the evening, he was quite shocked by the scenery before his eyes. This village was just a Shangri-La of northern Guangdong - forests mingling with fields, houses nestling amidst the orange trees, and smoke curling up to the sky. Although beauty and wealth are always linked together, however, this small village is an exception, “beautiful” but not “wealthy”. It is a provincial poor village in Guangdong Province. Of over 1,000 people in 256 households in this village, 41 households with a total of 172 people are impoverished. When walking through a country path, he can’t calm his mood- from this day on, his life has been closely connected to the fate of this village. In fact, people like Qi Yunliang who go to poor villages from all walks of life are not rare. Since 2016, Dongguan City has undertaken anti-poverty tasks for Shaoguan City and Jieyang City. A total of 323 relatively poor villages in 13 counties (cities and districts) in the two cities are in need of help. In these villages, there are 15,929 relatively poor households and 51,840 relatively impoverished people. To this end, Dongguan City has set counterpart cooperation tasks for 32 town streets, 31 departments directly under city government and 9 municipal enterprises. By 2019, Dongguan City has invested an accumulative total of 1.849 billion yuan in poverty alleviation. In the three years, Dongguan City has sent more than 780 cadres in two batches to relieve poverty in the two cities; at the same time, since 2016, Dongguan City has been providing counterpart assistance for six poor counties or districts in Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province in accordance with the national East-West poverty alleviation collaboration work. By 2019, Dongguan City has invested a total of 1.138 billion yuan in financial assistance to Zhaotong City, delivering benefits to 191,223 poverty-stricken people. A population of more than 800,000 people have been covered by assistance collaborative projects. Through more than 3 years of efforts, the remaining poverty-stricken population in Zhaotong City dropped from more than 1.11 million at the end of 2015 to about 180,000 at the end of 2019, and the poverty incidence rate dropped from 21.5% to about 4%. In addition, five of the six national poverty-stricken counties in Zhaotong City have been removed from the poverty list.

Before left Dongguan, Qi Yunliang had done a lot of written work. By looking up references, he learned that Renhua County has a rather extraordinary history - the county is located in the northern part of Guangdong Province, which is the junction of Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi Province. As early as 207 B.C, Zhao Tuo, the emperor of South Yue built a city here, which is still called "Chengkou" today. Xiezhou Village is an ordinary village in Fuxi Town, Renhua County, with an area of only 28.8 square kilometers and a woodland area of about 27,000 mu, including more than 10,000 mu of ecological public welfare forests and 3,000 mu of arable land.

The village with typical northern Guangdong features is embowered by forests. It has warm and humid climate coupled by abundant rainfall, and a well-protected ecological environment. The colorful river wandering through the village has a nice name: Jin River (Jin: bright and beautiful). Inside the village are four small hydroelectric power stations and several natural hot springs. The village is still in a pure and undisturbed state. Be it in the mountains or in the fields, by the river or on the beach，one can always see various birds and animals, including silver pheasants, bittern, pheasants, owls, golden-ringed snakes, cobras, silver-ringed snakes, trimeresurus, boars, and muntiacus muntjak. It has 8 subvillages: Xikeng, Huangshikeng, Xiaosankeng, Funtou, Dayintou, Yaoqian, Shangwan and Huangxishui.

After walking into the village committee at dusk, Chia Yunliang pushed the door into the crowded and simple old hut. Opening the simple bed at first, laying out the bedding and placing more than 30 medical books in the room, then he prepared for a sound sleep. In spite of the early summer, the weather in the southern countryside in Lingnan area had already been hot and smoky. The hut, not only being damp and full of a lot of mosquitoes that always buzzed above his head. Tossing and turning, he could not sleep, though he was extremely sleepy, only to see the misty moonlight shining in through the window panes, forming hazy patterns on the floor. He tried hard to comfort himself - the initial discomfort was inevitable when he jumped out of the cozy environment of the past and started life anew in a new place, but he could adapt as long as he adjusted his mindset and living habits. Suddenly, a mountain breeze slapped the window pane with a whirring sound, and he heard the gentle chirping of birds and the loud barking of dogs coming from the distance. He sat up from his bed, slipped on his shoes and went to the door. The night cloaked the village in haze, with only bean-like lights coming from the windows of farmer's houses in the distance. He smelled a strong smell of earth - a mixture of dirt, plants and rainwater, a smell he had known since childhood, but had long forgotten. Now, it was as if he was a teenager standing in his hometown's small village, fraught with whimsical thoughts. It actually was. After today, the dream of this village will be closely connected with his own dream. Returning to the house, he turned on the light and wrote down this sentence in his notebook: "A thought of life, began today."

Before leaving Dongguan, Qi Yunliang had made preparations for the "poor conditions" of the village. However, the next morning, the reality he saw still astonished him - the entire village committee had only one tap, which was installed in the bathroom for myriad purposes including cooking, drinking, bathing and flushing. He frowned at the blackened water. As a doctor, he immediately realized that drinking such water for a long time was detrimental to health. Consequently, he was aware that health would be the top priority in his upcoming work. In fact, he was not afraid of rural life at all. The reason was that the place where he lived when he was young - Qijiazhuang, Group 6, Yixingqiao Village, Baimatian Township, Xinning County, Shaoyang, Hunan Province - was a small hilly village near Guilin city. There are more than 50 households and more than 260 people in Qijia Village. It was 40 kilometers from the village to the country, which took more than an hour by car. How time flies. Qi Yunliang remembered his school days - he was a pupil of Yixingqiao Primary School, a student of Baimatian Middle School and Xinning No.3 Middle School. In 1989, he became the first college student in Qijiazhuang after being admitted to the the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Guangzhou College of Teaditional Chinese Medicine.

Thinking of his father, a word came to Qi's mind — hardship. There were 7 children in the family, and father was the eldest son. At the age of 22, father's mom died; less than two years later, his father was blind. Since then, father had to take grandfather to live under others’ thumb, seeking for medical treatments, and meanwhile took care of his younger siblings. As the mainstay of the family, he took all kinds of burdens, and finally brought up his younger siblings successfully. Father enjoyed credit for his impartiality, boldness and eloquence. Diligent, kind and considerate, he was selected to work in the village, the brigade and the commune at an early age, although with only a primary education. Moreover, he was once a teacher, a railroad-repairer, and also worked in the food station. Later on, he served as a branch secretary for more than 30 years, and was selected as the County People's Congress deputy for three consecutive terms, enjoying great prestige in the village.

Before Qi Yunliang went to Guangzhou for study, his father invited his friends and relatives to a banquet. Although the relatives were hard up, they gave out red packets, no matter how much was in, and encouraged Qi to work hard so as to achieve success soon. When Qi was leaving, his father grabbed his hand and said, "Studying medicine is to save lives and build virtue, I hope you can study hard and come back to make contributions for the fellow villagers." Farewell to his father, the young man came to Sanyuanli in Guangzhou with dreams for the future. After an ignorant encounter, he dedicated himself to Chinese medicine, immersed in studying Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, the internal organs and meridians. Although he spent all his days with medical books and herbs, he never felt tedious or bitter. 5 years flew by. When graduating, he gave up the opportunity to work in a hospital in Zhuhai and returned to Xinning County Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine without hesitation. He was the first medical undergraduate assigned here. It was father’s instruction that he should return to the hometown to be a doctor that makes contributions for the fellow villagers. However, as a Chinese medicine major, he always felt restrained in the primary hospital. In the beginning of 1999, when he received the notice of further training in Xiangya Hospital, he shed tears of excitement. During that period of hard study, he was not only recognized by many teachers that he had made up for the deficiencies of modern medicine, but also proficient in handling common and multiple diseases in gastroenterology, cardiovascular medicine and neonatology. Hence, he was promoted to an attending hematologist in Internal Medicine, and the "More Western treatments, less TCM therapies " became his master medical approach.

In August 2000, Qi Yunliang was transferred to Fenggang People's Hospital in Dongguan, a leading city of reform and opening up in China. With its numerous factories, the city attracted a huge amount of floating workers from other places who contributed a lot to the demand for local medical services. Therefore, despite the heavy workload, the hospital was developing rapidly. Here Qi felt in his element and practiced what he had learned. By 2007, he had finished the advanced courses for postgraduate in Integrated Western and Traditional Chinese Clinical Medicine at Guangdong Medical College and obtained a Master's degree certificate. Afterwards, he presided over and completed three scientific research projects approved by the Bureau of Science and Technology of Dongguan and one by the Bureau of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Guangdong Province, and published over 10 essays in domestic journals. In August 2008, after his promotion to associate consultant specializing in his major, Qi volunteered to work in a community health service center. Ten years later, he volunteered again, hoping to help with poverty alleviation in the mountainous areas of northern Guangdong. Having gained the agreement of his family, he resolutely embarked on the journey. From Dongguan to Renhua County, and then to Xiezhou Village in Fuxi Town, he has deeply experienced a kind of "unplanned" life - obviously, the daily life of grassroots cadres is very different from that of doctors - hospitals are like armies, with strict time limits and regional division, and everyone knows his own position and responsibilities.Working in a village, however, one should not only deal with daily tasks but also be able to respond quickly to changing situations and be prepared to shift the focus of work according to the priorities of different periods. After that chaotic night, Qi woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning. Since he had left the old environment, it was necessary to establish new habits as soon as possible. Reading and running in the morning were the first thing to do—he had practiced both for many years—the former improves mental ability and the latter strengthens physical health. Running in the village generated in him a completely different feeling: the morning light in the village was very delicate, the clouds in the sky were like orange red and light pink belts, and the air was fresh as if it had been filtered for a thousand times - when running, he felt his body was extremely light, like a pair of big hands holding it up.

The first thing he will do today is not a meeting, not to learn the document, but to practice riding a motorcycle. Though he drove his own car to this small village, to go to each natural village, he can only ride a motorcycle through those rural roads since the village was surrounded by mountains. At first, he trembled while learning to ride a motorcycle, but after several times of practices, he mastered the rules and rode like a rider. When Cai Guangjing, the old captain, came to him, he was like a skilled rider. Later, the two people rode motorcycles and set out to the poor families. Originally, the grass-green village was quiet everywhere, with only a few occasional birdsong and barking. Suddenly, the sudden sound of motorcycles came from far to near and became louder and louder. This small village at the beginning of the 21st century looks as if it were still the same as it was when it was born. However, it will understand in the future what came with the sudden sound was more than a new person. New sounds mean new changes, and new changes mean a new life.

Many days later, when Qi Yunliang recalled what happened that day, he found it difficult to find appropriate words to express. He is a professional doctor who has seen too much suffering and has stronger endurance than normal people. However, on that day, when he witnessed those people who were trapped in the deep well of poverty, he still felt his throat choked and his nostrils sour. Originally, all he knew about the impoverished villages and the impoverished population were figures on paper that appeared on the TV news; but now, when he entered those huts and met people face to face, all of a sudden, it was as if he had pushed a glass door and entered an extraordinarily real and concrete world. In this kingdom, all pain is magnified by a magnifying glass, all suffering is doubled, and all struggles are more intense and difficult. It was only gradually that he realized the harm that poverty caused to human beings, and he learned from the specific experiences of these families. Before that, "poverty" was just a noun; but after that, "poverty" was the name of each specific person.

When Qi Yunliang first saw the “Tuozi”, his jaw dropped -- he was so dark! The dark was shown on his face, neck, back of his hands, and ankles. Clouds of dark looked soft but cold. The man was fully immersed in darkness, like amber. By a closer look, alas, his hair unwashed for many days was glued to pieces. He was wheezing with his big nostrils. The eyeballs seemed to have been dazzled in the bright light, for his pupils had not been adjusted to the right position. The villagers had forgotten that his name was “Liu Jianye” and called him “Tuozi” as a force of habit. Before seeing Tuozi, Qi Yunliang had prepared mentally in advance, but he was still startled by the man’s darkness. The 66-year-old man’s entire back was completely arched like he was carrying an upside-down big iron pot. He was only about 1.4 meters tall with a loose and wrinkled jacket. And the yellow rubber shoes on his feet turned white with mud spots and looked bleak that could not be hidden.

Tuozi always smiles and grins with the black hole formed after the loss of his front teeth. Due to his deaf and dumb, he was classified as the household enjoying the five guarantees that have completely lost their abilities to work. He has always been single, with a monthly subsidy of more than 1000 Yuan. Although his daily life is not much of a problem, his life on his own seems dismaying and lonely.

As soon as he stepped into Nie Qiusheng’s house, Qi Yunliang took out a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer to check the pulse and blood pressure for Mr. Nie’s old mother. The male host was a tall man with a buzz cut, a fat round face, sturdy legs, strong arms, and love handles on his waist. His mother was 80 years old who suffered from not only high blood pressure but also diabetes and other incurable diseases. Qi Yunliang exhorted Mr. Nie to pay more attention the old lady’s health, and if there are any bad symptoms, call him in time. As a son, he nodded in agreement while listening. Mr. Nie looked very strong, but how could his family become a poor household? Actually, it was because of his invalid mother and school-age children, whose tens of thousands of tuition and fees that year were like a rake, making deep inroads into the family’s savings. Mr. Nie was not a gluttonous and lazy guy. On the contrary, he worked hard in the orange orchard all year round, but the income from the orange orchard did not depend only on the toil of the peasants, but also on kismet. A drought or rainstorm could easily damage the oranges that could be turned into money, making the peasants work in vain and gain nothing.

When he arrived at Liu Peizong's house, Qi Yunliang's whole body was frozen and he could hardly move. The old room was like a dark cave, not only was it dark and damp, but the walls were unstable and looked precarious. It turned out to be a nail house - as the only dangerous house in the village that had not been renovated, it was particularly conspicuous by its appearance. The man, Liu Peizong, is of medium height and robust, with a crew haircut and a round face that looks benevolent; his wife is slimmer, and although her skin is pale and haggard, her features are clear, and her face floats with a restricted and shy smile. Both were habitually barefoot and slippers. There are five people in his family , his mother is elderly and sickly, and his two daughters are both in school - the eldest is an undergraduate studying human resource management at Pei Zheng College in Guangzhou, and the youngest is a senior in Renhua County High School. Although more than 800 citrus trees are the main source of income for the family, it is still not enough to cover the medical expenses of the mother and the school fees of the daughters. it is still not enough to make ends meet, so life is difficult. When Qi Yunliang asked him about the progress of his family's new house, he immediately burst into smiles. The construction of the new house started in May this year and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. "Yes, yes, yes! If the inspection is completed, he will immediately receive a subsidy of 40,000 yuan from the state!" Liu Peizong nodded and nodded again immediately, knowing that the old house was holding the whole village back.

Nie Chisheng's home was a new house with whitewashed walls, a mahogany sofa and a wood-colored dining table. All these furniture makes his house look all the more brand new. The plump man who was the backbone of the family looked kind and shrewd. He opened the plastic jar on the dinner table and poured the yellow liquid into the plastic cup. It turned out to be the honey Lao Nie had made by himself! Under the sunshine, the honey looked crystal clear, just like the melting gold. After a sip, Qi Yunliang felt the taste was particularly sweet and mellow. How could Lao Nie who has such a skill make his family sink into poverty? The reason turned out to be that there are total six people in his family, Lao Nie and his wife, his son Nie Jiuwen and daughter-in-law Liu Xiuqing, granddaughter Nie Hongping and kindergarten grandson Nie Hongyun who studied in primary school and kindergarten respectively. The main income of Lao Nie's family comes from the plantation of capers and beekeeping. However, the agricultural income is greatly affected by the weather and other external factors, so his family's income is not stable. And with no one in the family working outside, the family lived a destitute and hard life.

Correction：Later, riding on his motorcycle, Qi Yunliang went to visit a lot more poverty-stricken households then. After a day’s toil, he returned to the village committee when the night has descended. As soon as he swallowed a little rice, he opened his notebook and jotted down his itinerary. The sky of the early summer night is particularly tranquil and appeared to be higher and farther from earth. With a gust of chill mountain wind passing by, Qi Yunliang’s mind was refreshed even though his body has undergone extreme fatigue. The experience of the whole day changed his thought before. NO, the poverty-stricken households are not born to be like that instead their miserable situation are caused by various reasons all together. To pull up a man trapped in the snare, we need rope, ladder and shelf. Their potential will be stimulated once they are given an opportunity, no matter how tiny it is.

After days of searching, Qi Yunliang gradually sorted out his thoughts. In fact, this small village is a miniature society. Every piece of land, just like every house and person, has its own history. In such a village, poor households are like a moat, always at the outermost edge and surrounded by a sense of alienation. Qi realized that to find out the situation of each household, he has to glean detailed information rather than only making verbal inquiries. So, like an anthropologist designing a field survey, he designed a “Household Questionnaire” specifically for poor households, covering physical status, outward employment, family income, and policy satisfaction. When he visited villagers with the form, he also took with him a blood pressure monitor and a stethoscope. He was deeply informed that “every family has its own problems”. It is not an easy task for poor households to regard him as a friend and pour out family secrets. Having stronger self-esteem and defense mechanisms, they will kindly reject overly focus on them. Nevertheless, it’s another story if the secretary interviewing them is also a doctor and offers free medical examination to the family.

In the following week, he reached every household in eight natural villages and got more than he expected. “The farmers in northern Guangdong are actually very capable!” This was from the bottom of his heart. He always remembered that he was a country boy who, without the support of the land, could not go to university and become a doctor. Now, when he went deep inside the villages and listened to every farmer, he felt that he gradually understood their difficulties and needs. He carries out his work step by step---to solve the most urgent income problem first, with the focus on industrial help; then to prevent poor households from returning to poverty with healthy help as an auxiliary part. In addition, mental help is required to give people confidence and determination to get rid of poverty and embark on a sustainable path.

In fact, by the end of 2019, Qi Yunliang had learned some information from the news - to help 323 poor villages in Shaoguan and Jieyang, Dongguan City introduced 141 leading agricultural enterprises, established 271 cooperatives, cultivated 490 agricultural special industries, including Donggua (winter melon) villages, Baixiangguo (passion fruit) villages, Mangguo (mango) villages where more than 10,000 poor laborers have realized transfer employment, with the annual per capita disposable income of poor households with laborers in the two cities reaching 15,670.44 yuan, an average year-on-year increase of 22%. The city also carried out “Hand in Hand for Well-off Society” in 6 leading towns and streets, 16 assisting ones and 6 poor counties and districts in Shaotong City. The city has invested a total of 38.43 million yuan to help 51 poor towns and villages - and his village, Xiezhou Village, is one of them.

Compared with other villages, the conditions of Xiezhou village were not very good indeed. There scattered eight natural villages with surrounding hills, gullies, and streams. What’s more, the village’s collective economic was underdeveloped and its hygienic conditions need to be improved. For all the villagers, working outside was their main source of income while farming secondary. Although they grew rice and sold moso bamboo, almost every family relied more on the income from tangerines and Shatang mandarins. However, with single economic model, small production scale and no notable brands, they struggled to support themselves in bad-harvest years. He pondered with a frown over the poverty alleviation of the village. He thought industrial poverty alleviation was the key. In his opinion, if a poor family had sufficient labor force, then some of its members should be encouraged to work outside. That would maintain a stable source of income and also reduce dependence on agricultural income. Secondly, efforts should be made to increase the yield and income of agricultural products in the village. Its remoteness and inadequate information resulted in difficulty in forming large-scale cultivation, low agricultural product prices and poor sales. So could a better sales platform be established there? Or could more profitable crops be planted? If a family were short of workforce and nobody were able to go out to work, they could do part-time jobs nearby to support their families during their leisure time.

To carry out the Health Program for Poverty Alleviation, Qi had to make long-term plans. The villagers looked older and many of them contracted diseases because they continuously conduct manual labor and had unhealthy living habits, including smoking, drinking, playing cards and oily and salty diets. Coupled with the poor water quality and lack of exercise, among the existing poor households in the village, 40% of them were suffering from chronic labor shortage due to illness, injury and physical and mental disabilities, and have finally suffered the evil consequences of poverty. There were 45 villagers with hypertension, 15 with diabetes and 8 bedridden ones with mobility difficulties. Among the 41 poor households, there were 41 disabled villagers. As a professional doctor, Qi was acutely aware that many poor families would face the risk of returning to poverty without solution to their diseases. Therefore, he was intended to make healthy family programs and chronic disease rehabilitation programs as a remedy.

During his visit in the village, he found that the barrenness and numbness of souls were worse than material scarcity. He believed those with wealthy life and strong bodies could not feel happy if their souls were rotten. At that time, some villagers always waited for subsidies and assistance without any enthusiasm to live a better life by themselves. Their idleness and resentment were alike to an invisible fortress preventing others from getting in. Qi was wondering how to make warmth and hope break that wall. Some were chained by inferiority stemmed from their lasting poverty, thus becoming submissive and inflexible. Looking at those who’d walked with their heads down and been afraid of looking into others’ eyes, Qi was eager to find ways to help them be confident and relived from imprisonment of souls. Part 24

Citrus, Honey and Grapefruit

Even if agricultural income was extremely unstable and was vulnerable to various factors such as the weather and the market, tribute oranges, sugar oranges and various vegetables were still the main income of Xiezhou villagers aside from migrant work. Qi Yunliang considered that with poverty alleviation funds, although the village had invested in photovoltaic generation system, Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Non-ferrous metal Company Limited, kiwifruit planting, black goat farming and other industrial projects to provide the poor households an annual dividend of about 1,000 yuan, the village also needed to get wider distribution and put up the price of agricultural products through all kinds of means to increase the income of poor households. During his door-to-door visits, he heard from many poor households who asked, "Why don't we harvest as many oranges as others?" In fact, the problem actually reflected the lack of agricultural thchnology guidance in the work of poor households. Therefore, through the county poverty alleviation office matchmaking, he specially invited experienced agricultural experts to come to the village to give lectures for solving the villager’s encountered problems like fertilization, harvest and other practical problems.

Selling became even more difficult as located in mountain areas, winding roads resulted in traffic inconvenience and privation of necessary information. Though villagers worked hard for a year, higher input was not accompanied by a higher income owing to the dull sale. Compared with ordinary farmers, low income families struggled against poverty line and tons of challenges, so their risk-resistance capacities were weaker. Being forced by invisible pressure, these poor families were overcautious, living in frugalness and uneasiness. Aiming at this situation, Qi Yunliang organized a discussion with cadres of poverty alleviation to solve this problem and relevant suggestions .Finally, they have decided to give out seedlings, breeding seedlings, chemical fertilizers and other products to poor families for free, aiming to have a good start. During farming, experts were invited to solve practical problems and training in citrus cultivation techniques and e-commerce selling were all special designed to increase their incomes.

When Qi Yunliang racked his brain to come up with solutions for Xiezhou Village, he relied not only on his own energy, but also on the support of the whole city of Dongguan. Dongguan City had made a lot of rewarding explorations in order to conduct industrial cooperation well, attract business and investment and alleviate poverty through consumption. For example, in combination with the available resources of Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, Dongguan had organized more than 137 enterprises, devided into 30 groups in total, to visit Zhaotong, and guided enterprises to carry out 127 industrial projects, with a cumulative actual investment of 1.616 billion yuan. These measures had an immediate effect and helped 9,781 people lift themselves out of poverty by getting jobs. Dongguan had also made great efforts to expand the scale of poverty alleviation through consumption with the accumulated actual purchase amount reaching 340 million yuan, driving more than 46,000 poor people to increase their incomes. The efforts made by Qi in Xiezhou Village, Fuxi Town of Shaoguan City, were only the most specific and subtle efforts in the general background. However, it is precisely because of cadres of poverty alleviation like him, with their own efforts to dig up a trickle of water, can finally picture a magnificent image of shining streams converge into the sea.

This day, Qi Yunliang took 20 chickens and 20 geese to Liu Wenbin’s house in Xikeng Village. Liu Wenbin, was tall and thin with white skin and shapely eyebrows in his early thirties and there was always a smile hanging on his lips. He wore a jacket over a T-shirt, and a pair of yellow rubber shoes under jeans. His wife, Zhang Zhaogui, was a thin woman with big eyes on her heart-shaped face, who wore a white hoodie with black stripes, black pants and yellow rubber shoes. There were a three-wheeled scooter and motorcycle in his yard; the children’s tiny clothes were hung on the wire outside the house. The hard-working young couple were already the parents of two small children, but they plunged themselves into poverty. It turned out that the man had lost his parents and was raised by his uncle. Now, the 56-year-old uncle lived with them. For the young couple, poverty was like a hidden wound that could not be opened up freely because it not only hurt themselves, but also embarrass others. However, they opened their heart to secretary Qi. They were busy all year round in the citrus orchard, but the income of it was not steady, which was good in some years and bad in others. With two young children and an uncle to support and no other workers, the family had struggled in poverty.

Qi Yunliang listened and nodded -- Obviously, Liu Wenbin and his wife were not poor because of laziness. They have been trying to find a way out of poverty. He designed a plan for the family now-- Liu Wenbin did the heavy manual labor of the orange orchard, managing the orchard and fish pond among mountains and rivers. His wife conducted online business at home and formed a fixed customer group by establishing WeChat groups, publishing WeChat moments, and making live streamings of their own featured agricultural products. After discussing the plan written on the paper, Qi Yunliang did not leave. Instead, he put on white gloves and went to work with the couples in the orange orchard. In this ordinary-looking garden, 1,100 citrus and sugar orange trees were planted. The lush trees grew well. Standing under citrus trees, Liu Wenbin said his dream of planting 800 citrus trees and digging three fishponds by 2020.

It's a pity that 2019 is doomed to be an unfortunate year - the village suffered floods in the first half of the year and drought in the second half of the year. Looking at those small thick-skinned oranges, poor households became worried.Every year, the oranges of these families alone can produce 300000 jin, which is the most important source of income besides working in the city. But how should they sell these poorly shaped oranges? These oranges with poor appearance are sold at a low price. At the end of the year, Liu Wenbin's family suffered a lot from the sudden spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a large number of unsalable oranges. To this end, Qi Yunliang visited again. He mobilized the men in every family to go out to work first so that they could maintain a stable income.In addition, he suggested that after the children were properly settled, the wife should focus on taking care of the orchard, and then do online sales in her spare time . After the market sales become stable, it is not too late to let the husband return home to expand production. After hearing this, Liu Wenbin and his wife nodded their heads sincerely.

The two or three months around New Year’s Day 2020 is the busiest season in Xiezhuo Village—the oranges are ripe! To help poor households, even the town secretary came to the village and personally engaged in the sale. The town mobilized the unions of the relevant units to buy the poor households’ unsold tribute oranges at a price not lower than the market—more than 500 cases of the Citrus Gonggan, with a total value of nearly 7,000 yuan! In order to sell, Qi Yunliang can be said to be racking his brains. He not only signed a purchase and sale agreement with Renhua county LecunTao E-commerce Co., on behalf of the poor households in the village, but also used the holidays to mobilize more than ten enterprises in Dongguan Zhang Mutou Community Health Service Center, Dongguan Feng Gang Twon Health Authority, Dongguan Feng gang Town Community and Huangdong Yuquan Industrial Zone to buy agricultural products such as Citrus Gonggan, sugar oranges, rice and honey.

Although Nie Chisheng is nearly 60 years old, he is still absolutely the spiritual leader of the family. Even though his dilapidated house has already been renovated and gained the national subsidy of 40,000 yuan, his family still has many problems. His family’s income mainly depends on the Citrus gonggan and honey—although the whole family endured hardship, finally, they still have no income increased because of the poor sales. In order to help the Old Nie, Qi Yunliang turned himself into a volunteer salesman. He contacted the colleagues of his former organization everywhere, his various friends and relatives, peddling the good things of “the genuine and price fair”—honey. In the end, the Old Nie family’s honey was sold for 13,000 yuan and the Citrus gonggan was sold for nearly 40,000 yuan. Together with the village’s 1,000 yuan dividend, its economic income has reached the poverty alleviation standard. But all of these were still not enough. What worried Qi Yunliang was that the Nies was likely to slip back into poverty. If they wanted to be free from poverty for good, one of them must go out to find a job. Nie Jiuwen, Old Nie’s son, was good at agricultural work and was able to operate a tractor, but he couldn’t express himself clearly since he hurt himself on the neck in an accident. Liu Xiuqing, Old Nie’s daughter-in-law, was introverted, reticent, and shy of words. She was so reserved that one couldn't see her tongue when she talked. Qi Yunliang had encouraged Liu Xiuqing to go out to work, but she always declined on the grounds that she had to take care of her children. Later, Qi Yunliang made contact with a plywood factory, and he took her there. Liu Xiuqing agreed to be a worker there after visiting the factory and knowing the salary. Three and half days later, however, Liu Xiuqing returned home. "You can earn 4,500 yuan per month under any circumstances. Why did you quit?" Qi Yunliang talked to Liu Xiuqing again, “Is it because the condition there is poor or the work is too much?" Liu Xiuqing, however, kept her head down but uttered no word. Qi Yunliang became anxious and he went to ask Old Nie. Qi Yunliang had racked his brains to find a reason, but Old Nie, avoiding eye contact with him, didn't say something clearly. It struck Qi Yunliang that except that Liu Xiuqing was uncomfortable with life in the factory, she had concerned that her family would feel worried about leaving her work alone there.

Now, there were four grown-ups all working in the orange orchard and the apiary. Although they can handle financial problems temporarily by doing so, it was difficult for them to get rid of poverty. However, he understood what did Old Nie concern in that normally those who work in a family were young or middle-aged men. However, with difficulty in communicating, it's challenging for Nie's son to get employed and even if he secured a job, how long he can work was a question. If his daughter-in-law went to work in a big city, Old Nie was afraid that villagers would gossip about this and also worried that his daughter-in-law may think her husband was no good for her if she saw a bigger world. How to unravel this taut knot? It was disturbing to bog in this impasse. Qi Yunliang frowned, but he would not give up. He believed that he can find a solution, only with needs to wait patiently and to try diverse approaches. After inquiring, Qi Yunliang knew that Liu Xiuqing's sister worked in Qiaotou Town, Dongguan City, and performed quite well, so he added her as a friend in Wechat (an app equivalent to Facebook). When Qi Yunliang asked whether she was willing to persuade her sister Liu Xiuqing to go out to work, she agreed without hesitation. He came to Old Nie's home again excitedly, and said, "Now, her sister will take care of her, what are you afraid of? Otherwise, let your son accompany her, so you will be more assured! ’’ Hearing this, a gentle smile upon occurred on Old Nie’s face. In Qi Yunliang’s notebook, a line, truly getting rid of poverty, shaking off real poverty and avoiding poverty-returning, occurred most frequently. He knew that it was easier said than done. The longer he lived in Xizhizhou Village, the more he understood the thoughts of the people in the village. He found that the reason why the residents were mired in the trap— poverty— was not only their extremely poor material basis, but also their conservative way of thinking formed over many years. Knowing each other very well helped villagers maintain a favorable interrelationship. But, at the same time, they developed a habit of paying too much attention to opinions of others. When doing something, they would look around to see others’ actions and they were reluctant to take the lead and deliver innovative responses. If we want to break old behavioral habits, the first step towards transformation is like the wheels rolling forward with great efforts when the train begins to roar down the line. That rolling requires extra driving force. Qi Yunliang believed that to have a better understanding families with financial difficulties needs to understand the comprehensiveness of human nature. Sometimes, their decisions could not be directly considered as right or wrong. Instead, they just tried to keep a balance with the surrounding environment. Thus, they would adapt their actions in accordance with the changing external conditions.

That day when Qi Yunliang came to Liu Guitang’s house, he was astonished by the house and stood there still and couldn’t move forward. contrary to the old house he saw when he went to Liu Peizong's house, the house in front of him was really beautiful. This two-and-a-half-storey floor building made of red bricks stood there. The exterior walls were installed with ceramic tiles, glistening in the sunshine. Qi Yunliang looked around, grinning from ear to ear. Walking into the room, he said to the owner, ”Now, you are virtually the landlord among needy families!” Liu Guitang was the Xikeng Village group leader. He was born in 1969 and was of medium height and had a thinner figure, with shrewd eyes. Although he was the group leader and underwent all sorts of hardships to manage, his life cannot totally get rid of the word “poverty”.

It turned out that the family was dragged down by the tuition fees of the two children. His daughter studied in collage and his son in technical school. The tuition fees and living expenses amounted to 50,000 yuan per year, just like a big iron spade, almost leveling the family. They lived in a dilapidated house before that is dark and damp, because of no spare money. Back then, Qi Yunliang always earnestly advised him, ”You are our group leader and should set an example for other poor families.” Later, Liu Guitang clenched his teeth and built this house, which amazed all the villagers. In order to help Liu Guitang get out of poverty as soon as possible, Qi Yunliang tried his best to think of ways. When he signed a sales agreement with Renhua county Lecun Tao E-commerce limited company on behalf of Liu Guitang, Liu Guitang's heart was still in doubt - Will it be okay to let the company sell? However, when the company sold all of his over 20,000 pounds of grapefruit, giving him a profit of nearly 50,000 yuan, he thought, "Secretary Qi did a great job!" The e-commerce company is good at marketing - the grapefruits elsewhere can only be sold for 1.2 yuan per jin, but Liu Guitang's were sold for 2 yuan per jin, and even as high as 2.5 yuan per jin. After all the grapefruits were sold out, the company salesman even called to him: "Is there any more grapefruits? You'd better send a few thousand boxes over again!" The village wanted to make a short video to promote agricultural products, so Qi Yunliang chose Liu Guitang as the representative.

Facing the camera, this man, who used to be quite self-abased, now has a bright smile with eyes radiating a different light as if they were electrified. He said that his family now had 600 grapefruits, 100 sugar oranges and 50 tea citrus, "Next year I am going to grow more grapefruit!" Now, after building a new house, his family has received a subsidy of 40,000 yuan from the government. His daughter is working in Shenzhen after graduating from college and earns 5,000 yuan a month; his son is about to graduate from junior college and will soon start to make money. The family's life has passed the most difficult times, like a train driving out the first meter, after that, they can just "chug chug" and try to move forward.

Part 25

Stethoscope, Tai Chi and Mask

The day November sixth, 2019 was a Wednesday. On that morning, Qi Yunliang showed up at the Fuxi Village Health Clinic and started to see patients. Well, how did “Secretary Qi” become “Doctor Qi”? It turned out that when Qi learned that the Health Clinic not only lacked medical staff, but the Traditional Chinese Medical Center was also out of business, he thought of providing medical service here. With the support of the County Department of Health, he finished procedures for multi-locations occupational registration of physicians. When he practiced as a health experts, he also taught the 20-year-old Li Hailong and 26-year-old Liu Yanfen at the Health Clinic. He knew that he would not work here forever so that he wanted to pass on his medical skills here through inheritance, as teaching a man to fish is better than giving him fish. His two students learned from him medical anatomy, pathology, pharmacology and other knowledge. Besides, they improved clinical medical and treatment ability and mastered acupuncture, cupping therapy, moxibustion, bloodletting and other skills.

As soon as the news that Qi Yunliang had started to see patients spreads, patients in the town came to visit him. One day, Cai Xinhua, a poor villager from Xiezhou village, took his wife who was suffered from epilepsy to see doctor Qi. After several courses of treatment, his wife was getting better significantly. He said gratefully, "It is so great to have a good doctor at our doorstep!" In this way, Qi Yunliang's reputation was spread by word of mouth. Since then, there would be a long line of patients waiting at the hospital every Wednesday. Doctor Qi left the village at 7:30 am and had no time to rest since he stared to see patients at 8 am. He can treat more than 20 patients one morning.

The diagnosis of Chinese doctor is complex because they need to spend so long on observation, listening, interrogation and pulse-taking. Moreover, Qi Yunliang is so meticulous and responsible that he often misses the meal. He always says sincerely to the students: "People trust me and I must not defy their trust." By April 2020, Qi has treated more than 200 patients, including the poorest, and won a good reputation. People all see a doctor in the town hospital because the village clinics have poor conditions. Taking Xiangzhou Village clinics for example, there is only one village doctor here, named Liu Juanhong. besides seeing patients she need to work in the fields. When villagers feel unconfortable and come to the clinic, the door is mostly closed. They would wait until the breaktime and then get medicine at Liu Juanhong's home.

With limited amount of income, the clinic could barely provide service by receiving support from the provincial treasury of 20,000 yuan. Due to low incomes, local doctors had to rely on farming to make ends meet. Having recognized such situations, Qi Yunliang felt it was impractical to harshly criticize the village doctors, so he often talked to Liu Juanhong and encouraged her: "If in the past the ratio between practicing medicine and farming was 2 to 3, now we have to strive for 3 to 2. We must ensure that minor illnesses and chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes can be treated in the village!" In the targeted poverty alleviation project, the cadres have slowly worked out the way - industrial development is the top priority, and must be supported first and foremost.What’s more, in order to keep the poor households above the poverty line, the two main priorities are hygiene and education. Hygiene is directly related to the health of the villagers - only if they stay healthy can they work strenuously in the fields and go out to work. Education sustains each family so that poverty will not be passed on to the next generation, and substantial changes may be seen. At the beginning of 2020, when Qi Yunliang learnt about the poverty alleviation initiatives in health and education throughout Dongguan in 2019, he gained confidence - “we are doing the right thing.”

Up to now, great progress has been made in poverty alleviation in Shaoguan and Jieyang, which have received the a great amount of funds and talents from Dongguan city in the process of paired assistance. What’s more, the cause to lift Zhaotong in Yunnan Province out of poverty has attracted the wold’s attention. From 2016 to 2019, Dongguan has utilized financial aid funds to carry out 679 projects involving housing, education, health in Zhaotong. Thanks to these efforts, 281 medical rooms, 2 new primary schools, 1,496 houses and supporting facilities, and 89.9 kilometers of roads were constructed in poor villages. And a project to improve drinking water safety was carried out for 15,426 poor households. Besides these endeavors, Dongguan also dispatched professional personnel including 26 temporary cadres and 244 professionals consisting of 83 teachers and 121 doctors for poverty alleviation. The government also mobilized 43 schools and 24 hospitals to help 38 schools and 20 hospitals in Zhaotong in pairs. In addition to regular assistance, Dongguan also took an innovative approach to promote vocational education so as to effectively expand the scale of local labor export. 4,161 students from Zhaotong in 3 batches were enrolled in vocational schools in Dongguan for free, who would be recommended for employment after graduation, which makes efforts to the absolute elimination of inter-generational poverty. The vocational education helped 94,800 impoverished labors in Zhaotong to find jobs outside their hometowns, 28,400 of whom worked in Guangdong province and 49,000 worked in surrounding areas.

If it is out of a doctor's instinct that he carried a stethoscope and a blood pressure monitor on his first day in the country, but as days accumulated, he increasingly felt that health and education were no less important than industry. If the poverty- alleviation by supporting industries is a rescue for one’s head, then the poverty-alleviation aiming at health and education will be a rescue for one’s arms. After returning to Fenggang, when Qi Yunliang told his former colleague that he always prescribed villagers drugs on the fields, the man opened his mouth wide in shock. When Qi said he had already learned to gather ganoderma lucidum, to keep bees for honey, to catch fish and shrimp, to plant rice seedlings, and to fertilize and spray pesticide, the man looked even more shocked whose mouth seemed to be able to swallow a hippo. “Only by working with poor households can you truly understand them and will they tell you the truth!” Now, there must be a notebook, a blood pressure monitor and a stethoscope in the bag when he rides his motorcycle running along the country road, just like a farmer going to the field with a hoe.

Now, when he appears in the village, he feels comfortable as a fish in water. He is now a completely different person compared with who arrived at the village at the first time. In the initial stage when he stepped out of the hospital office, he felt uncomfortable and that life had lost its regularity of working from 9a.m to 5p.m and everything was mixed up like a spider's web; but now he has completely adapted to this new life and has found a new routine and a new approach of living. Now, he is getting more and more skillful on his motorcycle, his face is getting darker, and his understanding of poor households is getting deeper. The field in the village are so vast and wide, whose depth and complexity are far beyond the understanding of those confined to a hospital office. Now, his life still consists of early morning reading and running, however, when he runs in the morning, all the people he sees on the road, no matter adults or children, will greet him affectionately: "Good morning, Secretary Qi!" On weekend evenings, when the lights of the village committee are still on, there must be someone to greet him: "Secretary Qi, why not come to my house for a cup of tea!"

In fact, this intimate relationship did not happen overnight, but was forged eventually by the accumulation of emotions day by day. He remembers that day very well - 27 September 2019 - and as usual, he went out for a run after his morning reading. From the village committee, he ran towards Xiao San Hang village, 3km away. Halfway of the run, urgent shouts came from his ears - "Secretary Qi! Secretary Qi!" When he stopped, a motorbike came to a screeching halt beside him. The owner turned out to be Li Runming, a poor household member. When he spoke in an eager tone, Li nodded: "Go back by your bike first, I'll be there soon!" The deal is that Li’s 82-year-old father was plagued by leg hurt, but he had been discharged from Renhua County People's Hospital just five days ago. Ten minutes later when Qi arrived, Li’s father was waiting in bed.

Once Qi Yunliang saw the patient, he changed his title from Secretary Qi to Doctor Qi. First, he learned about the patient's case history from the old man's words and health documents. He checked his left knee joint, then his tongue, and pulse. It turned out that the old man had suffered from diabetes, hypertension, gout, arthritis, hyperlipidemia, and other diseases. But after being discharged from the hospital, which was five days ago, he smoked two packs of cigarettes every day which caused swelling, pain in the left knee joint, and little sleep. He pressed the old man to quit smoking immediately, but then, after seeing the displeasure on his face, offered gentler advice to at least stop smoking while taking medicine. The old man laughed and nodded. In light of the old man's condition, he immediately prescribed the appropriate Chinese medicine and asked his son to pay attention to keep the old man's diet light, not to smoke or drink, and not to walk too much. Before leaving, he told the old man again, "If you don't feel well, let your son call me immediately!" The old man kept saying "thank you" and put a red envelope in his hand. Qi Yunliang, as if burned by a soldering iron, hurriedly gave the red envelope back. "No! No! Really!"

There are six people in Li Runming's family-Li Runming's husband and wife, parents and two children. The cause of his family's poverty is due to the cause of disease-the octogenarian father is weak and sick, often hospitalized; the 20-year-old son is studying in a technical school in Guangzhou, with tuition and living expenses of more than 340000 a year; the 8-year-old daughter is in the second grade of primary school, when she is growing up. The livelihood of the whole family depends on the income of 500 tribute oranges and 730 sugar oranges.Two years ago, Li Runming gritted his teeth to build a cement bungalow and received 40000 yuan of state subsidies, but his life has not been completely lifted out of poverty. In view of his family's situation, Qi Yunliang has formulated a poverty alleviation plan-in addition to participating in poverty alleviation projects in the village every year, he can get a dividend of more than 1000 yuan, not only to count on the harvest of fruit trees, but also to expand the scope of business.After consulting with the members of the poverty relief work team, he first distributed free chemical fertilizers and pesticides to Li Runming's family, so that his family would not be embarrassed during the spring ploughing. He also distributed free seedlings of chickens, ducks, and geese, encouraging them to make more efforts in the breeding industry and increase their income.

After leaving Li's house, Qi Yunliang still runs back to the village committee. Running, he laughed himself first. This kind of behavior of "seeing a doctor for the common people on the way of running" is quite similar to "walking doctors" and "barefoot doctors". He remembered that Sun Simiao said in the Great Doctor's Sincerity that "every great healer must calm his mind and resolve his mind. He must have no desire or desire. He first showed great compassion and vowed to save all spiritual suffering". He was filled with emotion. When he worked in the hospital, he did not really understand what a "big doctor" was. Now, after witnessing the embarrassment of poor families, he really understood what it meant to be "no desire, no desire" and what it meant to be "compassion". Only when we understand these things can we understand the sufferings of the world, and we can be merciful and compassionate, and go out of our way to rescue the suffering. In this process, the "big doctor" will never think of any selfish interests. At that moment, he suddenly realized that no matter whether his role was "doctor lacquer" or "secretary lacquer", what he did was to benefit the people, and in this process, he never thought of his own gains and losses.

Qi Yunliang has been thinking about Liu Jianye the "hump". One day when a garment factory of Humen donated more than 50 new clothes to the village, he chose two and give them to Liu Jianye. "Hump" is not tall, but he is good at martial arts--he can ride a bicycle to other villages for shopping. He is a bachelor who always lives a lazy and untidy life. In addition to the wrinkled and dirty clothes, the most frightening thing is his long and messy hair, which stands up for the dirt and oil in it. It was not hair, but a balck cloud. Qi Yunliang goes to find a woman who can cut her hair in the village and paid her a hundred yuan to ask her to cut his hair who quickly waved his hand: "No, no! That guy's really stinky!" Alas, Qi Yunliang gave a sigh--hump often skipped his bath. He really looks like a moving condiment store with variety of rich flavours, which makes people want to smother their noses. But how could one walks around with a black cloud? Borrowing a pair of scissors, Qi Yunliang cut Hump's hair at the entrance of the village. It was the first time he had cut someone's hair. Despite lacking of experience, he got the powerful scissors on his hand to empower him to cut regardlessly. At that time he thought he just put himself in other’s place instead of doing something good--what if that black cloud of hair was on his own head? How miserable it would be! Thinking about this, he cut hair like he was doing himself, not others, a favor. With those black clouds off his head, Hump totally changed his appearance. Small and frail as he was still, he looked much more fresh and neat. Looking himself in the mirror, he was out of surprise. Suddenly he giggled and then raised his thumb up, laughing loudly. Qi Yunliang laughed too; he said :"Who called you the stupid! You are clever!" He mimicked Hump's gesture and gave him a thumb-up back which stretched the smile of Hump and even solicited him to nod cordially. Warm tears were running down his face--Waters were surprisingly running down from his two wizened and hard eyeballs. Following the suggestion of Qi, the village officers decided to buy a television for Hump to spend those lonely nights. Qi also wanted to install a solar water heater for Hump to take hot bath. Hump is at the verge even of the margin of this village, but on the road of poverty alleviation, no one should be left behind.

Seeing the street lamps illuminating the cultural square of the village committee, Qi Yunliang thought spontaneously that it was necessary to take advantage of such favorable conditions. Inspired by that, he decided to teach villagers Tai Chi every Wednesday evening in the square. Patiently and responsibly, he corrected their every movement, including “Grasping the Bird’s Tail” which is soft but powerful and “Cloud Hands” with softy and fluidity. Having toiled on the land throughout the whole life, villagers’ hands were like clay with dry and cracked lines, and their bodies blocks of poplar, so stiff as to move without rhythm. “Learning Tai Chi helps cultivate one’s mind, build one’s body and enhance one’s vigor.” Encouraged by such words of Qi, the poor Cai Xinhua and his wife and Tan Fashan and his wife, villager Li Runlan and Cai Rundi, village doctor Liu Juanhong, village secretary Li Wenman, town agriculture office director Yuan, the retired village women’s director Liu Dajie and others all became Qi’s students. To facilitate contacts, they also set up a WeChat group. Every Wednesday evening, they all followed teacher Qi to practice, livening up the small village shrouded in darkness. This modern and fashionable atmosphere brought a frisson of novelty to the old countryside. Those who often drank, smoked, played cards and stayed up late, were greatly amazed by the orderly movements under the street lamp. With their tight, sallow faces, they all stared at first. And then, they hid in the dark, embarrassed to show up. In 2020, the spring began on Feb, 4, a drizzling day. That was originally the time for bamboo’s growth. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019 delayed the coming of spring in this village. The village seemed to be in a state of war readiness, the tense atmosphere suffusing everywhere. On an early morning, the Secretary of the Town’s Party Committee and the head of the town came here for a meeting, and they clarified the priorities of current work, including strengthening the patrol of temporary monitoring posts, enhancing the health education, timely delivering the related information, strictly monitoring the temperature of those back from pandemic-stricken areas, distributing protective materials such as masks, thermometers and disinfectants, etc. In view of the poor resistance of the old and patients with chronic diseases, Qi Yunliang then agreed with others on the goal of “visiting every household, taking everyone’s temperature, without missing anyone”. This day, his major work was to visit the poor households for taking temperatures. Of the 172 persons in 41 households, 26 lived outside the village, and 18 came back from Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

When he arrived at Liu Peizong's house, Liu's wife Zhang Fuxiang greeted him enthusiastically: "Secretary Qi is here! Come in and sit down!" Hearing this, Liu, who was chopping wood, immediately dropped his chopper and entered the house. Coincidentally, Liu's two daughters, Bao-lian and Juan-lian, were also at home and greeted Secretary Qi in unison. The house looked quite simple, but it was very harmonious. Qi Yunliang remembered that when he first came here, he couldn't remove his feet - the old house was dark, small and precarious. But now, the whole family has moved into the new house, and everyone's face is full of joy; and now, the family has finally taken off the tittle of "the only one in the village who has not completed the renovation of the dangerous house". When taking their temperature, Qi Liangyun told the old couple, "You must wear masks when you go out!" He tried many times to demonstrate the correct way to wear a mask and told them that he would say the same thing when he went to other people's homes. Having lived in the village for a long time, he had quite a good understanding of the villagers' thoughts - they were afraid that they would give their neighbors a laugh by wearing masks.

He took out a red envelope and gave it to Pauline: "You have to study hard at school, do more housework at home, and tell your parents more about epidemic prevention." Pauline nodded immediately, "Don't worry, I'll make sure my parents wear masks when they go out!" Originally, he thought it would be a problem to persuade them to wear masks, but now, it was solved in a roundabout way, and he felt happy. He lamented that some cadres, although very good-hearted, but work in a slightly brutal way, as if always in the right time, said the topic that can not be picked up, and the villagers instead of the more effort the more alienated. Before going out, he also did not forget to talk to the man about the harvest. The old Liu looked quite frank - the original crop would have been more than 60,000 yuan of income, but now affected by the epidemic, it may be a little less, but the overall can still be enough. Qi Yunliang gave a few more words of advice before setting off for another family.

Taking your temperature doesn't seem like much work, but it's time-consuming. Moreover, when he took temperature household by household, he never forgot to ask how the harvest was and whether there were any difficulties. He explained the epidemic in the simplest way, repeatedly emphasizing the importance of "not gathering, going out less and washing hands frequently." It was already 1 p.m after visiting 26 people of 8 households in Xikeng Colleagues touched the belly: "Are you hungry?" But Qi Yunliang smiled and said,"How about going out and visiting the five families in Huangshikeng and Yaoqian Village?" "Go!" "Go!" race against time!" Simple after lunch, they went to the small soap pit, big head and yellow water village. By the time they returned to the village committee at 7:30 p.m., they had visited 38 poor households, measured 126 people's body temperature, followed up 26 poor people living in other places by telephone, monitored 18 outsiders, and distributed more than 150 leaflets. These things can not be done smoothly at all, but sticked to trivial matters. However, at present, only by doing these small things carefully and practically can we achieve real results. After dinner, Qi Liangyun didn’t go to sleep as usual, instead, he went out again—he still had to patrol at the security posts. It turned out that, ever since the battle against the epidemic had started, the villagers had set up temporary monitoring checkpoints at three intersections and used loudspeakers to broadcast epidemic prevention and control knowledge to dissuade people working at other places from returning home temporarily. In addition, they also need to monitor and register the body temperature of commuters, and prevent outside vehicles and outsiders from entering. There were different combinations of village cadres, brothers, couples, fathers and sons, military families and university students on duty at the checkpoints. Everyone’s mind raced and they were still checking carefully. It was 9:30 p.m. when he returned to the village committee after patrolling the security checkpoints. After lying on the bed, he still felt unsettled and depressed, pondering how to do the work tomorrow in a detailed way. In the meanwhile, he realized the disease prevention and control still need to mobilize the villagers. Only by doing this, would we turn the passive protection into active protection. Therefore, why not organize a nationwide health education in the village? Why don't we find someone to demonstrate the process of personal protection? He rolled over from the bed, opened his notebook, and wrote down a poem by Chairman Mao Zedong-“I ask where the plague lord wants to go, the burning paper boats and candles send him away.”

Part 26 Daily chitchat, small red envelopes and tearing down old houses On a Sunday morning, Qi Yunliang left the village committee fully armed, wearing a straw hat, rain shoes, a long-sleeved coat and carrying a bottle. After a 40-minute walk, he arrived at the home of Tan Monsan. Tan was not tall, his skin was yellow and black, and his body was lean. He had big eyes, but the crow’s feet were extraordinarily showing. Although he was 65 years old, he was still the main laborer in his family. However, age can be a terrible curse, his hairline was clearly receding, making his entire forehead all bare; the few remaining hair had also become grey, even the beard around his lips and chin were grey. Although his wife was tall, she had little strength and cannot do physical work at all; his daughter had two children after marriage, but they were still young and need to be taken care of; his son-in-law was young and strong, but he worked in Shenzhen all year round so he couldn’t help with the works at home.

In the distance, two men were walking along the mountain road, both shoulders hoe a hoes and buckets on their hands. It was impossible to distinguish which one was the secretary and which one was the villager. After a half-hour hike, the two men came to a small mountain. Looking at the hills full of pomelo, capers and sugar oranges, the elder Tan slightly smiled-- this is not only his orangery, but also his hope and dream. Elder Tan, used to be a high school student in the village, is more receptive to new knowledge than others. His family had early completed the renovation of a dilapidated two-and-a-half-story concrete bungalow. Although the house cost the family a lot of money, but the state subsidy of 40,000 yuan, let the old Tan feel comfort. Elder Tan is keen to learn planting techniques - the more than 300 citrus trees on the mountain have been growing well and are predicting a good harvest. Once inside the orchard, the two men took their hoes and began to dig the canal, which had to be deep enough to hold more mountain spring water to water the trees. Qi Yunliang held the hoe handle in both hands, and swung it hard to make the top edge of the hoe snap at the ground. Then he bent down hard and dug out a piece of soil. Then, one more swipe, one more downward, and one more piece! This one follows that one, this one follows that one, and this one is completely different from that one.

Although the earth has been gouged out piece by piece, a small hoe could not cut the deep pit inside the dense net of roots. What to do? It had to be the stupidest way -- it had to be dug piece by piece. By hitting it again and again, finally, the whole canal sank completely and transformed into a deep gully. Such manual labor was something that Qi Yunliang has never had before - when he was young, he also did farming work in his hometown. But at that time, he never felt tired. Later, he was engaged in medical work for many years, and rarely had the opportunity to do farming work. Now, his T-shirt was drenched in sweat and clung to his chest and back. His arms were stiff and numb for swinging the hoe. The soles of his feet were covered with sticky mud, which added a little weight and made it difficult for him to move forward.

Back that day, the extremely hot sun was like thousands of golden arrows casting on his shoulders. As Lao Tan was wiping sweat, Qi Yunliang talked about everyday matters with him and said, “In fact, you could connect some pipes set with some switches and nozzles to lead stream water to the Orangery, which could help save you from digging!” However, Lao Tan seemed hesitated, with his lips closed. Moments later, he couldn’t help sighing and told his secret in a lower tone. It turned out that as this Orangery just yielded fruits this year, considering uncertain future harvest, he didn’t intend to invest too much. Otherwise, his income would decline irreversibly. Qi Yunliang felt puzzled, “with such favorable national rural policies, why don’t you invest?” Instead of not believing in policies, the truth was that Lao Tan thought there would be no successor for his business. Lao Tan sighed again, like a patient tipping off his own scars, and spoke out words soaking with pain, "Alas, my son-in-law lives with us. Effectively I can’t treat him like my own son at will. My daughter has to take care of children, and she does not have enough strength to do farm work." Qi Yunliang pondered for a while and advised Lao Tan, "How about letting your daughter persuade your son-in-law's? After all, you can not work throughout your life. It is important to inherit your own family heirlooms." Noticing Lao Tan's worries somewhat eased, he tried to reassure Lao Tan, "What about allowing me to come and talk to your son-in-law when possible." Lao Tan's eyes curved up with joyfulness, “Of course. That's good! " Qi Yunliang said, "Just leave this matter to me. You had better focus on the orange garden. I'll be in the village for two more years and I'll come to give you a hand!" Lao Tan nodded excitedly and said, "I will continue to work hard!"

At noon, they returned from the mountains. After putting the hoe and barrel in Tan's house, Qi Yunliang walked towards the village committee office. The light of the sun at that time was the strongest as if thousands of sunbeams were radiating from the sun. He was sweating again, his hair wispy and his trouser legs muddy. Villagers who saw him would greet him with a smile, “ Mr. Qi, have a nice day!” He responded with a nod and chuckled at the sight of his look. It seemed that he was a villager returning from the mountains rather than a secretary. Although his skin felt clammy and his arms, thighs and waist were punishingly sore suffering from exhaustion, he was in a high spirit. After taking a quick shower, he wrote a sentence in his notebook, “With mud under my feet, whereas there is light on my head.” He came up with it from his recent experience. As time went by, Qi realized how to get along with poor households. He must devote himself to the people. Qi ate with the local people and worked with them in their fields so that he would know the taste of their food, the hardships of their work and the pain in their hearts. Only after he got to know the situation, the poor households would accept him. Once they established a close emotional relationship with him, they would express their true feelings and be willing to take his advice.

A few days after that, after hearing Tan's son-in-law had been back from Shenzhen. Qi talked to the young man immediately. He was quite tall, about 5 feet and 10 inches high, but slightly thin and lean. Qi said straight to the point, "Now, the rural areas in northern Guangdong are developing well. Your father-in-law has laid a good foundation over the years. After you work for two more years, you should put the focus back on the fields and engage in farming." Seeing that the young man was a bit ashamed, he added, "If you grow citrus in your hometown, you can get rich, and at the same time keep company with your children. Isn’t that a better choice? Think about it, you are already the father to two." Qi’s words hit the man as a knockout punch. He immediately agreed, "Well, you are right. I’ll work for two more years before I come back." By the end of 2019, Tan earned nearly 40,000 yuan from the citrus business. Together with other income, Tan’s family has gone beyond the poverty standard. “If his son-in-law can come back and inherit the citrus orchard, the family will never be in danger of returning to poverty,” Qi Yunliang pondered

On another Sunday, it was afternoon when Qi Yunliang came to Li Rongsheng's house. The home looked very simple - white lime painted walls, log-colored cabinets, and a log-colored sofa and a dining table made the whole room look warm and inviting. Following the couple, he went to the orange grove on the hill. The view was quite nice, but the hot wind blowing from all directions punched straight on his cheeks and made him gasp for breath. The man is 47 years old, medium height, with a small flat haircut, and his skin is ginger with a dark coffee color. Obviously, he looks quite off-color- the luster of the skin has become dull, although the eyes are still fairly delicate and pretty, and the forehead and eye wrinkles are as deep as the cracked clay. His body type can hardly be described as "lean", but almost "bony" - the T-shirt on his body seems loose, no thickness, without any weight. His body looks light and thin, like a hollowed out flesh of a gourd scoop. However, this man's temperament is introverted and shy, a smile, revealing a mouthful of white teeth. However, Qi Yunliang could not bear seeing the man smile - the more he smiled, the more sour Qi Yunliang's heart was. You know, this is a uremic patient!

The main sources of income for Li Rongsheng’s family are oranges and three mu of rice on the mountain.His wife, Deng Yuanmei, just turned 30 years old.He has become the main labor force of the whole family with broad shoulders and a strong body. Her face was tanned and flushed from years of hard manual labor.But she, a person, only has two hands, a day from open eyes busy to dark, tired eyes bursts of dark, and there still has a pile of work not finished.They cannot help but decrease planting rice. However, the citrus has to be planted—those are the most important source of income! As for her husband’s serious illness, the woman gained a bare livelihood for the family, which has become the only one in the villages "easy to return to a poor peasant."In 2018, this family’s income was very low, with an annual income of only 6000 yuan. The whole family mainly depends on a monthly allowance of 2000 yuan to maintain lives— 484 yuan per person for four people. However, the orchards cannot be left to wast—added the citrus of the mountains and fields together, which have more than 600 citrus trees, and they are bearing fruit that is all they have to hope for in 2019.

Fertilizing orange orchards is a skilled matter - it depends on the needs of the citrus flowers, leaves and fruits, as well as on the weather conditions. Attentive farmers have concluded that the best time to apply fertilizer is the day before it rains. If the fertilizer is not applied on this day, the citrus harvest will be seriously affected. Considering the lack of labor in Li Rongsheng's family, Qi Yunliang discussed with the couple and made sure to come over on the day before the rain to help fertilize. When walking into the winding orange orchard, Qi Yunliang saw that the garden had been prepared with a small water pump, water pipes, buckets, a high-pressure spray gun and compound fertilizer. The three men began to work together - When Rongsheng and his wife were sprinkling fertilizer under each tree, Qi Yunliang dragged a 60-meter pipe and raised a water gun to spray water under the trees with fertilizer. Sprinkle here, spray there, collaborative labor is high efficiency. When he saw that some slopes were high, no matter how the water gun could not be sprayed, he used the most primitive method - fill a bucket with water and carry it up to water again.

He just carried water bucket by bucket. Although his legs have become flesh sticks without bones, he was still supported by his spirit - only when every fertilizer was dissolved by water can the harvest of this orange orchard be guaranted. Only in this way could the family's life continue. The temperature on the mountain was getting higher and higher, the clouds were like naughty children running from one side to the other, and the sun made the soaked fertilizer release a strong smell. Qi Yunliang, who was busy working, felt his throat was dry and could not swallow saliva. All afternoon, he was in such a humid and hot weather, dragging the snake like pipe around. His sweat did not trickle down drop by drop, but poured out like rain, making his chest and back all wet, as if he had been coated with hot paste. He sighed that he only came to help occasionally, but this kind of work was common to the couple and the husband was even a uremic patient! He was a professional doctor. Of course, he knew what the disease meant. But the couple in his eyes were full of optimism. They never complained or hated. They just worked diligently to try to change their poor days.

How could such a hard-working couple trap their family in poverty? It turned out that illness and tuition were two big black holes in this family. The average annual medical expenses of the host were about 100,000 yuan. Although 95% of it could be reimbursed, the family had lost a major labor force. Two children's tuition was also a heavy wall upon the parents' shoulders. The elder daughter Li Jing, aged 16, was shy and studied at Beijiang Secondary Vocational School in Shaoguan, where the tuition and accommodation cost more than 30,000 yuan per year. The younger daughter Li Yan, aged 10, was lively and studied in Grade 3 at Fuxi School. Elementary school tuition was free, but the spending for stationery and daily life was still high. Of course, compared with the sale of citrus, the number that was accumulated bit by bit seemed extraordinarily large. In order to save money, Li Rongsheng often rode a motorcycle alone to the hospital 30 kilometers away to do dialysis! By doing so, he saved both money on public transport and time his wife spent with him. Every time he thought of that scene -- the lonely man was riding his motorcycle toward the hospital -- Qi Yunliang’s eyes would turn red and his nostrils would turn sour. He felt his tear nearly run down his face. He admired Li Rongsheng -- this man was seemingly so ordinary, but he had a strong will beyond ordinary people. The rare ability to survive was like a gift that wasn’t diluted in poverty, but preserved intact.

In order to help the poor family out of poverty, he suggested that the village arranged a public service job for Deng Yuanmei, which could earn more than 1000 yuan a month. Their two children also received national grants – the elder daughter received 5000 yuan for tuition subsidy and 3000 yuan for living subsidy; The younger one received 3000 yuan for living subsidy. Even so, the family’s life was still hand-to-mouth. At the end of 2019, Qi Yunliang launched an event of “poverty alleviation through consumption, and dedication with love” – the town government bought high-quality rice at the lowest cost price, sold it at 60 yuan per bag of 5 kilograms, and donated the profits to Li Rongsheng. Finally, he sent the money of more than 6800 yuan he raised to Li’s house. During the Spring Festival, Li’s mother, who was in her 70s, wrapped a red envelope of 50 yuan for Qi Yunliang to express her thanks. While Qi pinched the red envelope, his nose felt sore. Such an old man, relying on her thrifty life, collected a dime or two bit by bit, and finally saved 50 yuan. He couldn’t receive such a big gift, and so, of course, he firmly sent it back. But he accepted the old man’s kindness.

In early 2020, Qi Yunliang learned from the news about the poverty alleviation situation in Dongguan City - through the efforts from 2016 to 2019, the living and production conditions of the poor households in the 323 impoverished villages in Shaoguan and Jieyang, the two cities supported by Dongguan, had significantly improved. Poverty alleviation officials helped impoverished villages to pave nearly 2000 kilometers of village roads, implement 512 safe drinking water projects, transform 4768 dilapidated houses, build 626 squares, and establish 339 health stations. The average annual income of impoverished village collectives has grown from 30,800 yuan at the end of 2015 to 153,900 yuan in 2019, with an average annual growth rate as high as 49.5%. He repeatedly read these data and didn't find them boring at all. These numbers indicated his and the people of Xiezhou Village's efforts.

When he stared at the sentence"4768 households have transformed their dilapidated houses", a smile unknowingly crept onto his face. Behind this number, there was a part of his contribution. That day, as usual, he got up at 5 a.m., recited the Tangtou Song Jue and "Bai Zheng Fu", and immediately went out for a run. From Xiezhou Village to Fuxi Town, it was Provincial Highway 246 for 10 kilometers in between. Along the way, whenever he met villagers going to the market, they would stop and greet him with a boastful look - "Secretary Qi, do you want to take my motorcycle?" "Secretary Qi, let me give you a ride?" He waved, saying "Thank you,", but he was

thinking,"although men enjoy accompanying the governor there, they cannot understand his pleasure either." When he passed by the Dayingtou Village group, he found many villagers gathered in the ancestral hall. It turned out that today was the day for the ancestral hall to hold a sacrificial feast. Now, he knew every village group in Xiezhou Village like the back of his hand. He knew that this group had three to four dozen households, and many young people went to work in the Pearl River Delta. The one being worshipped in the ancestral hall was Cai Shibalang. It was said that Cai Shibalang watched the Jinjiang day and night, protecting Xiezhou Village, ensuring its prosperity. Every day, there are devout grandmas coming to the temple to burn incense and worship.

In the evening, some villagers came to his residence and forcibly took him to the "temple feast". He couldn't refuse, so he followed them. There were seven or eight tables set up in front of the temple, with snacks such as biscuits, peanuts, and melon seeds on the table. At six o'clock in the afternoon, led by the drum and gong team, people carrying oil lamps, paper talismans, and paper boats carefully crossed the highway and fields to the Jinjiang River. After taking oaths, offering roosters, lighting the wick in the paper boat, setting off firecrackers, and setting the boat to sea, they prayed for prosperity at home and success in business for those away. Although this remote northern Guangdong village was not wealthy, people diligently managed every day with a heart full of piety. This atmosphere deeply touched Qi Yunliang in the crowd, making him feel like a grain of salt that had completely melted into the daily life of the village. When returning from the river for dinner, he found himself sitting with Lin Huinan, a villager from Dayingtou Village. Old Lin had a tanned face and was a respected figure in the village. As soon as he saw Secretary Qi, he immediately insisted on serving him food, and Qi got up quickly to thank him. It turned out that Old Lin's wife was Qi Yunliang's Tai Chi student who attended his class every Wednesday. Therefore, she always praised Secretary Qi in front of her husband, saying that he was a "doer in the soil". Hence, the two needed no roundabout ways to establish friendship, and they instantly became familiar. Since then, Qi Yunliang often interacted with Old Lin's family, and their relationship was very harmonious.

"Secretary Qi has a wide base among the masses!" These words were said not by others, but by the Secretary of Fuxi Town, Zhu Xiang'en. He asked Qi Yunliang for help: "Secretary Qi, I need to ask you for a favor with the housing renovation project." Demolishing old houses was a difficult task. Take Lin Huinan from Dayingtou Village, for instance, he already had a new house in the village, with white walls and floor tiles. However, the old mud-brick house had been idle, black and broken, and looked very eye-catching by the roadside. Although this house fully met the conditions for demolition, when the village committee and town government tried to persuade Old Lin, he was nowhere to be found; take Nie Qiusheng, a poor household from Xikeng Village, who had a mud-brick house that was on the verge of collapse and was propped up by a tree on the side. Despite the village officials having told him many times, he was unresponsive and refused to demolish it.

After accepting this task, Qi Yunliang decided to talk to Old Lin first. Old Lin, who was over 60, usually took care of his grandson in the county town and was rarely seen. His three sons were all married and had bought new houses in the county town. His old house in the village had been idle, raising some chickens and ducks. Seizing the opportunity of Old Lin's return to the village, Qi Yunliang visited him and brought up the issue of house renovation. Old Lin frankly expressed his worries, but when he heard Qi Yunliang's explanation, he immediately nodded with a smiling face, saying: "No problem!" Old Lin trusted Qi Yunliang and opened up about his concerns: "I'm afraid that if I demolish the house, the policy will change!" Qi Yunliang immediately reassured him: "The policy will definitely not change!" Qi Yunliang further explained: "You are eligible for subsidies if you demolish your house now. If you wait until later, there will be no subsidy." Seeing Old Lin still hesitating, he provided reassurance: "If you trust me, I will personally fund some of the cost for demolishing the mud-brick house. We will then sign a guarantee, I assure you that you will receive the subsidy!" Old Lin's eyes sparkled and he asked, "Really?" Qi Yunliang said, "We can find a witness!" Only then did Old Lin feel at ease and say, "As long as it's you, Secretary Qi, I can do it!" That night, Qi Yunliang, with a guarantor, brought the agreed-upon cash, a guarantee, and a signed receipt to Old Lin's house, and Old Lin quickly signed it.

When Qi Yunliang arrived at the Xikeng Village, he saw a beautiful picture of the northern Guangdong countryside, filled with low greens, clear streams, tranquil beauty, and plain warmth. However, when his gaze fell on Nie Qiusheng's house, he couldn't help but sense a disharmony. The old mud-brick house was not only worn out, but also twisted, propped up by tree poles on the side wall, nearly collapsing. When Qi knocked on the door of Nie's house, the first thing he said was, "How is your mother's health recently?" He first took the old woman's blood pressure, told her to rest well, then measured her son's blood pressure, reminding him to put less salt and oil in daily meals, and drink less alcohol. He then shifted the topic to praise the male homeowner for being a leading figure in poverty alleviation in the village. "Look, more than 800 citrus trees have been planted, many chickens and ducks are raised at home, and the income this year must be good. I am really proud of you!" Seeing the man's smile, he timely followed up, "Now, your eldest son has a job and earns 5,000 yuan a month, which is great!"

Observing old Nie's smile, Qi Yunliang got to the point, "Old Nie, the old brick house in your home is vacant and the walls are broken and slanted, it's very dangerous. Can you cooperate with the renovation of dilapidated buildings in the town and demolish it?" Nie Qiusheng's smile froze, and he began to tremble, as if he was being pricked with a needle. He lowered his voice, "Secretary Qi, you don't know, that room not only contains a lot of junk, but also the old woman's coffin!" Then he added, "And, the house belongs to my younger brother who is now living in Renhua County." Qi Yunliang nodded, "Even if it belongs to your younger brother, you can persuade him!" Seeing old Nie remain silent, Qi Yunliang devised a plan, "Come, Old Nie, let's calculate the account today! In these three years, the state has subsidized your family with 70,000 yuan each year! For this red brick house built by your family, the state has also subsidized 40,000 yuan!" Seeing Old Nie nodding, Qi Yunliang continued, "Demolishing the old house, although it will cause you temporary inconvenience, it changes the appearance of our village, making it beautiful! Besides, there are subsidies for demolishing the old house. We should be grateful!" Old Nie's face turned red and white in turns. He pondered for a moment and said, "Secretary Qi, don't worry. On the first day of the lunar month next month, I will move the coffin to elsewhere. I will persuade my younger brother."

Another evening in the northern Guangdong countryside.

After walking out of the Xikeng Village, the night had fallen deeply. In the moonlight, the yellow mud path was winding in front of Qi Yunliang. After he walked past, turned a bend, another mud path appeared, as if the path would never end. The soil moistened by dew gave off a faint earthy smell, which made him take a deep breath and slowly exhale. His feet stepping on the floating soil made a rustling sound, and there was an indescribable pleasure in his heart. Just now, he saw a message on his mobile phone, "By the end of 2019, the goal of poverty alleviation in Dongguan City is almost completed, with a total of 15,000 households and 51.6 thousand people lifted out of poverty, the poverty alleviation rate reached 99.57%; 618 collective economic income increase projects were launched, helping 323 poor villages to increase their average annual income from 30.8 thousand yuan in 2015 to 153.9 thousand yuan in 2019; Dongguan City also aided Zhaotong City in Yunnan, with a population of 191.2 thousand people. The aid cooperation project benefited more than 800,000 people, and 5 out of 6 national-level poor counties in Zhaotong have been lifted out of poverty." — He found his cheeks were wet. He knew that by 2020, the task of lifting all poor people and all poor villages out of poverty would definitely be 100% completed!

At this moment, Xiezhou Village was as beautiful as a photographic work — the dark green sky with a crescent moon hanging high; the farmhouses were like chunks of chocolate cake; the lights in the windows were like crystal pearls. Huh! A gust of warm wind blew, making the leaves rustle and also blowing Qi Yunliang's eyes hazy. Suddenly, he remembered his first night in the small village. At that time, he stood at the entrance of the village committee, seeing a picture of the southern Guangdong countryside; now, he is walking in this picture and has become an indispensable part of the scenery. He knew that he had left the best part of his life here; he knew that after these days and nights, he had completely become a person of Xiezhou Village!

Chapter 3: Poverty Alleviation Action in Haifeng Red Village The journey from Dongguan Humen High-Speed Rail Station to Shanwei takes over an hour. The train compartment is clean and tidy, spacious, everyone has their own seat, and there is space for luggage. The train, like a newly awakened lion, gathers its strength and accelerates forward. Shanwei high-speed rail station creates a minimalist modern style — clean, bright, orderly. The bus departing from here will take you to Haifeng County in one hour. Obviously, the county town is a completely different place from the high-speed railway station — under the scorching sun, crowds and motorcycles mix and make the crossroads present a disorderly hustle and bustle.

Haifeng is a place full of mystique in Eastern Guangdong. When you step into this small town, it feels as if you have entered those English towns of the Middle Ages - you and history are intertwined. However, this place does not have the coldness of England but is filled with heat and humidity. This county in southeastern Guangdong, named after "Nanhai Wufeng", has been in use for more than 2000 years. This small city of Lingnan is the last frontier of the land - the winding coastline is like the edge of a sun hat, and the abundant water vapor and hot sunshine stimulate plant growth, regulate air circulation, which is the exact opposite of the dry and waterless northwest. It is impossible for the bone-chilling cold of the northern winter to occur here. Everywhere, there is a vibrant reproduction of life - heavy rain and high temperature, huge banyan trees and kapok trees, banana trees and plumeria trees everywhere, groups of chickens, ducks, and geese. This land has a strong ability to heal. Those surfaces exposed by road construction or building houses are strangely flesh-colored, but soon, green vegetation quickly covers these scars.

Traveling allows your body to exchange space and experience unexpected things. Now, you stand upstairs staring at the county town in the early morning - the sun has not risen yet, the hill presents a brown curve, and the buildings are dim in the fog; during the day, the entire county town is busy with traffic and people streaming; at night, smoke rises from the big food stalls, and people, comforted by a bowl of Mashed Fish Congee, sweep away the hardships brought by labor, and sleep peacefully. However, in this county town, you always feel like walking on thin ice - because you don't understand the local dialect, so you can't communicate smoothly with people. When you try to eavesdrop on those strange Fulo speeches, it seems like invading someone else's territory, trying to enter another world, another region, another form of civilization. In this county town, you can always feel a strong sense of alienation. It seems as if you have come to some place at the end of the world, a place that has exhausted all possibilities.

One's Haifeng In Haifeng, history exists in a condensed way - not only can you witness the present, but you can also witness the history of 100 years ago. This county town is like a castle suspended in time, still continuing the noise of the revolution. Haifeng is the red capital of Guangdong province - Zhou Enlai, He Long, Liu Bocheng, Xu Xiangqian, and other old revolutionaries have all left their footprints here; Haifeng is also a city full of symbolic significance - just like London is Dickens's London, Haifeng is still Peng Pai's Haifeng. Walking through the streets and alleys, passing through the numerous small shops, squeezed in the bustling market, you cannot escape Peng Pai's gaze. In Haifeng, Peng Pai is everywhere - his name appears in people's casual talks, and also in the plaques of schools, hospitals, and parks. Peng Pai was born on this land by the South Sea, and of course, he loved his hometown. However, his love was different from others - because he saw the reason for the painful lesions of his hometown. As the best youth of Haifeng, Peng Pai brought great changes to this county. So if you don't understand Peng Pai, you can't understand Haifeng - the characteristics of Haifeng are the characteristics of Peng Pai.

Finally, you see those two large characters—Red Square. The Red Square is like the earliest gate of the Chinese revolutionary history—everything that comes after has to start from this gate. The Soviet regime established here is the first county-level Soviet regime in Chinese history. You are deeply shocked by the red color here—the red streets, red walls, red gates. The dazzling red forms a strong visual stimulus, making you tremble all over and show respect. The statue standing on the Red Square is not tall, but it is very expressive—that young man is wearing a suit, his hair is blowing, and he is looking into the distance. It seems that he has seen a completely different world, so he is full of confidence. His face is especially handsome and soft, even with a bit of innocence and mischief. This seemingly simple and energetic young man has done earth-shattering things.

In Peng Pai's life, what best embodies his revolutionary spirit is his attitude towards poverty. Poverty, on this red land on the southern coast, not only aroused rolling tears, but also aroused angry denunciations and violent changes. Although Peng Pai only had 33 years of life, he exhausted his life to shout for the poor. His ideal life is—"Let all peasants have fields to farm, books to read, and houses to live in". On the surrounding wall of the Red Square, there is a bas-relief of "Peng Pai Burning Fields". You see the young Peng Pai holding a torch high, and the field deeds in the box under his feet have been burned, and the surrounding peasants are looking at him with admiring eyes. Peng Pai's actions were shocking and not only shocked the entire Chinese history, but also the world history. When he lit the field deeds, he not only burned a pile of paper with words on it, but also illuminated the secret of that era. In the class system at that time, class consciousness was deeply rooted and everyone was familiar with their roles. If someone deviates a little, it is allowed, because everyone knows that that person cannot completely get rid of his class attributes. However, if a son of a landlord tries to resist the usual practices of his parents and even burns the field deeds with fire to prevent peasants from paying rent, he is standing on the opposite side of his own class and will be completely abandoned by the entire class. In the fire, Peng Pai became a new person—a person full of ideals, willing to put into practice for ideals, and ultimately died for ideals.

In 1922, Peng Pai, who graduated from the Department of Politics and Economics of Waseda University in Japan, went deep into the various rural areas of Haifeng County and began to engage in peasant movements. Before that, he had also conducted surveys in rural areas of Japan. However, the poverty he saw in his hometown shocked him greatly. At that time, the life of the peasants in the HaiLuFeng area was extremely difficult, not only because of the high rent, high exploitation, and endless levies and miscellaneous taxes like wool, but also, when natural disasters such as typhoons and heavy rains occurred, the landlord did not avoid rent, which made the peasants' life even more difficult. At that time, the cultural level of the peasants was very low, most of them couldn't even write their names, and if they had a lawsuit with the landlord, the peasants always lost. Therefore, those hard-working people worked hard for all seasons, but they were still struggling in the trap of poverty. "Singing mountain songs makes a noise, the peasant brothers are really sad! In the morning, the bowl of food is sweet potato porridge, and the bowl of food at night is sweet potato soup. Half hungry and half full are hungry, and there is no beam in the living room. Set up two thatched huts, seven leaks and eight leaks to reveal the moonlight."

At this moment, Peng Pai came. He said: "This is the emperor's country, who dares to sing revolutionary songs? Oh, it's me." He also said: "People who do not labor should not eat!" Peng Pai tried to analyze the stagnant and decaying society, and explore why farmers who work hard to farm do not eat enough. As an observer, Peng Pai saw a huge secret behind the phenomena that most people ignore—why are farmers so poor? It turns out that the landlord class is like a terrible parasite, sucking blood and marrow on farmers. Peng Pai is great because his observation method is different from ordinary people—he never deliberately avoids contradictions, and does not let linear thinking trouble him; he not only observes his hometown, but also reflects on the land issues faced by the whole of China and the world; he compares the situations in the East and the West, critically analyzes China's problems; at the same time, Peng Pai is not an idealist who is confined to the desk, but a great practitioner who dares to go to reality. When he observed those unsettling poverty phenomena, he didn't hide in a small building to be an one, but went to the laboring masses, trying to explore a solution in practice.

So, Peng Pai took off his student clothes and put on the coarse cloth clothes of the peasants; so he "ate up the tea and rice of the four townships, and almost every day he went out early and returned late". In the fields, he exposed the crimes of the landlords exploiting the peasants in various forms, inspiring the peasants' class consciousness. His behavior is quite similar to that of British writer Orwell (whose representative works are "The Road to Wigan Pier", "1984", "Animal Farm")—in order to understand the lower class of England, Orwell once mingled with tramps, slept on the same bed, drank tea from the same can, and worked with miners at the bottom of the mine. After some investigations, Peng Pai saw the miserable life of the peasants and predicted that if the peasants unite, they will explode with great energy. He said: "Before the Revolution of 1911, the peasants of Haifeng have always belonged to the oppressing class of the Manchu emperors, bureaucrats, gentry, and landlords. The peasants are as afraid of landlords and gentry and officialdom as mice are afraid of cats. They moaned in the landlord’s lids, the gentry’s fan heads, and the official’s chains." "Today, among our proletariat, there are none who do not feel the difficulty of life oppressed by the economy; those who are diligent in labor all day and are not full of three meals are quite a few; and because the cost of living is difficult to support, as selling wives, trafficking children, and abortion, are also emerging one after another, and those who abandon their right to live and commit suicide also exist."

Peng Pai became a dynamic speaker, with clear and sharp vision. The words he spoke in the fields were like drums and gongs, opening the minds of the farmers. The words Peng Pai spoke were simple and plain, but the principles he explained were profound and complex. He continually expanded the farmers' thinking, telling them that things like "three covers and a chicken head" (which referred to landlords' exploitations and insults to tenant farmers during rent collection and additional taxes) could be completely eliminated... "We farmers are the main class of world production. The existence of human life entirely relies on the grains we painstakingly produce. Who dares to deny our greatness and sacredness! Therefore, once we become aware, we unite all the farmers in the county, organize farmers' associations, jointly unite and resist all unreasonable social systems, and regain our right to survive..."

In the end, the peasants rose as a class — this was not a drama on stage, but a scene in real life. In July 1922, Peng Pai and five farmers established the first Peasant Association in Guangdong Province — the "Six-Person Peasant Association". Later, the association grew like a snowball, from a few people to hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and finally hundreds of thousands. In the "Guangdong Peasant Association Charter" in 1923, Peng Pai proposed a program — "For the transformation of farmers' lives, the development of agriculture, the self-government of farmers, and the popularization of farmers' education". In 1924, Peng Pai went to Guangzhou to lead the peasant movement and founded the Peasant Movement Training Institute. In 1927, he participated in the Nanchang Uprising. In November, he led the people of Haifeng to do something that shocked the whole country — convened a county-wide congress of workers, peasants, and soldiers, and established the Haifeng Soviet Government of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers. This was the first time in Chinese history that the flag of Soviet power was raised, which initiated the proletarian revolution in China.

In the book "Haifeng Peasant Movement", Peng Pai detailed the specific measures of the peasant association — adjusting tenant relations, preventing landlords from arbitrarily raising rents, leading farmers to reduce interest and disasters, asking landlords to reduce rents in case of crop failure, resolving disputes between members, abolishing wharf taxes, opening peasant pharmacies, peasant schools, and agricultural banks, reclaiming market management rights, dredging rivers and lakes, abolishing feudal customs, etc. Peng Pai was very good at carrying out struggles based on the actual interests of farmers, and he paid great attention to struggle strategies. In the early stages of the revolution, he focused on developing production and improving farmers' lives. After gradually guiding the movement, he transformed it from an economic movement to a political struggle. Today, when you listen to the ballad "Tenant Scolding Landlord" created by Peng Pai in Haifeng, you will still feel your blood boil —

"Dong ya! Dong! Dong! Dong! The tenant scolds the landlord: The tenant farms the field to death; The landlord sits at home eating white rice! If you work hard, you starve; if you're lazy, you're fine! It's you who don't think! It's not bad luck! Farmer! Wake up! Farmer! Don't be stupid! The land is made by heaven! Heaven gives it to everyone! If you don't farm, take a rest!"

Now, when you come to this red land, it is only nearly a hundred years since Peng Pai organized the Peasant Association. The Haifeng countryside today has undergone tremendous changes. Haifeng people are proud of the construction of two provincial-level new rural demonstration zones — the Lotus Zone involves 3 administrative villages and 22 natural villages, following the construction idea of "one river, one road, five gardens", they have invested 160 million yuan in construction funds, improved various infrastructures, built a number of rural tourism facilities, and the characteristics of Chaoshan folk houses are very prominent. This area has also deeply integrated the tea industry with tourism, effectively boosting the income of local farmers; Haifeng County has invested nearly 200 million yuan in the construction of the Xinshan Lujing Zone, creating five administrative villages such as Xinshan and Chikou. By the end of 2019, all constructions were basically completed. The county has integrated red relics, landscape resources, and industrial economy, developed leisure sightseeing, cultural tourism, modern agriculture, and other rural economic industries, built a new type of industrial chain, and become the viewing point of the Guangdong East Rural Revitalization Strategy Field Meeting and the Guangdong Party Building and Rural Revitalization and Red Village Party Building Demonstration Project Field Meeting. The daily number of tourists at peak times exceeds 20,000.

The current countryside of Haifeng is not the same as Peng Pai saw back then. By implementing measures such as agricultural industry development, rural infrastructure construction, the "toilet revolution", "three clearances and three demolitions", the revitalization and development of the countryside have achieved significant results. By the end of 2019, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in Haifeng County reached 31,310 yuan, an increase of 9.3%; the per capita disposable income of rural residents was 17,457 yuan, an increase of 10.4%; the growth rate of per capita disposable income of rural residents was 1.1 percentage points higher than that of urban residents. The county also vigorously promotes the construction of characteristic boutique villages — raising 140 million yuan, selecting 1 to 2 administrative villages in each town, a total of 15 villages in the county, implementing a residential environment rectification and quality upgrade project, and fully implementing the construction of new rural demonstration villages in 37 provincial relative poverty villages. Finally, through leading by example and extending the scope, the county has deeply promoted the rectification of the residential environment, achieving a complete facelift for the countryside. By the end of 2019, the 9089 registered households in Haifeng County had a total of 27,999 poor people, with a per capita disposable income of more than 15,000 yuan, achieving 100% stable poverty alleviation according to the "eight haves" standard; all 37 provincial poverty-stricken villages have reached the poverty alleviation standard.

When you read these numbers in Haifeng County, what you experience is a sense of magical displacement — the various artifacts preserved in the Red Palace and Red Square Museum allow you to vividly see the hardship of Haifeng peasants 100 years ago, and these current figures, however, show the emergence of a different state. You will be skeptical — in this remote place, have all the farmers been lifted out of poverty? Have all the poverty-stricken villages been taken off the list? You are determined to do what Peng Pai did in the 1920s, and visit the villages under the jurisdiction of the county to investigate on the ground. Only by observing the growth of crops in the fields, looking at the furnishings in the farmers' living rooms, and talking about their sources of income, will you truly respect these numbers.

Poping Village Although it's already midwinter, the cold in Lingnan seems to have been halved. Driving from Haifeng County to Lian'an Town in the southwest, it took 20 minutes to snake through the rural roads. According to the "Huizhou Region Place Names", legend has it that during the Qing Dynasty, representatives from Shitang, Tianxin, and Youpu (past "Yue" is equivalent to today's "Xiang") pledged to avoid fighting and promised that each "Yue" would not participate in fights but unite to protect the safety of the people. Hence the name "Lian'an". On the right side of that rural road, there are telephone poles one after another, pulling long power lines. However, the left side of the road is empty. The winding road is covered with asphalt and is quite flat, with vast fields on both sides. The houses standing in the distance look very small, like thin miniature shells.

After crossing a bridge, we arrived in Lian'an Town. There is a saying in the town: "When Lian'an is ripe, Haifeng is full", which shows the importance of the town. With a total area of 50 square kilometers, Lian'an Town has a population of over 40,000, 30,000 mu of arable land, and 15,000 mu of fish ponds. It is not only an old revolutionary base in Haifeng County, but also one of China's important wetlands, and a home to water birds. The town is crisscrossed with rural roads and rivers, and the fields are vast. It is backed by Baxian Zhuangyuan Mountain and faces Changsha Yinhai Beach, with a fertile piece of land in between, it is a place for farming and living. In fact, this is not your first time to Lian'an Town. You've been here three or four times before. However, the town is strange and every time you find something new. Therefore, you realized that a superficial interview would yield very little. When a writer tries to describe a place, going there once is not enough. If conditions permit, you should visit repeatedly at different times to experience the changes that occur there.

Lian'an Town has no tall buildings, everything is spread out under the sun like a pancake, waiting for your inspection. On both sides of the narrow streets, there are three or four-story small buildings, each seeming to be a replica of the next. The town doesn't look like a city or a village, it has a feeling of semi-urbanization. There are intersections here too, but they are quite narrow and miniature; all types of vehicles drive here, but most people walk. You once ate at a large food stall in the center of the town—red plastic stools are placed next to wooden round tables, and diners sit around the tables in groups— it looks no different from other small restaurants elsewhere. However, you remember the taste here: "It feels like everything I've eaten before is counterfeit!" Whether it's the fried fish in the big iron pot, the crab with a double layer of membrane, or the light pink shrimp, the taste is extremely delicious, 100 times the flavor in your memory. That strong aroma makes your mouth feel like it has blossomed, making you feel comfortable all over.

Exploring the source of the delicious food in the small shop, you learn that Lian'an County is not only the most important grain silo and vegetable production base in Haifeng, but also a seafood base. The mud crab, dark feather crab, double membrane crab, sand shrimp, white thorn shrimp, flower shrimp, oysters, turtles, etc., produced here are all hot commodities in the seafood market. The ingredients in that large food stall are naturally very fresh and cooked using countryside handcraft methods, so of course, it tastes better than the food from city hotels with assembly line operations. In fact, after modern industrial technology has provided people with a large number of cheap fast foods, there is not much nutritional value in those instant noodles and canned food, and these foods have greatly damaged the original taste system of humans. People living in cities, because they have eaten too much junk food, have become pale and weak. Leaving the town center, the car heads to Poping Village. The asphalt road, under the onslaught of the heatwave, becomes oily black. Bushes and winding rivers appear on both sides of the road; next to the river are vast fields, leaving brown rice stubble; the white plastic greenhouses are neatly arranged, one next to the other; the mountains are like robust muscles, stretching and winding to the horizon; white smoke from burning wasteland rises at the foot of the mountains, blending with the mist; the white-walled and black-tiled farmhouses sporadically stand by the river. These scenes combined are like a symphony, rising and falling, graceful and delicate. The river you see originates from the first mountain range in Eastern Guangdong, the Lotus Mountain Range, and it's the Daye River. The color of this river is not heavy and stagnant yellow, but a cheerful and bright ice blue. When the Daye River meanders through Lian'an Town, it not only forms a beautifully curved ribbon but also creates a picturesque primitive style on both sides of the ribbon.

On both sides of the river bank, clusters of yellow-green grass grow, forming a rare and natural wetland here. The various water birds that feed, play, and breed on the river bank regard the wetland as their natural home. Eventually, this place becomes an important area on the international East Asian migratory bird route, attracting not only endangered birds to overwinter - such as the Black-faced Spoonbill, the White Spoonbill, the Purple Swamphen (with a red bird crown, blue spots on the belly, and a predominantly black back, its feathers shiny) - but also making the egrets permanent residents here. Now, there are hundreds of birds in your sight, standing by the river, one after another, as densely packed as soldiers in white uniforms. When they fly, the flapping of their wings is entirely on the same frequency, and their snow-like belly and back are completely exposed. Obviously, they have already adapted to human cars because, apart from flying low along the riverbank, they are not panicked and do not plan to leave. Although the wetland is a place of labor for the nearby villagers, the people of Haifeng have always regarded water birds as mascots, and they have never resisted water birds coming to forage in their daily farming activities. Therefore, a harmonious scene is formed here where humans are busily working and water birds are gathering to forage.

However, a beautiful environment and a prosperous life are not proportional. Poping Village, located on the banks of the Daye River, is a provincially designated poor village in Guangdong Province. Now, this village is paired with the Nanwan Sub-district Office of Longgang District, Shenzhen, the Policy Research Office of Longgang District, and the Agriculture Bureau of Shanwei City (which became the Shanwei Municipal Party School after June 2019) for assistance. Zhou Jianhua, the captain of the poverty alleviation team and the first secretary of Poping Village, is waiting for you at the village committee. He has a medium stature, thick eyebrows, big eyes, short flat-top hair, dark skin, and a slight smile at the corner of his mouth. He introduces that the village covers an area of about 2.8 square kilometers, with 2800 mu of arable land, 265 mu of fish ponds, and 850 mu of mountain forest area.

When Zhou Jianhua walks you through the small village, you are surprised to find that the village is not in a state of decline or decay, but maintains a kind of simple and dignified cleanliness. The villagers are neatly dressed, the open spaces in front of the farmhouses are swept clean, all the village roads appear smooth and unobstructed, and the fields within sight are tidied up very neatly. This makes you feel relieved. You remember the chimneys, blast furnaces, coal factories, and slag heaps you saw in industrial towns and feel that so-called "civilization" or "progress" sometimes swallows people into its own belly. However, how to keep the beauty and purity of the rural world while allowing the farmers living in it to have a high quality of life is a problem facing rural development. In 2016, in this small village with 733 households, there were 78 poor households with a total of 187 people. By the end of 2019, all 187 people had been lifted out of poverty, achieving the goal of "two cares and three guarantees". But how were these achievements achieved?

According to Secretary Zhou Jianhua, after the village working team came to Poping Village and learned that the main economic sources of the villagers were agricultural planting and migrant work, they promptly reported the situation to the aid units: Nanwan Sub-district Office of Longgang District, Shenzhen, Policy Research Office of Longgang District, and Agriculture Bureau of Shanwei City. The aforementioned units studied the situation seriously and accurately implemented measures. By seizing the "bull's nose" of "industry-driven poverty alleviation", in combination with Poping Village's revolutionary history, they developed a plan emphasizing the two main development lines of modern agriculture and characteristic tourism, striving to change "blood transfusion assistance" into "hematopoietic poverty alleviation". The aid unit first invested 2 million yuan to buy shares in the Hailong Investment Building project, enabling the village collective to guarantee an income of 100,000 yuan every year. It also rented out 265 mu of fish ponds, bringing in an annual income of 580,000 yuan. Under the drive of the village cooperative, they built a 160-mu chili pepper planting base and an 80-mu South American shrimp farming base.

Rice is the crop that farmers in Poping Village plant the most. However, when the spring plowing season arrives, some farmers feel a pinch and don't have extra money to buy seeds and fertilizer. After talking with the farmers, you realize that it's very difficult for them to save money - someone at home is always getting sick, someone always needs to buy clothes, they always have to entertain relatives and friends. Farmers are always living under tremendous pressure, and under this pressure, they often make impulsive spending mistakes. Furthermore, the small village is by the sea and often affected by natural disasters such as typhoons, which make crop yields very unstable. For these reasons, the work team not only distributes high-quality rice from Yuan Longping to poor households for free but also provides them with fertilizer and helps them buy insurance, among other beneficial farming measures. They encourage poor households to vigorously plant high-quality rice to increase family income. Sure enough, with the help of poverty alleviation cadres, the villagers greatly boosted their confidence in planting rice, expanding the area of rice in the village to over 1,000 mu.

Although Poping Village, like other poor villages, has the problem of low income for farmers, this village has an extraordinary history. How to make poverty alleviation work innovative after grasping the most basic issue of good agricultural production is another problem facing the work team. Zhou Jianhua leads the work team members to study the village's revolutionary history carefully. It turns out that this village has rich red resources - there are 35 martyrs rated by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in the village, 22 of whom are from the Ya Qian Peng Ziran village. This result is closely related to Peng Pai's peasant movement. It turns out that in 1922, Peng Pai came to Poping Village to promote the revolution and received full support from Peng Gui, Peng Yuanzhang, Peng Yuanyue, and others in the village. Under the leadership of Peng Pai, they set up a "peasant school" in the village to teach villagers to read and write while promoting revolutionary ideas. By the spring of 1923, Poping Village had established a peasant association, formed a peasant army, set up a branch, and became the first "Red Guard Village" among the surrounding eighteen townships to start a revolution. However, during the Great Revolution (1924-1927), Poping Village was brutally besieged more than 10 times by the reactionary forces of the Kuomintang, and over 100 members of the Red Guards and a group of revolutionary masses were killed. A village group with more than 170 people had 81 killed and 15 households wiped out. Nine people from Peng Gui's family participated in the revolution, and eight of them gave their lives in the brutal struggle.

Zhou Jianhua and his teammates also went deep into the homes of impoverished households to ask them about the time when Peng Pai was starting a revolution. Every household would bring up the story of "Peng Pai gave 12 white horses" — originally, in 1927, when Haifeng County established the first county-level Soviet government in China, many villages held celebrations, and Poping Village also celebrated by inviting an opera troupe to perform. On that day, in the county town's Red Square, Peng Pai gave 12 white horses captured from the enemy to the peasant army in Poping Village as a congratulations. When Peng Gui and the peasant army rode these white horses back to the village, all the villagers came out to welcome them. They could be seen riding majestically on white horses, galloping around the village, raising clouds of dust. The peasant army also performed fire circle drills in front of the stage, which made the villagers cheer and jump for joy. Even today, when people talk about the grandeur of that day, their eyes still light up, and they are filled with emotion.

In Haifeng County's 203 administrative villages, the history of Poping Village is completely red. How to make good use of this historical heritage? It turns out that Haifeng County has invested 10.15 million yuan for the construction planning of all administrative villages in the county. The county decided to vigorously develop "agricultural sightseeing", "folk farmhouses", "leisure sports" and other rural tourism industries in surrounding rural areas such as Lianan Town, Lotus Mountain, Dahuhu Wetland, Huangqiang Forest Farm, and Nanyue Ancient Post Road, to stimulate new vitality in the villages. The county upgraded the red villages such as Poping Village in Lianan Town, Xinshan Village in Fucheng Town, and Fuzhuyuan Village in Huangqiang Forest Farm, and ultimately built characteristic villages. Currently, the county has one provincial-level cultural and characteristic village, one provincial-level rural tourism boutique route, and five provincial-level leisure and rural tourism demonstration spots. The Poverty Alleviation Office of Haifeng County has integrated the poverty alleviation funds of all the impoverished households in the county who are capable of working, invested in red tourism poverty alleviation projects, and distributes dividends to impoverished households at a rate of 7% per year. Currently, among the 36 poor households in Poping Village who are capable of working, the annual dividend per household can reach 1,400 yuan.

The once messy and scarred Poping Village is now tidy and clean, peaceful and beautiful. Old sites such as squares, revolutionary martyrs' memorials, and the homes of martyrs have been repaired and rebuilt. When you come to Ya Qian Peng village group, it has become a base for patriotic education and party member integrity education. The scene of Peng Pai initiating a revolution in the village in the 1920s has been turned into a large mural on the wall; the former residences of martyrs like Peng Gui and Peng Yuanzhang are all neatly painted; and the old site of the peasant association, which was once dilapidated with a weathered wall, has now been turned into an exhibition hall with new blue walls and a red door. The interior of the hall is quite modern. Zhou Jianhua proudly said, "The village committees of Poping Village in Lian'an Town, Xinshan Village in Fucheng Town, and Yonghong Village in Meilong Town have been recommended by Shanwei City as excellent examples of village planning and are being promoted throughout Guangdong Province." The house of Huang Xiaoxiong, although small, is very neat—the tiled floor is swept clean, all kinds of items are neatly arranged, even the pots and bowls on the stove are polished shiny, and the bathroom is also tiled, which is pleasing to the eye. Clearly, this home must have a diligent hostess. Indeed, his wife Ye Shaohua looks very capable—she has neat short hair that reaches her ears, and although she is 56 years old, she has fair skin, clear eyebrows and eyes, and looks quite elegant and beautiful. She is wearing a brown sweater and holding a little girl in her arms who is wearing a pink top. "This is my granddaughter who is just over a year old!" The grandmother looks at the flower-like girl with eyes full of love and pity. 59-year-old Huang Xiaoxiong stands aside smiling, his short black hair is mixed with some silver. However, he appears quite masculine—aside from his thick eyebrows and small eyes, high nose and wide mouth, he is very tall, about 1.8 meters. He has wide shoulders, a thin waist, strong legs, and not a bit of excess fat on his body.

This man is wearing a black and white long-sleeved t-shirt, his smile is serious and humble, but does not lose his dignity. Everything seems so wonderful, however, you always feel that something is wrong. When you look again at this man who is already a grandfather, you suddenly realize—he is extremely dark-skinned. Having lived in Guangdong for over ten years, you have grown accustomed to the unique dark skin of the local people. Due to long-term exposure to tropical sunlight, people living in Lingnan receive more sunlight than those living in the northwest, so their skin appears darker. However, when you see Huang Xiaoxiong's skin color, you still take a deep breath in shock. That kind of black can be described as charred—whether it's the face, neck or hands—all seem as if they have been roasted on charcoal. However, that degree of charred blackness does not reach the color of African people, but is just a bit darker than the people you see in daily life. Against this charred black skin, this man's teeth stand out from his face, appearing particularly white. When he opens his mouth to speak, you take another breath in shock—he is extremely fluent in Mandarin! After forty years of reform and opening up, most of the middle-aged and young people living in Guangdong can speak Mandarin proficiently, but those who are nearly sixty years old usually stumble when speaking Mandarin. If they can master it proficiently, they must have ventured out, not just limited their life radius to the village. Therefore, you are full of curiosity about this man in front of you.

As the head of the household, he talked about his children: the eldest daughter, now 32, married and moved to Guangxi, where she had three children; the younger daughter, 30, married and moved to Lufeng and had two children. Aside from taking care of her children, she also assembled jewelry at home; the youngest son, 23, worked odd jobs in a jewelry factory in Meilong Town, and his income was very unstable - he earned more when there was work, and nothing when there wasn't. On average, he made about 3,000 yuan a month. After deducting 800 yuan for rent and some daily living expenses, there was barely anything left to save. Today, by a fortunate coincidence, the eldest daughter, Huang Shuying, who lives far away in Guangxi, returned to her mother's home. As she walked out of the inner room, you are taken aback—this woman had a thick, black ponytail, wore a white T-shirt and black pants, had skin as white and delicate as her mother's, and was quite pretty. She warmly invited you to drink tea, exuding youthful vitality all over her. You couldn't help but wonder—why would such a tidy and respectable family, who treated people so kindly and thoughtfully, struggle with life?

As it turns out, the cause of this family's poverty was a sudden severe illness. It was in 2013 when Huang Xiaoxiong discovered that the lymph nodes in his neck had swollen, he rushed to the hospital for an examination. To his utmost surprise, he was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer! This news hit the family like a bomb, leaving them feeling numb. What to do? Ah, don't think too much, just get to the hospital! The two months he spent in the hospital were a dual torment for Huang Xiaoxiong - his physical body and his spirit were in great pain. After various tests, he prepared for major surgery. Despite enduring all kinds of pain, he didn't shed a tear. However, when he saw the medical bill of more than a hundred thousand, he couldn't help but cry. Although a significant portion of these expenses was reimbursed, the family had to subsidize a lot, and with him in the hospital, the family lost a labor force. After being discharged, his body was not as it used to be. Not only could he not do heavy work, but he also had to regularly go to the hospital for check-ups, which cost over ten thousand each time!

As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. Just two years after her husband was discharged, his wife was diagnosed with diabetes. Later, she suffered a stroke caused by cerebral thrombosis, resulting in a crooked mouth and weak legs, making it impossible for her to walk. After over a year of treatment and more than ten thousand in medical expenses, she barely recovered. Both husband and wife were tormented by illness, their daughters were married off far away, and their son only had an unstable job. Thus, their home seemed like a house with a hollow roof, on the verge of collapse. In 2015, when the poverty alleviation team came to the village for an audit, his family was identified as a poor household.

Huang Xiaoxiong fell into his memories. Back in the 1980s, when the household contract responsibility system was implemented, the village had allocated seven or eight acres of land to his family. At that time, everyone grew rice and broccoli, and his family was no exception. However, rice didn't sell for much, and broccoli prices depended on the market. The family worked in the fields all year round, and after calculating the accounts, they only had a few thousand yuan in income, just enough to feed themselves. Despite the hustle, they remained poor, which made the head of the family ponder. In 2010, Huang Xiaoxiong made a decision—to let relatives farm the land and move the family to Meilong Town to make money by doing business. As a farmer, he had only accumulated farming experience in the first half of his life and didn't have any other solid skills or much capital. What business could he do? He decided to start with the most basic small business—selling fish.

Every day at 4 am, he hurried out to the wharf in Houmen Town. He would wait here for the first batch of fishing boats to return from the sea, then buy enough fish at wholesale prices before chartering a car to sell them at the market in Meilong Town. Ah, he was earning hard money—a 22 yuan per catty fish would sell for 25 yuan at the market. Business was risky, and it was always good and bad—sometimes, his fish were popular with customers, and they sold out quickly; other times, he had a pile of fish left over that he couldn't sell. The whole family worked like this, and making more than 5,000 yuan a month was quite good. Although it was busy and hard, it was better than farming. Listening to this man talk about the past, your face grew hot—you had been moved by the fish, shrimp, and crabs produced here, and the amazing taste had lingered in your memory. You felt that all the seafood you had eaten before was fake, but you knew nothing about the hardships of the fish sellers.

In 2015, Huang Xiaoxiong made another decision—to return to Poping Village and start farming again. After his nasopharyngeal cancer surgery, he had to continue chemotherapy, which severely drained his body, so the doctor advised him to take good care of himself; his wife's body gradually recovered after the stroke, and she needed a stable and peaceful environment to recuperate. Huang Xiaoxiong returned to his old home to take care of the land and led a rural life of "work at sunrise and rest at sunset." He has never regretted this decision. When his family was identified as a poor household, the village's poverty alleviation cadre provided help based on their situation—first, they gave out high-quality rice seeds developed by Yuan Longping for free; then, they distributed fertilizers and other agricultural supplies for free; through a shrimp farming project, they could get a dividend of 15,000 yuan each year (including 2018 and 2019); after investing in the county's "Red Tourism," they got an annual dividend of 1,400 yuan. Apart from these aids, what moved Huang Xiaoxiong the most was the "reward for subsidy" policy—To encourage poor households to become rich by farming or working, the government decided to provide a 1,000 yuan subsidy for each acre of land farmed by a poor household. This policy allowed the Huang family to receive a subsidy of 6,000 yuan in 2017, 7,500 yuan in 2018, and 3,850 yuan in 2019.

In fact, the contradiction lies in the fact that despite their vitality, abundant resources, and hard-working attitude, impoverished households spend most of their energy on things that many others around them also do. This makes it difficult for them to earn more money, hence losing the opportunity to live a wealthy life. When poverty alleviation officials found out that the soil and water quality in Poping Village were suitable for growing guava, they encouraged Huang Xiaoxiong to take it up. But he seemed a little hesitant: "What if the trees don't bear fruit?" "We'll get an expert to solve it!" "What if we can't sell them?" "We will help you with that!" So, from 2017, Huang got busy in the fields—when he planted the saplings into the fields, he was full of hope. After safely passing 2018, the guava trees were full of fruit by the end of 2019. According to the situation, the income from guava should be around 20,000 yuan. When Huang Shuying heard that you wanted to go to the field, she cheerfully agreed: "No problem!" So you rode on her motorcycle, followed by Secretary Zhou Jianhua on his motorcycle. After bumping along several country roads and turning onto a major road, you arrived at a field. As the motorcycle attempted to cross the gravel path in the middle of the fish pond, the bumping was so severe that you quickly jumped off and pushed the bike forward. After the gravel path was a broad field, the midday sun smeared amber on a bunch of green trees—Ah! These are the guava trees meticulously planted by Huang Xiaoxiong! The sight made you sigh—sometimes, poverty does not merely mean lack of money, but also the loss of ability to tap into one's potential.

Now, the guava trees growing on both sides of the ridge are over a meter high, with large leaves and green fruits. Walking between the ridges, you feel like you have arrived at a small park in the suburbs—the woodland is clean without any weeds, and the trees are spaced equally apart. You feel lucky to have seen a blooming guava tree! In your sight, the cluster of white petals has five, tightly huddled together, with the stamen in the center, like a cluster of blooming creamy white fireworks. In that gentle core, the sweetness of the world is concentrated. You notice that although the trees are full of fruits, they are not green but white. The farmers, with immense patience, have wrapped all the fruits in white plastic bags to protect them from damage. They need to be very careful in this process—to ensure that the bag covers the fruit entirely without harming the surrounding fruits.

Looking around, your heart trembles slightly—this is no small task! Those tens of thousands of fruits are all bagged, which means Huang Xiaoxiong has repeated the action of bagging over ten thousand times. You finally understood—why his skin is so dark! Because he has spent a long time in the field, bagging the fruits on these trees, his entire face, neck, and arms have been repeatedly baked by the sun. You can't help but feel heartache—how much sweat has this man shed in this field? Bear in mind that he is not only a man nearing sixty but also a patient who needs chemotherapy! In the city, he would be about to retire, but here, he still regards himself as the main labor force!

You remembered what he confided to you in his house earlier. After he fell ill in 2013, he was always anxious, thinking that his family might not be able to hold on. After his wife had a stroke, it was even worse. In 2015, when he decided to return to the village, he just wanted to work in the fields and recuperate. He never imagined that good days were yet to come. 2017 was a special year for him—he not only started growing guava but also received 5,000 yuan in medical aid. He also built a new house—although it cost him 90,000 yuan, he received a 40,000 yuan subsidy through the national dilapidated housing subsidy policy. Afterward, the unexpected grants and dividends he received at the end of the year were all beyond his expectations. He feels like everything is a dream, yet it's all happening right in front of him! Huang Xiaoxiong's eyes are sparkling—he is a man who has seen the world, a diligent and hard-working man, and a man who understands the true meaning of life! Now, this ordinary family is living a simple and dignified life. Although they don't have much spare money, the family lives together with a sense of certainty and peace.

Leaving the guava plantation and crossing that bumpy stone path, you stop by the fish pond. Secretary Zhou Jianhua introduces—"This is not the fish pond commonly seen in Lingnan, but a shrimp farming base secured by poverty alleviation officials!" Your eyes light up upon hearing this—are these fish ponds that provide poor households with labor an annual dividend of 15,000 yuan? Secretary Zhou Jianhua nods quickly. It seems that the condition of this bumpy ground is ordinary, and now the midday sun turns the gray surface of the water into mirrors. When you try to look down from the surface, you can't see the inside at all—that's a pond of ginger-yellow turbid water, and you can't see the fish and shrimp swimming or the aquatic plants swaying. The only thing that makes this water area unique is an aerator protruding on the calm surface. Now, it is the modern aura radiating from that machine that makes this water area so special. Standing by the pond, you feel sticky as if the air has stopped flowing and your body is in a sealed space. You can hardly believe the temperature here—it's the end of December, but the midday sun in Lingnan is still blazing. Can you imagine the villagers sweating profusely when working in the fish pond? And their skin must be as tanned and shiny as Huang Xiaoxiong's, right?

When 63-year-old Huang Zihua begins to speak, his tone is extremely slow—slower than the pace of most people speaking deliberately. He speaks as if he's a grandfather talking to a baby. As you listen to his slow-paced words, you don't find comfort, but rather, you feel a growing chill, as if hitting an iceberg. Just now, you walked through the midday guava field, stood by the sweltering pond, and at this moment, it feels as if you've walked into a cold room. The man before you now combs his hair in a 3:7 parting, wearing a jacket of grey and black stripes with blue trousers, looking lean yet strong. Apart from some missing front teeth, his face looks fine, but his eyes see nothing! You notice a few white strands in his dark hair, and subtle wrinkles on his face, details of which he is completely unaware. As you stare at him, you feel a mix of pain and sorrow at the tip of your heart. You sigh—indeed, the lives of the poor are full of risks!

As you listen to him recount his story, it's like watching a horror film, you're overwhelmed by the chilling plot. In 2002, when Huang Zihua's motorcycle caught fire, he was in a state of utter helplessness—the wind blew the flames onto his body, causing his chest to burst into flames. The fire burned off all his hair and eyebrows, deformed his hands, and left his chest scarred, like the surface of the moon. And as if misfortune follows misfortune, by 2007, he noticed his eyes beginning to atrophy. After struggling, he became completely blind. Now, the images of the world imprinted in his pupils are like a kite in the high sky, lost in the distant fog. You realize—it's his blindness that gives him a slow pace of speech, distinct from others. In his 'slowness', he carries hesitations born from being unable to see. He now relies entirely on his hearing to interpret the outside world—he doesn't know what you look like, your purpose of interview, or how to approach you. Even though he stands in the house saying "please sit", he's like a generator, constantly humming, filled with questions.

You can't help but think—sometimes an international financial crisis might have little impact on farmers in remote areas, but a traffic accident or a disease can strike them hard. Research has found that even in normal years, agricultural income can vary greatly. In any normal year in Bangladesh, agricultural wages can be 18% above or below their average; the variability of agricultural wages in India is 21 times that of the U.S.—because American farmers have insurance and can maintain their living standards through subsidies even in bad harvest years. For the poor, risk extends beyond income or food—it includes health. However, in remote villages in China, people who insure their health are few and far between, and a crisis can be a devastating blow to a family.

People might think—Huang Zihua is really unlucky! The chance of a motorcycle catching fire is not high, why did it happen to him? This random event caused catastrophic consequences—he was severely burned, incurred a lot of medical expenses, and was significantly weakened, no longer capable of heavy physical labor. Losing the ability to work is a heavy blow for an ordinary farmer. Yet, what he never expected was, this was not the end of his misfortune. Years later, he was tortured by the pain of deteriorating vision, and eventually, complete darkness. As a man, as the pillar of the family, he not only lost his ability to work but also fell into a situation where he needed others' care. A series of misfortunes fell upon this family, like a spider weaving a web, trapping the whole family in a difficult situation.

Compared to other homes, this one seems somewhat disordered—the living room is not large, the floor is tiled but dusty; a long, narrow tea table with a teapot and cups, the ashtray filled with residues; a small TV on a cabinet, and a lamp on the fridge; a pile of bulging bags stacked against the wall, rice and flour bags on the rosewood sofa. However, when you enter the bathroom, you find it tiled and equipped with a shower and toilet, looking quite neat. As introduced by Secretary Zhou Jianhua—this is the achievement of "Small Toilet, Big Revolution" in Haifeng County. In order to significantly improve the living conditions and habits of the rural population, Haifeng County initiated a "Toilet Revolution". Specific measures are—for registered poor households, the government fully subsidizes the construction of their home toilets; other households receive subsidies, with each household receiving more than 2,700 yuan; meanwhile, the county has completed the renovation of 2,147 harmless sanitary toilets, with a coverage rate of 100%; it has built 624 public toilets, completing 100% of the rural public toilet construction and renovation tasks.

Looking at Huang Zihua, you can't help but worry about this family—when the man was strong, he could maintain his family's livelihood, but as one disaster after another befalls them, the money they earn will decrease. Will this family fall into a "poverty trap," and embark on the road of permanent poverty? Research has shown that in Indonesia, if a family member becomes seriously ill, the family's consumption level will decrease by 20%. Now, Huang Zihua's family seems like they have slipped into a dark tunnel, struggling to move forward, but unsure of when they will see the light. Such circumstances often bring many psychological issues—facing disasters, people feel hopeless, with no way out, and this greatly reduces their self-control needed to get through the tough times. Under heavy blows, people seem to lack the psychological quality to pull themselves together and start again. Ultimately, they may develop depressive moods, gradually withering like a flower without water.

Fortunately, you see a different outcome—this family hasn't been defeated by disaster, but instead found new life in their efforts to face the challenges. Now, the main labor force of the family has shifted to the wife and son. After they finish their work in the fields, they will use their spare time to do odd jobs in town to supplement their household income. By the end of the year, through the "reward instead of subsidy" policy, they will receive more than 7,000 yuan in subsidies; at the same time, they can also enjoy the village's benefits for poor households—they can receive free rice seeds and fertilizers when farming in the spring; there are various bonuses at the end of the year (they can get 15,000 yuan from the South American shrimp project, and 1,400 yuan from the Red Tourism project); and with Huang Zihua's disability subsidy and minimum living allowance, he can receive a monthly subsidy of 1,000 yuan. All in all, not only can this family maintain their daily life, but by the end of the year, they also have more than 20,000 yuan in income. Adding the income from the wife's and son's jobs, life is no longer strained.

Huang Zihua lamented, "Every Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival, the work team will send over 1,000 yuan in consolation money, as well as rice, cooking oil, and cotton quilts!" In his slow-paced narration, there is no rush, no complaints, no resentment, but rather, an unusual sense of calm and certainty. In fact, giving the poor some hope, protection, and comfort can serve as powerful stimuli when they regain their confidence. Essentially, establishing a minimum livelihood guarantee for urban and rural residents is akin to establishing a social safety net. If people's income drops to a certain range, they can receive a minimum income support. By painting a future for the poor, they can alleviate stress without worrying about not being able to survive due to lack of money. In this way, they will strive for various opportunities to work hard and no longer live their days in a daze.

Part 29

Baishan Village Just as each kind of flower blooms in different seasons, the central area of the town bears the traces of the time when the place grew, highlighting its highest level of development and the process of decline. Now, you have arrived at Fairness Town, famous as "the Millennium Fairness Ancient Market, the first market in the mountainous area of eastern Guangdong." This town, located northeast of Haifeng County, used to be a significant transport route and trade center. As early as the Tang Dynasty, it became a place where goods were distributed, and merchants gathered. The market was named "Fairness" for fair trading. At that time, the town had formed the tradition that every commodity was traded in the market with its designated name - such as Tea Street, Fish Street, Cloth Street, Sugar Street, Bull Market, Pig Market, Green Fruit Shop, Mountain products Shop, etc. The prosperity of business has enabled the town to promote culture and education since ancient times, with simple folk customs and colorful folk culture. Mr. Zhong Jingwen, the departed leader of folklore, was born here. The famous "fair beef jerky" you bought in the county town supermarket tastes delicious, tenacious, and chewy. This method of making beef jerky is ancestral: fresh beef, natural spices, sugar, garlic, pepper, Fenjiu, etc. You never forget that road--the tarmac road that leads from the county to Fair Town--like a green tunnel. Because of the strong and stubborn sunlight in Linnan, the secondary shrubs along the roadside shimmer in shades of dark green and scorched yellow tones. This sticky hue is more like a mineral tone than a plant tone. Perhaps the tropics are not a world built on taste, but a world cast on color. In this blazing place, the various splendid colours are so full of seductive power that human pupils cannot see through and see it all, even if they are opened to their fullest. Yes! You can't help feeling that nature has not been completely conquered in the tropical Lingnan, but rather asserts a dignity that is uniquely its own. Now, the road you see seems to be enchanted, stranded in the riverbed of time--where there are no concrete houses, no billboards, no neon lights--completely in an interdimensional space.

As you arrive at the downtown, you would be hit by the hustle and bustle. The buildings on both sides of the street look dull with age, and rain marks are still hanging on the walls. However, when those lined up huge garment advertisements, factorties and western-style buildings alternately appear, you can experience a long-lost familiarity in the heat wave--in various townships in Dongguan, pervading with the flavor of industrialization. Obviously, the appearance of Gongping(Fair) Town at this moment is shaped by the combination of a long history and the current economy. Now, in this town with an area of more than 100 square kilometers, there are more than 100 garment enterprises of all kinds along with over 20 enterprises of accessories, zippers, threads, packaging and so on, which are the largest garment professional town in the east of Guangdong. The garments here are sold to all over the country with Guangzhou as the marketing center, and also sold to Russia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other places through border trade, with a large proportion of foreign orders. However, finally, the garment industries there, for various reasons, didn't make Gongping Town become the world-reknowned "Clothing Capital" like Humen Town of Dongguan. Just as you've been to Lian 'an several times, you've been to this town several times. You came to this town to visit Zhou Feng's former residence. As Peng Pai's mother, Zhou Feng's life is full of legend. Born in an ordinary peasant family in a small village under the administration of Gongping Town, she had been well aware of the hardships of the poor since childhood. Therefore, when she gave birth to Peng Pai, she always taught her son not to look down on the peasants and planted a seed of kindness in his young heart. Zhou Feng's former residence has been uninhabited, only a blackened bungalow. Pushed open the door, inside is a narrow courtyard. There are two wing rooms on both sides of the main house. Inside the three rooms are empty, only amidst the Zhou Feng portrait hung on the wall-the old lady who wore a black cotton-padded jacket is kindly smile. The room didn't display the drama you'd expect-it was just an empty shell when the owner had left. The house was surrounded by bamboo and banyan trees and was very quiet. From a distance, a few dogs bark loudly. This is one of the most common lingnan village. Who would have thought that the woman who married from here would raise such a son? And that son, once with a fire to burn the title deed, with shocking attitude was written into the history of human development. When you go through the center of town and come to the Baishan village. A fresh and pleasant smell came to your face--spread out around the vast expanse of fields which showed a strong yellow-green color. Because of its remote location, inconvenient transportation, and different modes of production, the rural world has built up a complete and closed agricultural ethnic group. Life in the village is quite different from that in the city they have always retained an ancient tradition, maintaining a mysterious balance. According to Chen Lubo, leader and first secretary of the Baishan Village Poverty Alleviation Team: Baishan Village has nearly 3000 people, a total of 489 households, among which 88 households have been verified as poor households, a total of 313 people due to a congenital disability, acquired illness, lack of labor capacity and other reasons. Members of the poverty alleviation team here come from Shenzhen Longgang District Pingdi Sub-district Office and Longgang District Work Safety Supervision Bureau. When poverty alleviation cadres come to the village, they first walk into the homes of poor households, talk with people, find out the causes of their poverty, and then carry out precise poverty alleviation and help them in pairs. . Poverty alleviation cadres have included all the poor households without working ability in the social security system, and implemented policy-based guarantees to lift all poor households out of poverty; For those poor households who have the ability to work, the cadres stimulated their internal motivation, encourage them to give play to the spirit of working hard and perseveringly in the old revolutionary base areas, and strive to get rid of poverty through farming, doing manual work or other ways rather than completely relying on the government.

Secretary Chen Lubo said that before the work team arrived, many villagers in Baishan Village used tile tanks to hold water. But now, every household has access to tap water. Now you see that not only in Baishan Village, but even in the whole Haifeng County, the coverage rate of centralized water supply in natural villages has reached 99.66%，among which，18 of all natural villages with more than 20 households in 37 provincial designated poor villages have realized centralized water supply coverage. At the same time, the county also attaches great importance to the construction of health stations. Except for 7 empty shell villages in Haifeng County, in the remaining 196 villages，73 health stations have been completed and put into use, 114 have been fully completed, and 9 have completed the main construction.

In fact, access to pure water and timely medical treatment are very important to the villagers. According to the data of the World Health Organization and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in 2008, around 13% of the world's population lacks improved water sources (usually refer to tap water and wells), and around a quarter of the population has no available and safe drinking water,many of whom are poor. Experts agreed that domestic tap water and sanitary facilities would have a great impact on health, which can greatly reduce the infant mortality rate and cut down the overall mortality rate by nearly half in the same period. Although improving water resources is a very daily problem, it is also an opportunity to start a long-term social reform——when people can live a healthy life, it will greatly reduce the possibility of people falling into the "disease trap", thereby starting a virtuous circle.

A country road was called "Dapuyang" in the village, which was used to be a bumpy dirt road, but now it has been transformed into a smooth concrete road. Secretary Chen Lubo said that villagers would no longer have to worry about dirty shoes and socks in rainy days after the construction project of hard-bottomed roads. Now, you can see the Public Service Center of Baishan Village as well as the Targeted Poverty Alleviation Infrastructure Project, which is a ginger three-story building with a brown-red roof. The building has also become a landmark in the village. In front of the service center, a series of asphalt roads radiate away, extending to all parts of the village. The village was dark at night before, but now, when rows of street lamps have been erected, the village becomes bright at night. When the street lights shine on the basketball court opposite to the service center, the space looks particularly wide-the aqua blue floor with purple basketball stands setting off the beauty of white rebounds. During the day, many young people come here to play basketball; On the sports equipment beside the basketball court, you can always see old people busy turning their waists. In the past, villagers liked to play mahjong or drink alcohol after dinner, but now they are busy exercising.

Zhang Shuer's home is also an independent new brick one. Standing at the door, she is waving to you. Although you are only an occasional guest, you are still warmly welcomed by her. She, 35 years old, has a big face, thick black eyebrows and curled eyelashes. Although the mask covers her nostrils, lips and chin, her face still looks beautiful. A little chubby, she wears a pink cardigan over a black T-shirt and jeans. Her house is newly built, so the tiles outside look fresh. When entering the house, you are surprised, as if you enter a aristocratic family in the United Kingdom -pure white European furniture, ginger silk curtains, big color TV and refrigerator, open kitchen, clean bathroom. Obviously, its owner prefers Western furniture with modern taste, which is different from most families that we have seen before. She has three children, with the ages of 6, 8 and 10, who are in the first, third and fourth grades of primary school respectively. The helmet on the shoe box is used by the mother when she rides a motorcycle to pick up her children to and from school.

When she was married from the next village to Baishan Village, she and her husband loved each other and lived a prosperous life. Her husband Zheng Jiansheng works in other places all the year round, and the family affairs depend on herself. Although the annual 0.1 hectare land income is only 2000 RMB, she is reluctant to waste it, also she’s busy taking care of the children's daily life and study. Her husband, who can cut, used to work in a garment factory in the town, earning more than 3,000 RMB a month. As for the overall decline of the garment industry in recent years, he went to work in Guangzhou. Although the salary is more than the original, he seldom comes back home, sometimes half a year or only come back during the Spring Festival. No one could have imagined the sudden change that had come upon this family. In 2015, a cooking hostess had to be hospitalized after being injured by a gas leakage. The fire burned her beyond recognition. Her hands were completely deformed, the backs were covered with pits, and her face was completely scorched. She spent more than a month in hospital having skin grafts on her face, hands and thighs. The palms of her hands became small with atrophy, with white skin, the fingers were glued together without free move; her chin crumpled like fragments of lava. If she is not wearing a mask, her face will divide from the bridge of her nose, with the pleasing upper part and the shocking lower part to the eye. Therefore, if she would like to go out or meet visitors, she always wears a mask. The sudden accident cost the family more than 300,000 yuan -- 70 percent of which they had to pay for themselves, as some imported medicines were not reimbursed. Heard that she has unfortunate things, and a lot of friends through WeChat helped her to fundraise and she was deeply moved. Now, when she talks about these memories, she would smile and talks in a relaxed tone. She has a pair of charming eyes, shining like jewels which enable you to listen intently to her. When she tries to emphasize something, she would pause but not choke up. She soon extricated herself from the sad narrative. After the illness, Zhang Shuer was not only attacked by physical pain，but also suffered a great blow mentally--seeing that all three children had to go to school, what should she do about living expenses for school. When she was in a sorrowful mood, she was overjoyed by a policy that through education aid to poor households, each child who went to the primary school could receive a living allowance of 3000 yuan a year. She calculated that with a subsidy of 9000 yuan every year, she would be able to ensure the children's eating, dressing, and learning supplies. How a timely aid. In fact, student subsidies can lift parents out of extreme poverty, broaden their horizons and give them a longer-range outlook on life-education must be invested now. Nurturing the next generation so that they are physically and mentally healthy and well educated, both in the short term and in the long term, is very helpful in eradicating poverty. A small amount of investment in nutrition in childhood will have a great impact on children's growth in the future. Now, when the mother can buy milk, eggs, meat, and vegetables for her child, she can let her child absorb adequate nutrients in childhood, which will not only reduce their risk of illness, but also have a healthy body. When these children grow up, they will be able to earn more money, which can lead the family out of the "poverty trap" and prevent the intergenerational spread of poverty. A study of anti-malaria activities in the southern United States and several Latin American countries shows that children who do not have malaria earn 50% more a year when they grow up than those who have.

In addition to the student subsidy, Zhang Shuer also has a disability subsidy of more than 300 yuan per month; Her family also applied for a minimum living allowance of more than 1000 yuan per month. With these subsidies, plus the income from the fields and the husband's working income, the family has started to boom like an oil engine. The new house was built in 2018, half of the 200000 yuan spent was borrowed, and the 40000 yuan subsidized by the state was a timely help. "The old house is a tile roofed house, always dripping with water. It is dark and damp inside." Now, Zhang Shuer rides a motorcycle to pick up the children to school every day. When her hands grasped the handlebars, she always looked trembling. But she is a mother! As soon as she gritted her teeth, she was full of the power like the mother of earth, and drove the motorcycle out like that! Now, when she does anything, she needs to pay several times more efforts than ordinary people to achieve it. However, she did not want to wait, rely on, and want, but was willing to work hard. When she took out her mobile phone to show the children's photos, her eyes shone like jewels on black velvet. After such a great disaster, she was full of sincerity and enthusiasm instead of being disillusioned with the world of mortals, lost, resentful and cursed. Now, with incomparable patience and endurance, she calmly accepts the unfairness given to her by fate. No, she doesn't want to turn life into a wailing wall, but a revolving stage.

When you stand in front of the door of this new brick house, you will never believe that it is the house of the poor livelihood. The exterior wall of this house was inlaid with ceramic tiles and firmly stood on the ground, which appeared extremely new. Zhang Binghui, 48, is the owner of this house. He was a man of moderate size, with dark skin, delicate face and quiet eyes. Although some wrinkles appeared on his forehead and his hairline was very high, he still looked very young. His skin is neither coarse nor saggy, which should be related to his long-term manual labor. If you only look at his clothes, you will feel that he has no difference from other people you can see in sight——The black and white T-shirt is covered with a black jacket, and the lower part is black trousers. However, he was barefoot with a pair of slippers. When you first arrived in Lingnan ten years ago, you would always feel uncomfortable if you saw someone wearing slippers in winter. But now, you have already adapted to this kind of Lingnan people's dressing.

Obviously, he lived a well organized life, for his house was neatly kept--not only the tile-cladded walls, but also the tiled floor of the living room. The wooden sofa and table were very clean, and the pots and pans in the kitchen were arranged in order. In the fence outside, he also raised four or five hens, with beautiful feather and imposing appearance. Looking out from the door, the beside dilapidated mud house was particularly eye-catching--low and dark, fragile and dangerous. And that house was the old one he lived in. Haifeng, adjacent to the South China Sea, is often attacked by super typhoons. It is very dangerous to live in such an old house for a long time. The torrential rain will cause waterlogging and burst the dam; the swollen river will flood the fields and bring down the houses. The tropical storm is completely different from the drizzle in the northwest. The rain is not falling vertically in lines, but piles of steel balls splashing down which will not stop when the clouds have left. Because too much moisture condensed here need a long time to release. Violent typhoons can blow pedestrians away, bring trees down and devastates the houses.

Zhang Binghui had really wanted to build a new house for more than a year or two, but he always gave up because of lack of cash. In 2018, he managed to build a new house with the government subsidy for the renovation of dilapidated houses. The total expenses for the house were more than 200,000 yuan, which including his savings for many years, the money borrowed from relatives and friends, plus 40,000 yuan from the state subsidy. For farmers, a house is not just a square building, but also a tangible home. Namely, a new house is not only pleasing to look at, but also a sign of confidence and capability. Now, the family lives in this tidy house—with a TV and a refrigerator in the living room, running water in the kitchen and a shower in the bathroom—just like any other city house. Living in such a house, people will consciously keep it clean and tidy, but also become self-confident. Kitchen with running water and bathroom with a shower make farmers’ life more sanitary and reduce the possibility of disease. Children can have a better life if they grow up in such a living environment.

When Zhang Binghui spoke, his tone was steady and slow. He had three children—the eldest daughter had graduated from technical secondary school, the second daughter was still in college, and the youngest son was in technical secondary school. Now, he was confronted with the awkward stage of middle age—the children were unable to be independent, while the parents’ health was getting worse and worse. The two major expenses of the family were obvious—the daily living expenses and the children’s tuition fees. Though they worked hard all year long, there was still nothing much left after paying these fees. Obviously, the reason that made the whole family poor was not that the man was not smart, hardworking, or diligent enough. He sighed: “It is not easy to be a farmer now! There is a large population with relatively little land with water shortage existed!” In 1984, when the village carried out the household contract responsibility system, his family only got about 4 mu of land (mu: a unit of area=0.0667 hectares). Later, the number of people in the family grew, so the brothers had to divide the land again. In the end, he only got about one mu of land, with less paddy lands and more dry lands. Because of the lack of water, they used to be able to grow rice twice a year, but now they could only grow one. He and his wife had been busy in the field for a year; still their income was very little. But they felt reluctant to give up farming—the land was the root of farmers, without the land, it was as if people have no soul. However, the income from farming could not make ends meet, so the land became some kind of “chicken ribs” — things of little interest.

No matter what he did on the farmland, he could not be able to earn more money. However, the household expense couldn’t be cut down neither. In order to make more money, he went to work at the clothing factory in the town. He was a lathe worker, and his salary was calculated on a piecework basis. In the peak season, he could make two or three thousand yuan per month, while in the slack season he could make no money. In addition to taking care of the household chores and the children, his wife also did the part-time job in the factory as a handyman, doing some work such as trimming thread ends, to earn as much as she could. Working in the clothing factory for more than 20 years, he was totally qualified as a skilled worker. If the clothing industry in Gongping Town could continue its prosperity in the 1980s, his family would never fall into this predicament. In recent years, the whole clothing market is in the low season, and the order quantity had slumped. All of these were related to the increase of domestic raw material prices and the decrease of labor cost advantage, etc. Without orders, the factories wouldn’t open, thus, the workers wouldn’t make any money. Now, unemployed, Zhang Binghui is in an awkward situation - it is so hard to switch to another job! What should he learn? It’s not easy for him to forget all the skills he learnt from the clothing factory and learn other new working skills. However, if you ask him to work at the construction site, he is no younger anymore and can’t compete with others on strength. Although the couple work really hard, they are still struggling for life.

However, there are always more solutions than difficulties! After 2016, Zhang Binghui, who had fallen into depression, became cheerful all of a sudden: "Planting! Plant the land! Plant the land!" It turns out that one of the national policies for poverty alleviation is "substitute subsidies with rewards" - poor households will be rewarded proportionally at the end of the year, whether they farm or do other work. At first, he wondered that whether it really be rewarded. The poverty alleviation task force gave poor households free hybrid rice varieties cultivated by Yuan Longping, and initiated them to plant super-rice in a row. Before planting, the poverty alleviation team also provides special technical training to poor households. In 2017, when Zhang Binghui received a subsidy of 4,000 yuan, his heart was so warm! He sows his own land, and reap his own harvest, the government also subsidizes so much money, how wonderful! So, he discussed with his wife about planting more land next year, she nodded her head in agreement. By the end of 2018, he had received a subsidy of 7,000 yuan. For this family, these subsidies are really timely help. Because that is the most difficult time for the couple - as long as they work hard a few more years, by the time their children are out of school and working, his family's life will really get better.

Secretary Chen Lubo said: "There are many poverty-stricken households who strive actively to be employed like Zhang Binghui in the village. From 2016 to 2019, the village has allocated more than 1 million yuan for the “substituting subsidies with rewards” bonus, which is a real help to the poverty-stricken households." He also said: "In view of the weak collective economy of Baishan Village, the financial department of Longgang District has invested 2 million yuan in the construction of Hailong Investment Building Project to ensure that the village receives no less than 100,000 yuan of dividends annually. In addition, 66 poor households with labor ability have been organized, with 20,000 yuan invested by each in the Red Tourism Project of Haifeng County, and thus each household can receive 1,400 yuan of dividends annually. Another investment of 200,000 yuan was entrusted to the town government in the organization of the town's industrial poverty alleviation projects, with no less than 8% of its annual profit being dividend payments." In order to promote the transformation of traditional agriculture from extensive to intensive, the poverty relief team also helped the village establish cooperatives, raised funds to buy a harrow machine and an excavator, and sold high-quality agricultural products produced by the villagers to Shenzhen and other places, so that the villagers can increase their income.

The long daytime was coming to a close and the night scene was rising all around. After leaving Baishan Village, the car then drove off Gongping Town. The low hills along the country trail gradually retreated back of the car windows, leaving only several violet profiles. Before your eyes, the flat fields were disappearing, and the narrow village roads, the farmers wearing grass hats as well as the lighted huts were also missing. When you were leaving these scenes, it was as if you were leaving an ancient land. You suddenly realized that you loved the country life so much only because you lived in the city for so long. In fact, the countryside in your eyes was a countryside contrasted with the city. While in the eyes of the farmers, the scenery of the countryside would showcase another meaning. For them, what the countryside represented was not only homeland, family and roots, but also tardiness, stodginess, and restraints. In order to obtain harvest, they had to adapt to various restraints. Therefore, they knew more of the taste of loneliness and tedium. As you pass through areas of darkness, dense lights will come into your view - here you are in the county! Haifeng looks just like a huge market at night where neon lights never stop flashing and noisy traffic surge and crowds of bustling people swarm everywhere. After a day's work, people tend to have a bowl of sesame fish porridge at stalls before returning home. Although it is already the end of December, the night breeze is particularly refreshing. Try to ponder it - the city represents the most complex and purest aspect of human civilization. The concentration of so many people in such a small area turns the city into a hot melting pot. The city is so vast that anyone can live a life of anonymity here without being known by their neighbors. For these people, each one of them is individual, and each of them living a life confined to his or her own family and profession without close contact with the surroundings.

:On the contrary, each village appears to be an individual microcosm with the people living in it closely interlinked. Life in the village is slow, but the old traditions have not completely disintegrated and still have a strong influence: there, people have grown up with each other and thus know each other very well, and any newcomer here will be instantly recognised by the villagers.

Here, people sow in spring, cultivate in summer, harvest in autumn and store in winter - the timetable of the village is completely different from that of the city; In the village, people tell time by the messages from the sky and the earth, but in the city, time is determined by street lamps and air conditioners. Everything in the village - the farmhouses, the crops, the ancestral halls and the rituals - has evolved over many centuries to achieve a certain perfection and harmony, whereas the city is still like a teenager in its developmental stage. From the exterior, the city looks like a labyrinth, but its interior has clear rules, just like those spreading farmland on the earth, where although each piece has a different structure, many fields are pieced together to form a perfect item of mosaic patterned clothing. Part 30

Dahua village Located in the southeastern part of the county, Chikeng took its name from the the Northern Expedition era, when it was the center of Red Guard activities. In order to commemorate the Red Guard's loyalty to the people, it was named "Chikeng Town". The Dahua village you are going to arrive is a poor village helped by Shanwei Power Supply Bureau. You find that there is very little traffic on the country roads, and after each road there is another road waiting, and they look the same. Outside the window is the midwinter in Lingnan, but it turns out to be more of the early autumn in northwest. The trees seem to be running, and the grass heated by the burning sunlight , showing a piece of yellow red. Every once in a while, a village pops up, revealing an ink painting of the Lingnan countryside -- low-slung farmhouses, small plots of farmland, winding rivers, and farmers in straw hats.

You finally come to Dahua village. Zhang Liye, leader in residence and First Secretary, is a middle aged man of medium height with marked features and a gentle smile on his face as well as a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. At first, he was a cadre in the power supply bureau, but now he is called Secretary in a Straw Hat by villagers fondly. When you walk through the village with him, you can see comfortable fields, lush trees, clean roadway and wide square with soldier-like street lamps in rows. Secretary Zhang said with a smile, “The village is different now.” Dahua village was a poor village in Guangdong Province with remote location and obsolete infrastructure, introduced by Zhang. Poverty alleviation team raised 950,000, with which the whole village now takes on a new look. Their contributions included the establishment of infrastructure in transportation and water conservancy, the clog, smell and usual overflowing of rivers and ditches. They also contributed to rain and sewage diversion, the painting of village facade, the upgrading of pavement in front of the village, the removal of old utility poles, the upgrading of 62 street lamps and the installation of 22 solar street lamps. They also assisted to mobilize country gentlemen to make contributions, raising almost 1.4 million yuan for the completion of Zhongshan Culture Square.

Of the 700 households in Dahua village, 103 were poverty-stricken families, and only 71 poverty-stricken families were able to work. From 2016 to 2019, the poverty alleviation team raised about 7.5 million yuan in various funds for the village, which greatly promoted the village's economic development. Within three years, the task force applied for more than 1.2 million yuan of government subsidies to renovate 40 dilapidated houses. In 2018, 34 people from poor households received assistance for serious diseases, and more than 1 million yuan was reimbursed by medical insurance. By 2018, the per capita disposable income of poor households reached more than 9,500 yuan, which basically ensured that rural poor people had no worry about food and clothing and had access to compulsory education, basic medical services, and safe housing and drinking water safety. By the end of 2019, all poor households had been lifted out of poverty. In the past, Dahua Village not only was economically weak, but also had a single industrial structure -- vegetable farming and poultry farming were sporadic, rice fields were abandoned and there were few decent industries. Now, the economy of the village is in full bloom. The poverty alleviation team has built “one village, one product” according to local conditions, which has contributed to the birth of more than 40 projects such as Haifeng Qinzhi Cooperative, Smart Farm, Liyang Dried Beancurd Sticks Production Base investment, and Yuan Longping Rice. Since 2016, the poverty alleviation task force has purchased Yuan Longping hybrid rice seeds for poor households and distributed over 2,000 jin of rice seeds free of charge. Through agreements with specialized agricultural companies to provide technical guidance and training for farmers, the task force broadens the channels for villagers to "stabilize grain and increase income" and guides villagers to plant cash crops such as melon and tomato, and assists farmers to raise and sell local products, such as free-range chicken and free-range black swine, so as to stimulate farmers' inner motivation.

A sandy path branches off the main road, where there is a huge banyan tree with a thick trunk and beautiful round leaves. The small ginger house near the tree seems newly renovated, which adds a touch of modernity to the rural landscape. That glittering plaque -- “Haifeng County Qinzhi Professional Breeding Cooperative” -- was put up in November 2019. When seeing the word “Cooperative”, you become interested in it. It’s a word you’re familiar with -- you already knew it back in the 1980s. Now, it’s back! The cooperatives were once a sunny avenue for farmers; now its connotation has changed -- it is no longer the old thing, it is the new model. In the past, cooperatives were collective economies under the planned economy system, while in today they are individual economies under the socialist market economy system. Now, cooperatives are like a connecting bridge of hearts instead of a single-log bridge. They organize farmers in disarray together, so that the farmers can help each other and actively cooperate for development instead of just waiting for, relying on or demanding other’s help.

As a matter of fact, it is one of 708 cooperatives in Haifeng County, which turns out to make great efforts in developing modern agriculture. The County values the construction of industrial parks, it put the key of development on six production bases of high-quality rice, vegetables, fruits, tea-leaves, livestock and poultry and aquaculture, invested 228.04 billion yuan in Haifeng modern agricultural and industrial park of vegetables in provincial level, and equipped with some modern agricultural facilities, such as smart agricultural cloud platform, science and technology park of vegetable atomization planting, and vegetable plant factory, which prompted modern vegetable production and operation system to be developed gradually. Besides, Haifeng County also put 14 million yuan on the development of “a village with a featured brand and a town with a specialty industry”—organized each town to declare project of featured agriculture and industry in town level with positiveness, seized every chance to attract investments and optimized business environment. Through the drive of leading enterprises and the combination with local advantages, a characteristic industrial belt and an advantageous belt could be formed, aiming to build featured brands of Haifeng vegetables, Huang Qiang day lily, Lian An organic rice, Gong ping peanuts, and Keng Tou sweet potatoes. It also laid emphasis on nurturing and developing new types of agricultural businesses—a total of 1,265 leading enterprises in agriculture, specialized farmer’s cooperatives and home farms had been nurtured, including 71 leading enterprises in agriculture, 708 specialized farmer’s cooperatives and 486 home farms.

Opening the door of the cooperative group, a modern display hall appears. You can see all kinds of local products planted here: rice, sweet potatoes, eggs, bean crud, honey, threaded peppers, chickens, geese and so on. In fact, there are so much risk in agricultural production - farmers’ effort for the whole year would be in vain for the product lags. So how to sell those agricultural products well? The solution given by the poverty alleviation cadres is - the cooperative group could buy those green and organic products and then process and package them to sell online, thus eliminate the intermediate circulation links and make the products be sent on the customers’ tables directly. Farmers can jump out off the disastrous circle of “bumper product but no bumper harvest.”

The fields in front of the cooperative are very special - each one is separated by a ridge into a rectangle and a large sign is erected in it. Taking a close look you could see it says “Qinzhi Smart Agriculture A Zone No. 7”, and leafy green lettuce and cabbage are growing in the field. It turns out that all the vegetables in this 15-acres fields of “smart agriculture” project are planted with consumers’ orders. It recalls you that, more than a decade ago the game “Happy Farm” took the internet by storm and became a memory for that generation. In order to experience the joy of harvest, many players get up early and stay up late to water, fertilize and catch insects for the garden, they even steal vegetables from others. Unfortunately, that behavior can only stay in the virtual world. On November 11, 2019, “Smart Agriculture Project” was officially launched in Dahua Village - an interactive platform jointly developed by the Poverty Alleviation Task Force and the Aladdin Smart Innovation Lab, with the ultimate goal of interconnection, control and income generation. People living in city spend about a hundred yuan a month to have a piece of their own vegetable plot, not only to let children learn agricultural knowledge, but also to let the family eat safe and green food! According to Secretary Zhang Liye - through the integration of sensor technology and wireless control technology, the platform thoroughly realized the “field realistic” “visual control” and other innovative effects. The whole process of sowing, planting and harvesting for online users can correspond to the actual farming work of offline businesses, making the people living in city feel like being in the field personally. Users can remotely water, fertilize, weed, harvest and view the growth of fruits and vegetables in real time through the phone. This practice also allow farmers to avoid the risk of having no one to but the vegetables. It frees them from traditional farming model and allows poor households to achieve true poverty alleviation and prosperity.

On the front door of that ordinary bungalow, Sun Xianzai's home is pasted with "lucky stars shining high." Although the room was not large, the walls were white. When the 10 a.m. sun shines through the small window, the whole room is bright and bright. You notice that this room is similar to the one you see in Lingnan Village, except that the walls are unusually white_as if they had been painted yesterday. The lime powder, however, was not uniform, deep in places and shallow in others. The living room has a wooden sofa, a wooden bunk bed, a TV and a rice cooker on a wooden table, old-fashioned calendars on the walls and a ceiling fan on the beams. Although the bathroom area is very small, but installed with sink and shower; On the kitchen stove was a large pot. Except for the small windows, the room was no different from any other building in the city. The master looks younger than his real age, and although his skin is dark, his eyelids are well defined, his eyes sparkle, and his lips are thick and curved.His hair is parted in threes and sevens, and he wears a white long-sleeved shirt and black pants. Although there are some wrinkles on his forehead, eyes and cheeks, his entire face is clean. The most impressive thing is his eyes, which are typical of Cantonese people, with dimensional features.Although you are used to seeing Uighur and Kazakh looks when you were in Xinjiang, this man looks different again from these minorities. By the time he starts talking, you hear a strong whiff of Cantonese Mandarin. Originally, he was supposed to live a similar life as the people in the village - farming, and at the end of the year, he could earn about 6,000 yuan after selling the rice and sweet potatoes. However, this life pattern took an unexpected turn. in 1987, Sun Xianzai got married, but he did not find out that his wife was a meningitis patient. Although she did not look high, but all intact. After the marriage, the husband was surprised - his wife not only often had dizziness, headache, fever, nausea, and also vomited.When she went to the hospital, it was found that she had been suffering from meningitis for a long time. The illness made the family's life even more difficult - the wife was unable to work, nor could she do housework, so her husband had to do everything; moreover, she had to spend a lot of money on medication for years.

In 2016, when the Poverty Alleviation Task Force was conducting a survey of poor households, it found that there was a big problem in the Laosun family. The male host was no longer young enough to be competent for high-intensity heavy physical labor; His wife was ill all the year round and had no ability to work; Although the three children were over 20 years old, but the situation is not optimistic- the son was working in stainless steel processing, monthly income of 3000 yuan; The eldest daughter and the younger daughter were both engaged in sales, with a monthly income of 2200 yuan. These jobs were all temporary, so their income was very unstable. Therefore, Sun Xian's home was approved as a poor household. After living in Guangdong for more than ten years, you know that there is a big difference between a regular job and a casual job- people who do casual work always have to worry about finding the next job.

They have to scrimp in life to survive, it is difficult to save money; Compared with regular workers, casual workers work fewer days. A survey in the India state of Gujarat found that casual workers worked an average of 254 days a year, compared with 354 days for office workers. At the same time, a third of casual workers at the bottom work only 137 days. According to the situation of Sun Xian's family, the poverty relief cadres had designed special assistance plans to encourage their children to do a stable job as much as possible, not only to maintain their own survival, but also to subsidize household expenses; Lao Sun was too old to work in the field, but he could do farming. "It's a good job to raise groud-up chickens. You don't need to spend too much energy and you can earn quite a lot of income!" But Sun was afraid, "What if I can't sell it? The cadres cheered him up, "You just keep it, and we'll sell it for you!" So Sun settled down and started to breed the groud-up chicken. Sure enough, after more than 200 chickens were cultivated, the cadres helped him to contact the sales. One chicken could sell for 100 yuan, and the annual income could be more than 20000 yuan! Over the past three years, the cadres had helped him sell nearly 700 chickens!

In addition to the income from selling chickens, his family received an award of 5,000 yuan in 2017 and 8,000 yuan in 2018 because his father and children were both working. He soon got rid of his poverty hat. He always had a little dream in his heart - to renovate his old house. And now, it's done! Now you see a house with white walls, tiles in the living room and bedrooms, and tiles in the bathroom, all for 13,000 yuan! Seeing your astonished look, he points to the walls and says, "I bought all that paint myself!" After a pause, he adds, "The dark house is full of fretful people!"

You are struck by the steepness of the phrase - a rather common phrase, but one that contains the wit and humour that is characteristic of the Lingnan people. He must paint the house, if not professionally, to get the walls white, because, well, he doesn't want to fret! Clearly, the tufted house brought him a strong sense of achievement! So, when he describes his life, his attitude seems that positive. Raising walking chickens started a virtuous circle, and in those first moments it was especially important to encourage him not to be afraid to give his voice.

The Lai Yang beancurd factory, from Guangdong Lai Yang Agricultural Technology Company, is a targeted poverty alleviation project introduced by the poverty alleviation task force, adopting a new model of "company + rural collective + farmers". By the end of 2019, the Shanwei Electricity Supply Bureau has allocated 900,000 yuan in donations for the industrial project, while the Dahua Village Committee has participated in the shares through a "guaranteed dividend", earning the first dividend of 150,000 yuan at the end of 2018. The factory was officially commissioned at the beginning of 2018, and a site meeting on soybean mechanization and agricultural industry projects was held immediately afterward. Now, the beancurd factory has an average annual output of more than 100,000 pounds and provides about 30 public service jobs (mainly for women and poor households left behind, who can earn more than 20,000 yuan per year); it also drives the villagers' soybean planting and black pig breeding industries - more than 20 poor households grow more than 60 acres of soybeans each year. Villagers can sell their soybeans to the bean factory, work in the factory and raise chickens and pigs with the bean dregs. When the dividends from the factory are remitted to the collective account, the village's "blood-making capacity" is enhanced!

In fact, the production of beancurd is a technical job-after drying, shelling, soaking and grinding soybeans. They should first be boiled into slurry; Then, a layer of beige curd is formed on the surface by precipitation; Twist gently in the middle of the curd, which will be picked up bit by bit; Dried fresh beancurd is hung on the bamboo pole to form triangular golden shields, emitting charming bean fragrance; To make themselves dry, they absorb the energy of the sun, so finally even look weather beaten. Seeing the rows of beancurd hanging outside the yard, you can remember the scene you saw in Turpan, Xinjiang. In the depths of the Gobi Desert, a snow river winds through the valley, forming a vineyard on both sides of the valley bottom. And next to those green plants are some hole-in-the-wall rooms, specially used to dry grapes. Now, you think the surface of beancurd and raisin are both wrinkled, similar to each other. Two-year efforts have paid dividends, as "Beancurds in Liyangshan" have been crowned as "Shanwei Famous Brand Agricultural Products", and this factory as the leading agricultural enterprise in Shanwei. The narrow alley leads you to a residential area where rows of bungalows stand side by side, like cabins on a cruise ship – featuring similar size and appearance in their rooms. Sun Houchuan's house is located in the one near the street - the exterior wall is tiled, so is the interior floor. Opposite the front door is the living room, where wooden sofas, tea tables, cabinets and televisions are placed. On the wall are clocks, emergency lights and red Chinese knots; In the corner of the wall stands a wooden Buddha niche, inside which is a statue of Guanyin.

At 42, Sun Houfun looks like an athlete - athletic and athletic. He wears a grey long-sleeved T-shirt and blue jeans, and his black leather shoes are cleanly polished. He was wearing a gray long-sleeved T-shirt and blue jeans with his black shoes polished clean. He looked very amiable-a smiling face under his black hair. It can be seen that he is a cheerful and optimistic person. Even his voice was particularly clear-he spoke faster than others in partuculai accurate words.His communication with others was alwayed full with playfulness and humor, but he never be inpropriety. This man, if not for the disability of his left eye, is really a handsome and likable man. However, fate showed unusual cruelty to him-the muscles around his left eye were twisted because his left eyelid was drooping. As a result, his face showed a strange effect-ugly and hideous on the left, but heroic and handsome on the right. However, he has a soul that does not match the physical body-so optimistic! So full of energy! Never give up easily! This state makes you happy, too-maybe physical defects are not scary, but people are really scary if they don't expect anything from themselves. "I was able to see when I was first born!" He stated this fact in a strong tone. Then he regained his composure and began to tell the story of the first half of his life. Four months after he was born, his left eye suddenly lost its light and his eyelid collapsed; and it was at this moment that his mother died of an illness. What a tragedy to lose the sight of one eye and his mother, both when he was a baby! How he spent his childhood he doesn't talk much about, but skims it over, but you only have to think a little harder to feel that the boy survived the struggle. His father must have been depressed and manic, having had to endure the loss of his wife at mid-life and the responsibility of raising a disabled baby. When he was seven years old, his father married a woman from another village and went to that village himself. Before he left, he passed his son on to his eldest uncle. Before finishing junior high school, he began to work in the fields. He soon became very familiar with all the work in the fields. When he grew into a young man, his uncle arranged marriage to him. When he married his wife, he did not know that she was ill. In fact, the woman was the opposite of him - although she was good with her arms and legs, had a good face and walked and ate without problems, her head went black like a computer motherboard that often shorted out. Despite having two sons, my wife's spirits were in a constant state of ups and downs. When she is awake, she is a normal person; when she is sick, she seems to be possessed by a demon, not only yelling but also hitting people with great force. If the husband got a few punches and kicks, it would be fine, but sometimes she would beat up the children in the middle of the night. Every time, when he was in a deep sleep, he would jump up when hearing the thunderous cries. Now his wife sleeps alone in one bedroom, and he sleeps with his two sons. He shakes his head: "I can't help it! I'm afraid the children will be beaten!" The family seems to have fallen into a "disease trap" - the husband is disabled, the wife is mentally ill and children are too young. The family relies on the husband's farming alone for all its expenses. He was unable to go out to work and he knew it: "I can't go out in this condition, but I can put all my energy into the land!" He planted a dozen acres of land with a vengeance, and worked every morning and evening, but life was still very hard. After working outside, other men could come home to a hot meal cooked by their wives, but he could not enjoy that blessing. When he returned home, he had to roll up his sleeves and cook. In addition to his household chores, he has to look after his two young sons and his older uncle. You are amazed! It's a miracle that under such a high pressure life, he is not even a little bit hostile, but bright and optimistic! Without the disability allowance and the school grant, life would have been very difficult for this family. However, when the government provided the family with a "ladder", they slowly climbed up from the dreaded "poverty trap". The family now receives a disability allowance of more than 3,000 yuan a year; the family receives 900 yuan a month in low income benefits; and their 13-year-old son, who is in primary school, receives 3,000 yuan a year in living allowances. This is not a lot of money for city people, but it is enough to sustain the daily life of this rural family in the south of the country. The most rare thing is that, although Sun Houfun has been approved as a "poor household with no working capacity", he has a strong will and will not let his life go to waste. When the poverty alleviation cadres saw that he loved working more than those healthy people, they let him do some of the village's public work - weeding, sanitation, cleaning drains, etc. - so that he could earn some pocket money. His youngest son, just three years old, with soft black hair, two dark, shiny eyes and a small, rosy mouth, is very adorable and witty. The boy wears a black waistcoat over a grey jumper, blue jeans and trainers underneath, just like a boy growing in city. When his father was going to work in the fields, he would always ask a neighbor to look after the boy; sometimes he would take him down to the fields with him when the neighbor was not available. Being smart and sensible, the little boy has even learnt to dig! His father videoed the boy holding a small hoe and chopping earnestly at the ground. He looks so serious, definitely helping his father instead of playing a game! This little boy, who should have been learning phonics in his little kindergarten class, is now holding up his hoe like a hard-working farmer. He's on his hands and knees, his back straight and genuinely trying to help his dad. You laugh at the video, but as you laugh, the corners of your eyes feel sore and sore. Alas! Fate has been so hard on this family, yet they never complain, but accept it and try their best to adapt and change. These ordinary people are like the dirt in the fields, unimpressive, but they are the building blocks that hold the world together. They deserve a better life! They deserve a better life! The sunset shines on the field by the south sea. While rivers, fields, farmhouses and trees are left behind car, the sunset still shines on the winding streams, waterlogged ponds and banana groves swarmed by weeds. The water at dusk was like a blazing fire, burning the last beam of light. The sunset makes the village a widescreen movie, like a utopian world and a gorgeous painting. You enjoy the scenery as far as you can see, and you like the people who live in the scenery - they are as simple and thick as the fields. At night, you organized your interview notes, pondering what you had seen and heard along the way. Apparently, the development of rural industries in Haifeng County has yielded some results - the county has formed six major agricultural industry bases, cultivated a batch of new agricultural business entities and created few agricultural brands, which have played a significant role in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization though there still exist some issues.

First of all, the county is still haunted with issues like few brands and low benefits, and is in the situation of "business without benefits, industry without scale, product without brand" - the leading industry in the county is food production and its economic benefits are not high, while the industrial projects with large scale, long industrial chain, high scientific and technological content, strong driving ability, and many employment opportunities are still under cultivation; Secondly, although the number of new business entities exceeds 1000, the scale is generally small and the driving capacity is not powerful - although there are more than 100 campanies of "three products, one standard and one brand", the brand effect has not really expanded and the market competitiveness is not strong; Thirdly, the reserve of rural talents is insufficient - with the acceleration of the new urbanization process, the farmers have washed their feet and left the fields, resulting in a serious loss of rural talents. The atmosphere of returning to their hometown for entrepreneurship is not exuberant. The left behind labor force is mainly women, the elderly and the infirm, and cultural literacy and technical ability cannot meet the requirements of modern rural development. All these things need to be solved by Haifeng in the future. New Changes in the/a Small Village by the Sea

After coming from Haifeng County Town to Shanwei High Speed Railway Station, one experiences a strong discomfort - you need to adjust your body and mind to get used to the electronic screen with its flashing red letters, the rows of steel-framed seats, and the slowly rising escalators - all of which are full of post-modern simplistic style. All of this is very different from the rural scenery one has witnessed before. About an hour or so later, one arrives at Humen High Speed Railway Station in Dongguan from Shanwei. One overcomes another kind of discomfort - the surging crowd, the noise, the swift footsteps. One struggles to catch one's breath and tries to establish a normal correspondence between your mood and the scene in front of you. In fact, one makes this adjustment constantly throughout the interview. One has realized plainly - the world one has just left and the world one has now arrived in are two entirely different worlds.

After leaving Haifeng, the last thing you want to say is: thank you. Those poor families you have visited are not idle people, waiting all day long to get relief for nothing; on the contrary, they are totally some people like us. Although we are not poor, well-educated and well-informed, the truth is that there is not much difference between us and them, because we know much less than we think we do. Our real advantage is that we have acquired many things without realizing it, while the poor families need to work constantly to get them. The families you arrive at all receive you warmly and politely; the men you witness, whether middle-aged or old, are muscular, sallow-skinned, and capable of all kinds of manual labor; the women you talk to more often are all handy and full of maternal devotion. All this amazes you!

Although you do not go alone - a local friend takes you there - even so, it is actually a very presumptuous thing to walk into a stranger's house and ask him about the composition of his family, his past experiences and his financial income. However, they all answered your questions patiently and without reservation; they even allowed you to visit the kitchen and bathroom, not minding what you might see; and they never shied away from their own problems, always looking for opportunities to change. None of the homes you reach smell funny, none of the people are in rags, and none of the children are out of school. Although they are not rich for the time being, this does not prevent them from creating a warm family life, nor does it prevent them from being decent and humane when receiving guests. They don't feel bad about their lives, and they still have the fervent hope that "If I struggle for it, I can improve it".

Now, what you want to say is that the so-called "poor households" are not weighed down by the miserable clouds of sickness and pain, nor are they filled with hostility because of unemployment or various accidents. They seem to be very flexible in applying the state's policies to help the poor. In those homes you visit, almost all of them have newly built or renovated their houses. They know that the 40,000 yuan of state subsidy is definitely not enough, but with this money as a boost, it ignites the fire in their hearts. So, even if they borrow some money, even if the future is tighter, they still want to improve the house first - the house is not only a building, but also their home, their place of hope. Of course, they will decide the cost of building a house according to their ability to repay, and will never put themselves in a difficult situation. In the homes of the people you visit, although every family is poor, the family system has not disintegrated and people's spirits have not been broken. On the contrary, the hardship brought the families closer together and kept each other warm.

You find that the so-called "poor households" are in fact the most ordinary people, but on their shoulders, they carry invisible rocks. No matter what they are doing, they are bearing a pressure that ordinary people cannot imagine. Sometimes, that pressure almost exceeds their body's maximum load. And at this time, it is very important if someone can give them a hand. However, the state's support policy is primarily designed to stimulate the potential of the poor, not to spoil the lazy poor by taking over all their tasks. John Hatch, the executive of the "Foundation for International Community Assistance", once said, "Give poor communities some opportunities and then just let go." The truth is that the only people who can imagine the future of the poor are themselves. Given a boost, they will be full of innovation and strive to make themselves rich. Sitting in the study of your home in Dongguan, your mind has not yet left the small seaside town. After thinking about it for a long time, it dawns on you - how close to an ideal state (paradise?#####) those days you spent in the Haifeng countryside were. It was a place where the Chinese revolution began, where the flame of a star began to start a prairie, where the first heart sprouted and even germinated. After the trip to Haifeng, you found that your mentality and vision had changed a lot - now, when you witnessed the skyscrapers in Dongguan, you did not feel that they were an isolated existence, but rather that these buildings were closely related to the fire that Peng Pangpai lit in Longjiopu Square in Haifeng a hundred years ago. You had a kind of "counter-revelation" during this trip - you thought the world you were living in was complete, but now you realize that it is just a part of a much larger world. In a sense, the red villages in the land of Haifeng are like the roots under the flowers, and our world cannot be nourished and fed by that world.

In the twilight, you seem to see Peng Peng in 1923 writing in his "Dexi Study Room" - he only had time to write very late in the evening. At that time, he could never have imagined that one day his sculpture would stand on the Red Square for visitors to see; at that time, he was trying to find out the secret of the peasants' poverty with a strong storm raging inside him. At first he was hesitant to put pen to paper; but gradually he became excited; he even stopped writing and got up to walk around the house because of his excitement. His self-confidence was built up little by little. When he came back to his desk, his mind was clear as a bell - and he was writing again. Outside the "Delightful Study Room", the Longjin River was meandering by, while banyan, banana and lychee trees were clustered along its banks; a full moon was hanging in the sky, shining on the whitewashed farmhouses; a white heron with long legs and a long neck was standing on the river bank like a white exclamation mark!

In 1929, due to the betrayal of traitors, Peng Peng Pai was arrested in Shanghai and then sacrificed at the age of 33. After Peng Peng's death, as his former comrade, Zhou Enlai wrote a sorrowful eulogy: "He had led tens of thousands of peasants in Hailufeng and started the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese peasants against the exploitation of the landlords. His history of such heroic revolutionary struggle has long penetrated into the hearts of the masses of the toiling masses throughout the country, and he has become the most beloved leader of the masses. Who does not know that there is Peng Pai in Guangdong? Who does not know that Peng Pai is the leader of the Chinese peasant movement and the faithful leader of the agrarian revolution." Across all the old pains of rustic China, the wheels of modernization never stop. In these last 40 years, change has come to China in a tangible way. The world where all peasants can have fields to grow, books to read, and houses to live in, as Peng Pei imagined, has now come true!

The voice of a shepherd boy sang from nowhere, and it was so clear and bright--

Winter! Winter! Winter! Winter! 　　The field boy scolded the field master: The field boy plowed the field until he died; the field master ate white rice in his alley! I'm hungry and lazy! It's because you don't know how to think! It's not a bad life!　farmer! Wake up! Farmer! Don't be stupid! The earth is God's work! The earth is God's work! You have no part! I have no share! If you work it, you will eat it! If you don't, please rest! Epilogue: The wind in the South China Sea is faster

China's poverty alleviation project is not only complicated and huge, but also has no precedent, so we can only solve the problems by ourselves. However, the Chinese have the wisdom of the Chinese! In the past, it was unimaginable that all poor households could be lifted out of poverty "without leaving anyone behind"; now, the miracle of lifting all poor people out of poverty and all poor villages out of poverty is not only the first in Chinese history, but also the first in the international arena! Now, a thousand-year dream has been realized, and this is a gift to the world from China, which has gone from a big country to a strong one!

Located in the South China Sea side of Guangdong Province, is the front line of reform and opening up, had the courage to lead the tide of the times, and now, in the battle of precise poverty alleviation, and delivered a special answer sheet - it has two battlefields in the province and outside the province! By the end of 2019, the annual per capita disposable income of relatively poor households with working ability in Guangdong Province will reach 10,560 yuan, a total of 1.6 million relatively poor people will be lifted out of poverty, and more than 90% of relatively poor villages will reach the standard of being listed; by the end of 2020, all relatively poor people in Guangdong Province will reach 100% of poverty, and 100% of relatively poor villages will reach the standard of being listed; at the same time, Guangdong Province also helps Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces (regions), 14 cities (states), 93 poor counties, so that nearly 4.2 million people also got out of poverty!

"When the great sage Su Dongpo came to the hot land of Lingnan more than 1,000 years ago, he wrote these lines with delight. However, the dream of not allowing 10,000 families to bask not only in the "natural spring color" but also in the "happy spring color" has not been truly realized until now.

Lingnan Englisch 8

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