——Zhang Jinchang, deputy to the Luoyang Municipal People's Congress and founder of melon planting
I would like to use this document to give the 103rd birthday of the Communist Party of China!
"When a man has a great purpose, he replaces rest with labor." - Greek proverb
In recent years, a little-known rural youth has quickly become popular on both sides of the Yi River in western Henan, and has been praised as a well-known news figure. He is Zhang Jinchang, the person in charge of the Guarang Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Yichuan County and a member of the Communist Party. As long as the locals mention this aspiring young man who became famous in one fell swoop for planting melons, they all give a proud thumbs up and tell his entrepreneurial story like a few treasures.
Zhang Jinchang has been awarded many honorary titles such as the Star of Returning to Entrepreneurship in Henan Province, the Good Youth of Luoyang City and the Outstanding Villager of Luoyang City. The company he founded was awarded the title of large-scale production base of authentic Chinese medicinal materials of Yichuan County Guarang Farmer Professional Cooperative by Luoyang Agriculture and Rural Bureau, the title of Yichuan County Returnee Entrepreneurship Demonstration Base by the Yichuan County Committee of the Communist Youth League, the excellent project of returning hometown entrepreneurship to help rural revitalization in Henan Province by the People's Government of Henan Province, and the title of Yichuan County Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Base jointly awarded by the Organization Department of Yichuan County Party Committee, Yichuan County Care for the Next Generation Working Committee, Yichuan County Science and Technology Industry and Information Technology Bureau and Yichuan County Agriculture and Rural Bureau. It was awarded the title of Luoyang Rural Cooperative Demonstration Society by Luoyang Agriculture and Rural Bureau.
These honors mark the affirmation and support of governments at all levels and all walks of life, and a dazzling new star on the agricultural front has risen in the land of Yibin, bringing new hope to the fathers and villagers who are "facing the loess and facing the sky". However, few people know that the road of successful people is not just a fresh wine at the beginning, but also a thorny and bumpy road.
Dilemma thinking
Zhang Jinchang successfully started a business in Zhangqizhuang and is now an "honorary villager" respected by the whole village. Zhang Qizhuang and his hometown Longwangtun are separated from Sanhuali, the two villages are located in the shallow mountainous area, there is no natural river, the loess that the ancestors have relied on for generations to survive are all "looking at the sky and harvesting", the traditional crops such as wheat, sweet potatoes, corn and so on all depend on the gift of God, when the rain is abundant, there is an occasional harvest, and the yield is ultra-low in case of drought, and even the grain is not harvested, and the villagers are even difficult to draft, and the economic conditions are poor.
Since ancient times, there has been a local saying that "Zhang Qizhuang, there is no good prescription; Longwangtun, it is difficult to keep people. Good men don't enter Zhangqizhuang, and good women don't marry Longwangtun", which is a vivid portrayal of these two villages. Due to the compulsion of life, many children in the village drop out of primary school, and very few can complete high school. Zhang Jinchang is no exception, after graduating from junior high school, his father lost money in business, and the huge pressure of hundreds of thousands of foreign debts made the diligent and studious Zhang Jinchang stop his studies, forcing him to make an early choice in life.
The Revelation of the Ancestors
For several days, he locked himself in his room and paced back and forth, thinking about his future and his future. When he was bored, he set his sights on a few old crates that his family regarded as "family heirlooms". It was the diary and books of the grandfather he had never met before his death, and he usually didn't pay attention to it, but at this time, he carefully flipped through them one after another, hoping to give him some guidance. Pursuing time against time, the yellowed diary restores for Zhang Jinchang the glorious history of a young man in the old era who went out to study and devote himself to the revolution for the cause of the nation at a time when the country's survival was in danger and internal and external troubles.
Grandfather Zhang Jifu (1904-1956), participated in the revolution in 1935, joined the Communist Party of China in 1937, served as the secretary of the Mahui District Committee of the Yichuan County of the underground party of the Communist Party of China, and used the identity of a teacher in Youxin Normal School as a cover to develop party members and engage in revolutionary activities for a long time. Inspired by him, many progressive students embarked on the revolutionary road. Among the students of equal nationality, Zhai Mingwu, who participated in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, the Huaihai River, and the many battles of crossing the Yangtze River, and served as deputy director of the General Political Department and Culture Department of the People's Liberation Army after liberation, Xing Ze, who had galloped across the battlefield for decades and successively served as deputy commander of the 38th Army and political commissar of the 54th Army, known as the "Long Live Army," and Ji Xichen, one of the "top ten reporters" in the country who served as chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region Salvation Association, director of the Sichuan branch of the Xinhua News Agency, and director of the reporter department of the "People's Daily," were all outstanding among the progressive students in that period. Zhang Jifu was also appointed by the organization to risk his life to open up a revolutionary base in the Luanchuan Mountains, and because of his shrewdness, ability, and outstanding contributions, he was appointed as a member of the Yichuan County CPC Committee and head of the United Front Work Department. After liberation, he successively served as the chief of the urban construction section of Yichuan County, the principal of the No. 1 Middle School of Minquan County, and the director of the Food Bureau of Minquan County until his death in 1956. Grandpa's touching deeds of going out of the mountain village to make a revolution and being born and dying for the people have always been the glory of the family and the pride of the township.
When he was confused, he revisited the mental journey of his ancestors, which made Zhang Jinchang suddenly open up, and he was deeply inspired and encouraged. After a few days of hard thinking and meditation, this 15-year-old boy who had never been involved in the world quickly understood: the tree dies, and the person lives. If you want to pay off your debts and change your fate of relying on the sky for food, you must go out of the mountain village like your grandfather, go to the outside world to go through the wind and rain, see the world, and find business opportunities to open up new roads! He persuaded his parents to take the only few dozen yuan in the family and get on the southbound train overnight.
(Zhang Jifu served as the director of the Minquan County Food Bureau in 1951)
Ten years of sharpening a sword
After a night of long-distance bumps, Zhang Jinchang, who had never been far away, appeared on the streets of bustling Guangzhou, he didn't care about being hungry, and he didn't have time to appreciate the verdant southern Guangdong customs, so he hurriedly went to find his cousin who worked here.
Once you have a place to live, you start looking for a job. But where did he think that it would be difficult for minors with no diploma, no skills, and no Cantonese to find a job! Just not having an ID card keeps him out of the employer, not to mention that no one wants to use child labor illegally. Even if he wears out his tongue and claims that he only needs food and shelter and no salary, no unit is willing to accept it. The continuous encounters day after day can't help but make this dream-chasing teenager lose his self-esteem, and then doubt his life. Although his cousin helped him get a fake ID card and changed his age to 18 years old, his immature face and immature body could not lie for him, and his job search was still fruitless.
A month later, his cousin introduced him to a furniture factory as a painter through an acquaintance, with a probationary period of three months and a salary of only 96 yuan. Dirty and tired, low salary, this is a job that ordinary people do not want to do, and Zhang Jinchang cherishes this opportunity, he gladly accepts, and promises to do a good job, every day early and late to go, love and dedication, the youngest but the most hard, soon get the praise of the factory, this work is two years.
However, after all, the salary was too low, and he was eager to earn money to pay off his debts, so he quit his job and tried to find a high-paying job. In the following three years, he moved to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Dongguan, changing furniture factories, toy factories, electronic equipment factories and other units. Because he does not pick fat and thin in his work, does not refuse to do dirty work, bears hardships and stands hard work, works hard, works hard, learns a variety of business skills, accumulates certain experience, and his salary has also risen with his performance.
Five years later, in order to improve his ability to adapt to the complex environment, he made a bold decision to abandon Guangdong, which he was already familiar with, and took the initiative to enter the completely unfamiliar "magic capital" Shanghai, and applied for a job as a clerk in a photographic equipment store. Based on his five years of experience in Guangdong, he is keen and studious, hard-working, and unwilling to be mediocre in his style, and he is full of confidence in camera marketing.
But he never expected that he had left a good reputation everywhere in the past, but this time he was frustrated in the first battle, and the performance appraisal in the first month encountered "Waterloo". The boss issued a warning: the three-month probation period could not meet the sales target, and he had to leave. Zhang Jinchang was not discouraged, he found that his shortcomings lie in the lack of professional knowledge and inadequate promotion, which leads to the loss of customers. So he tried his best to "make up for his brain", forgetting to sleep and eating after work, studying professional books, memorizing the performance characteristics, price points and advantages and disadvantages of different brands and models of cameras, and paying attention to the sales skills of excellent store staff in the store to improve his business ability.
Sure enough, the hard work paid off. From the second month, he overfulfilled the marketing task month by month, became the sales champion of the store, was impressed by the company, was appointed as the store manager in the second year, and jumped to the regional manager with an annual salary of 300,000 yuan in the third year. This year, he was 22 years old, the 8th year of hard work away from home, and he relied on extraordinary tenacity and struggle to become the company's eye-catching business elite. What Zhang Jinchang didn't expect was that his success not only won the respect of the company, but also gained the heart of a girl in the electrical appliance store opposite.
The girl's name is Gao Fangfang, from the water town in the south of the Yangtze River, gentle and handsome, and she cares about and warmly guards the masculine, handsome, and ambitious Xiao Zhang. She sees every progress of Xiao Zhang, is happy in her heart, and never stingy with WeChat likes or food rewards. collided with the spark of love in the back and forth of communication, and the two soon entered the palace of marriage and agreed to create a better future together.
In the later business development, Zhang Jinchang's suggestion of teamwork for key customers was adopted by the company and his profits tripled, and he won a reward of 100,000 yuan, and then won the honor of "outstanding employee" every year. With the increase of economic income year by year, he not only paid off the foreign debts for his family, but also had more than 1.2 million savings. So far, he has realized the gorgeous turn of a rural boy, his career is in full swing, and a bright future beckons to him.
He could have chosen to grow up and work in Shanghai, a metropolis, like other young people, but what he never forgot was to change the appearance of his hometown, and he was determined to use his more than ten years of experience in business marketing to feed back to his homeland, and change the farming model of his parents and villagers who relied on the sky for food from generation to generation. After discussing with their lovers, the two submitted their resignation reports to their company at the same time. In order to retain talents, the boss of the company was willing to give up the position of cadre shares and shareholders, and such temptation did not shake Zhang Jinchang's determination to return to his hometown and start a business.
Stepping on the bumpy road
When the boss of the company learned the reason for Zhang Jinchang's resignation, he couldn't help but feel respect. He proposed to become friends with Zhang Jinchang and was willing to provide a supply of goods to help him open a store in Luoyang. Zhang Jinchang declined, he knew that opening a store would definitely make money, and he could arrange employment for a few people, but he could not fundamentally solve the problem, and if he wanted to change the face of poverty in the whole village, he had to make an article around the word "agriculture".
In order to choose a suitable project, Zhang Jinchang took his lover home to see his parents, and then went out non-stop to investigate, and his footprints traveled all over the country. When I visited my parents-in-law in Jiangsu, I heard that my wife's brother planted melons to drive the whole village to get rich, Zhang Jinchang's eyes lit up, and then he went to visit, and learned that melons are a kind of perennial root crops with the same origin as medicine and food, the whole body is a treasure, the skin can relieve cough and phlegm and moisten the lungs, the root can improve the body's immunity, and the seeds are delicious snack food. The planting cycle is short, the effect is fast, the labor intensity is low, and it has good economic value and development prospects. He also consulted in detail on the specific aspects of melon planting, management, processing and sales, and decided to give it a go and try planting in his hometown.
One day in March 2018, Zhang Jinchang came to the Pingping Township Government, hoping to get land support for melon planting. happened to meet Tian Shengwei, secretary of the Zhang Qizhuang branch who was working in the township government, it can be said that Bole met Maxima, the two hit it off, and the Tian branch secretary immediately made a decision to transfer 200 acres of land for him to plant melons.
Zhang Jinchang believes that this is a godsend. Without further ado, he invited technicians from Jiangsu to introduce high-quality melon varieties, and the couple learned by doing and devoted themselves to melon planting. They get up early every day, from ploughing, digging ditches to erecting and laying nets, every link is meticulous, and strive for high standards and strict requirements. In order to solve the problem of water, he laid more than 5,000 meters of drip irrigation pipe network, which not only saved water, electricity and fertilizer, but also saved time and labor. A year later, the golden melons were hung with vines, stunning the four fields, dressing up the mountain village, with an income of more than 5,000 yuan per mu, and a total profit of more than 300,000 yuan that year. The successful trial planting of melons on the barren land of "relying on the harvest of the sky" has created a miracle in the history of agriculture in the Central Plains for the first time.
Zhang Jinchang insisted that "if a person is rich, he is not rich; If everyone is rich, they will be rich". He adheres to the socialist concept of common prosperity, registered and established a professional farmer cooperative for melon planting in Yichuan County, invested more than 5 million yuan to build a Chinese herbal medicine planting base based on melon planting, and provided free technical guidance to implement the "one-stop" service from planting to management to underwriting, driving the neighbors, radiating the surrounding area, and attracting more farmers to join the melon planting team. In just 6 years, from the initial 200 acres, expanded to more than 3,000 acres now, and the development of more than 800 acres of Chinese medicinal materials such as Bupleurum chinensis, Shegan, Polygonatum polygonatum and blood ginseng, and also built a supporting melon herb processing plant, which is used to complete a series of processes such as melon drying, slicing, melon seed frying, and root processing. Up to now, the output value of melons developed by him has reached more than 500 yuan, driving more than 50 farmers in 7 villages around Longwangtun, Qiling, Jinhutuo, Huangcun and Liuzhuang to engage in melon planting, so that they can embark on the road to prosperity.
In addition, he donated more than 200,000 yuan to the Zhangqizhuang Village Committee every year, and also paid rent on time to the peasant households who transferred land, which greatly improved the appearance of the village and the people's livelihood, and turned the small mountain village with dirt roads and old tiled houses into a new countryside with small western-style buildings today.
This year, Zhang Jinchang has established cooperative relations with growers in Bozhou, Anhui, Pingdingshan, Hebi, Zhumadian and other places, and is committed to the development of planting area while expanding the deep processing business of melons, so as to drive more people to get rich. The expropriation of 800 acres of sloping land in Pingping Village is under negotiation.
Zhang Jinchang said frankly that he has the red gene of his revolutionary ancestors flowing in his body, and he will keep in mind the purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly, make melon cultivation bigger and stronger, benefit his hometown, help poor households get rid of poverty, and lead the masses to the broad road of common prosperity.
(The author is a member of the Communist Party of China, a former head of a special agency of a well-known central media, and a senior reporter.) He has worked in propaganda departments and government agencies, and has published a large number of news and literary works. ）