Official moves mountains to improve villagers' lives

There is a famous Chinese fable about Yugong (foolish old man), an old man who decided to remove two mountains that blocked his home from the outside world. Wang Guangguo, Party chief of a village in Hubei province, has been dubbed a modern Yugong for leading villagers to build a cliff road, mostly with their bare hands.

Dianziping village, in Hubei's Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, used to be separated from the outside world by rivers and mountains. Wang, 50, started to work in the village in 1994 and was elected its Party chief in 2002.

In that year, after he told villagers that he wanted to build a road, many thought he was crazy due to the lack of money, technology and even manpower, but he was determined to build the road no matter what the cost. "If we were unable to finish building the road in five years, we'd just keep doing it for 10, 15 or even 20 years," Wang said.

In the fable, Yugong smashed apart rocks, dug up the ground and transported earth to the seaside in baskets.

His neighbors laughed at him, but Yugong said: "Even when I die, I shall have sons and grandsons surviving me. My descendants will go on forever, but the mountains will get no bigger. Why should there be any difficulty in leveling them?"

A god was moved by Yugong's sincerity and helped him level the two mountains. Ever since, his spirit has served as a standard for strong will and persistence in Chinese culture.

To persuade villagers, Wang donated 20,000 yuan ($2,400 at the time) of his family savings and even sold all seven family pigs to buy explosives.

In 2005, the village's elderly, teenagers and women banded together to start construction of the road on the cliff, as most of the men of working age had left to find work in the cities.

They started early in the morning and often did not come home until midnight.

To save time, they did not go home for lunch, and other villagers would bring them roasted potatoes and porridge.

By the end of 2010, the villagers had managed to build a 2.5-kilometer dirt road. After their deeds were widely reported in the media in 2011, the local government arranged for a professional construction team to build the rest of the road, and an 11.7-kilometer stretch, including a bridge, was finished in 2014.

Road to prosperity

More convenient transportation made it easier to visit the village's beautiful scenery and as Dianziping's popularity rose, it spurred a boom in other businesses, including rural homestays and tourism.

Wang said the villagers used to only grow potatoes, corn and soybeans, mainly to feed themselves, but once the road opened, they began to grow fruits and build a chili production factory.

His story moved Li Quanxing, Party secretary of Jiangsu province's Shanquan village, to persuade local entrepreneurs to donate 3 million yuan to build a kindergarten in Dianziping.

Zhong Zixu, the kindergarten's principal, said that in the past, many pupils in the village did not attend kindergarten. Today, over 60 do, and facilities are even better than those elsewhere in the county.

Wang said that a film depicting the village's road building story, which hit cinemas in 2019, brought tourists to Dianziping, and many villagers were able to turn their homes into hotels, providing meals and lodging to visitors.

The villagers make an annual income of up to 10,000 yuan ($1,570) per person nowadays, compared with only 2,000 yuan in 2010. And in 2016, the whole village was lifted out of poverty.

As a Party member, Wang said his fundamental faith is to serve the people and help fellow villagers achieve a prosperous life.

"Dianziping has improved greatly over the years, but there are more dreams we need to realize through concrete action and perseverance," he added.