Amid white apricots

Grassroots effort

The past decade has witnessed the remote village's transformation. And Sun Zhibao is the one who propelled the change.

After graduating from Xi'an International Studies University, in Xi'an of Shaanxi province, in 2001, Sun worked in a travel agency in Tianjin as a Japanese interpreter for several years. Then, Sun's father asked him to return home to run a business that might help fellow villagers to embrace a better life.

"I had broadened my vision of the outside world and it was time for me to help lift my home village out of poverty," Sun says.

He went back in October 2008, and began to plant cotton on a dry area near his village. He was the first in the village to use drip irrigation and sowing methods on the field. His endeavors to cultivate cotton on barren land have inspired fellow villagers to follow in his footsteps. In 2014, he was invited to join the village's Party committee where he could help the villagers to get out of absolute poverty. Three years later, he was appointed the village's Party secretary.

It was also that year when the village met the turning point in its development.

In 2017, Zhejiang province's Ningbo city joined efforts to support his village in upgrading its infrastructure and agriculture sector.

"Ningbo government provided high-quality crop and fruit varieties for the villagers here to grow. Supermarkets and other outlets in Ningbo helped to sell our agricultural produce," Sun says.

The husbandry cooperative in the village is now raising 789 cows and more than 2,000 sheep. Last year, the village's collective income surpassed 3.08 million yuan.

Sun has been actively seeking talented, diligent young people to join him as grassroots cadres to push the village and nearby villages to the next stage of development.

"Young cadres with action and enthusiasm are important for rural vitalization," he says.

He plans to set up a fruit cultivation zone covering some 33 hectares in the village.

The white apricot is always there to grow.