"Dry beach" in Minning Town, Ningxia became "Golden Beach"
Mushrooms, grapes, red raspberries, medlars, and other planting industries have gradually formed a cluster industry development model
When the immigrants first arrived in Minning Village, they had to open up wasteland on the Gobi Desert.
Photo courtesy of respondents
An aerial view of Minning Town today.
Photo courtesy of respondents
On February 2, Ma Chunhua picked Agaricus bisporus in the mushroom house.
A04-A05 version of the picture (except for signature) / Beijing News reporter Zhang Jingshu
In the Ningxia Consumer Poverty Alleviation Exhibition Center in Yinchuan, products from the e-commerce poverty alleviation workshop in Minning Town are on display.
On February 1, Ma Yan "launched", holding the wolfberry in the poverty alleviation workshop to introduce fans online.
On January 30th, Xie Xingchang talked about the relocation of immigrants 24 years ago at home.
With the popularity of the TV series "The Love of Mountains and Seas", 66-year-old Xie Xingchang has to be interviewed by several groups of people a day, "Is it really so bitter then?"
Xie Xingchang was the first generation of immigrants from the Xihaigu area in Ningxia, as the prototype of the village cadre who called on the villagers to emigrate in "Mountain and Sea Situation". He was also the first village party secretary of Minning Village who called on villagers to relocate. The long grass, the wind blows the sand and runs away. It's hard to live, it's harder to live than in a TV series."
In 1996, Fujian and Ningxia established a counterpart assistance relationship, from the initiation of the relocation of Xihaigu immigrants to the implementation of industrial poverty alleviation projects. In 24 years, 11 batches of 183 temporary cadres from Fujian, more than 2,000 team members and experts in supporting education, medicine and agriculture More than 100,000 academicians and volunteers from the Western Program directly participated in helping Ningxia.
As of December 30 last year, more than 30 counties (cities, districts) in Fujian Province have paired up with 9 impoverished counties (districts) in Ningxia. The Fujian Provincial Government has invested a total of 1.934 billion yuan in free aid funds, and all sectors of society donated nearly 4 100 million yuan.
It assisted in the construction of 349 health projects including maternity and child health care centers, medical training centers, and health centers (institutes) in Xihaigu Prefecture, and more than 230 schools were newly (expanded).
Xie Xingchang couldn't think about the changes in Minning Town now.
Lin Yuechan, the first batch of cadres for poverty alleviation in Minning, said, "We Fujianese, we are not in vain!"
The persuasive power of 4 corn cobs
On the morning of February 2, Ma Chunhua skillfully picked a bisporus mushroom from the mushroom bed with his right hand in the mushroom room of an ecological agricultural technology company in Minning Town, Ningxia, and gently "sweeped" it with a small knife in his left hand. The silk and the black base of the mushroom root were cut off, and a round and white bisporus mushroom was placed in the basket.
To prevent these mushrooms from being artificially damaged, Ma Chunhua had to be very careful, using her thumb and forefinger to fix the thick umbrella cover, "one press, two twists, three pulls" in one go.
This is a set of procedures that Ma Chunhua is familiar with. In the fall of 2020, when she finished working outside and just joined the company, she didn't say much, she reached out and went on the road.
The warm and moist mushroom house is a place that Ma Chunhua can't be familiar with. It is the place that supported her family's livelihood more than 20 years ago.
Ma Chunhua’s hometown, Xiji County, Haiyuan County, Guyuan County, and Jingyuan County, are collectively called the "Xihaigu Region". It is located in the southern part of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. It has deep mountains and deep ditch. The average annual precipitation is only 300 mm, but the evaporation is high. Above 2000 mm.
In 1972, it was determined by the United Nations Food Development Program as one of the most unsuitable areas for human survival.
"Nine droughts in ten years. After the seeds are planted, they hope for rain. Only when the seeds are planted can you harvest some grain. If it doesn't rain, there will be no harvest." Xie Xingchang remembers the situation still fresh, and he lives in Hongtai, Wangmin Township, Xiji County. In the village, almost every family depends on state relief food, and the per capita annual income is less than 500 yuan.
In 1996, the Party Central Committee officially launched the poverty alleviation cooperation between the East and the West, and Fujian and Ningxia established a paired assistance relationship.
Lin Yuechan, director of the Fujian Provincial Poverty Alleviation Office at the time, recalled that the natural conditions in Xihaigu area were harsh and poverty alleviation was difficult. The two provinces of Fujian and Ningxia decided to build a new immigration demonstration area near the resettlement point of Yuquanying Economic Development Zone in Yinchuan City.
"It is much easier to find a place where there is water from the Yellow River and live anew here than to help the poor on the spot."
Ma Chunhua and Xie Xingchang were the first immigrants who responded to the call.
It was not a simple move, but a relocation for immigrants who were able to feed themselves.
In addition to relocating himself, Xie Xingchang was also the first group of village cadres who called for emigration from neighbors.
At the beginning of this year, a TV drama "Mountain and Sea Situation", which reflected the relocation of immigrants from Xihaigu area at that time, was released. The actor Huang Xuan played the role of a village cadre who called on villagers to emigrate, and Xie Xingchang was the main prototype.
In the late 1980s, Xie Xingchang graduated from Guyuan Health School and returned to the village to become a village doctor, and later became the village party secretary.
In July 1997, Minning Village, a settlement jointly built by Ningxia and Fujian, broke ground on a Gobi Desert in Yongning County, Yinchuan City.
It was more than 20 kilometers away from the Yellow River in a straight line. Xie Xingchang recalled that at that time there was still a dry beach with "no birds in the sky, no grass in the ground, no one for ten miles, and the wind blowing sand." However, if water conservancy projects can be used to divert water from the Yellow River Irrigation, here is "Seibei Jiangnan".
He saw the state-owned farm in Yuquanying Development Zone, 4 kilometers away, where corn and sorghum were growing prosperously. Before returning home, he deliberately broke off 4 corn cobs.
"This is the hope of the whole village." It is not easy to call on the villagers to move to this "dry beach". These 4 corns are his "helpers", telling the villagers that "we can use the Yellow River if we go." The best proof that water can grow such crops.
But the persuasiveness of the four corn cobs was obviously weaker than Xie Xingchang thought. The first group of 14 people who followed him, the three-wheeled tractor drove for 12 hours before reaching this "wasteland" from the mountains.
When you first arrive, you have to build your own house, open the ground, and connect to water and electricity.
He remembers the first experience of encountering a sandstorm, when the house was not built and the tent was home.
Looking at the yellow sand from a distance, he shouted to let his lover who was cooking protect the food.
When the wind passed, there were only three things left in the tent: "My wife, the pot she was holding in her hand, and the quilt under her feet. The rice is no longer eatable, it's all sand, the villagers Complain,'what the hell is this?'"
Some people murmured back, while others continued to be persuaded by Xie Xingchang. In the TV series, when telling this experience, there was a part of the village cadre being scolded at the nose by the neighbors. Xie Xingchang told the Beijing News reporter that in real life, he was always suffering. Hit.
Agaricus bisporus became the "first pot of gold" for immigrants
When Xie Xingchang was busy recruiting and retaining people, at the end of 1997, Lin Zhanxi, a professor at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and inventor of Juncao technology, came to Minning Village with his team and became the main force for agricultural technology poverty alleviation in Minning's counterpart poverty alleviation collaboration.
In the previous six months, Lin Zhanxi and his colleagues succeeded in preliminary experiments in Pengyang County, Ningxia. They transplanted the technology of "using grass instead of wood" to cultivate edible fungi that had been researched and implemented in Fujian for more than ten years to the Northwest.
When he arrived in Minning Village, Lin Zhanxi found that it was even more difficult. Minning Village, which is still a piece of dry sand, had no cave dwellings suitable for mushroom sheds. Starting from thinking of ways to cover mushroom sheds, many people were stumped.
On February 4th, Lin Zhanxi told reporters that he was too tired at that time. Many people were tired before seeing the success of the mushroom seeds, but everyone did not dare to rest because this was not an experiment, "it was a task of (poverty alleviation). Come." The final "semi-underground" mushroom shed was successfully finalized after several failures and experiments.
After 1998, Lin Zhanxi and his team members began to spread out to various village groups, teaching farmers to build sheds, erect racks, and use cow dung and grass to make compost.
Ma Chunhua's family was the first batch of farmers to grow. She remembered that all the materials and raw materials needed at that time were provided by Fujian for free.
There is a four-story wooden mushroom bed in the mushroom shed of about 200 square meters. The Fujian technician teaches it. She and her lover are studying while they are learning. They don't understand the accent and some vocabulary. They just ask and do the same.
Before that, she hadn’t even heard of Agaricus bisporus. When the first mushroom appeared on the mushroom stand, Ma Chunhua was surprised and delighted. For the first time, Ma Chunhua and his wife, who used to work outside their homes, did not even come out of their house. Just count the money.
In less than a year, Ma Chunhua's family made a total of 7,500 yuan from selling mushrooms.
"This little thing, but it solved a big problem for the family." Even in retrospect, Ma Chunhua still thinks that Agaricus bisporus is rare and precious.
Similarly, Ma Wenxiang, the first group of villagers who learned to grow mushrooms, also remembered that mushrooms sold for two to three yuan per catty at that time, which was more expensive than meat. He became the first group of "crab-eating" people, and life in the mushroom shed was the most difficult. To feed a family at the time.
The immigrants from Xihaigu found the first pot of gold from the bisporus mushroom shed in Minning Village.
"Minning Qiao Wife" with live broadcast
In December 2001, Minning Town, named after the abbreviation of Fujian and Ningxia provinces, was formally established. At that time, it had five villages under its jurisdiction and was merged into the Yuhai Economic and Technological Development Zone of Yinchuan City.
In 2010, a new immigrant village was planned and constructed in the wasteland north of Minning Township. In the following years, nearly 2,000 immigrants from 13 townships in Yuanzhou District and Longde County of Guyuan City have been resettled. The name is Yuanlong Village.
In 2013, Ma Yan's family of 11 moved here from Zhonghe Township, Yuanzhou District, which can be regarded as the last immigrants of the entire Minning Township.
Compared with the predecessors of immigrants 17 years ago, when Ma Yan's family came, Minning Town was no longer the “dry beach” that year.
There are clean and tidy hardened roads in the village, red brick houses are located in rows, water, electricity and solar energy are all available, and the school kindergarten is built in front of the house.
Ma Yan remembered that the village committee gave a birthday cake to her grandma's birthday in the first year she moved here.
Ma Yan said that at that time, she and her husband and her two children temporarily rented a bungalow in Yuquanying Development Zone. The old man rode an electric bike for more than ten kilometers and carried a sliced cake to them and sent them home. This is the first birthday for an old man in her 60s, and the first time she has her own birthday cake. She is too rare to let everyone eat it."
Before immigrating, Ma Yan’s home was surrounded by mountains. She seldom thought about going out and thinking, "eat, sleep, and take good care of the children." Ma Yan didn’t think too much. She only went to school for half a year and couldn’t think of "culture". "What's the use in the mountains? Having cattle and sheep at home is a good situation.
"Feeding cattle and sheep does not require culture."
But now, 29-year-old Ma Yan has become a "cargo anchor".
"Thank you for your participation. Recently, our wolfberry is engaged in activities. The authentic Zhongning wolfberry is a nourishing thing for the body. Fans who purchase can click on the little yellow cart (shopping cart) below." At 8 o'clock in the morning on February 3, Ma Yan started a live broadcast in the warehouse of an e-commerce poverty alleviation workshop in Minning.
After the introduction of the main medlar, astragalus, and golden chrysanthemum, Ma Yan pulled the live camera to the workbench of the female workers in the workshop. Several female workers were repacking the packaged milk. The packaged gift box will be in the Spring Festival. It will be listed as a New Year's Day.
At the end of 2019, an e-commerce poverty alleviation workshop in Yuanlong Village, Minning Town, was completed. It mainly sells special agricultural products in Ningxia, and prioritizes the recruitment of local left-behind women and poor households with registered cards.
At present, 52 people are employed in the workshop, 90% of which are women, and 50% are poor households with original documents and registered cards. The average monthly salary of employees is nearly 3,000 yuan.
The person in charge instructed these mostly illiterate female workers to sort products, pack them with equipment, and operate computers to make express orders.
When she first entered the factory, Ma Yan was timid. She hadn't seen a lot of things after she had never been to work, and she couldn't even name the product.
She came up with a "stupid way", took paper and pen with her, asked others to write down the names of products she didn't know, and went home to continue learning.
"Teacher" was her eldest son who had just entered the second grade.
Starting in the first half of 2020, they started "live delivery" under the leadership of Li Huiqin, the deputy mayor who came to Minning Town in Fujian Province. 6 female workers including Ma Yan formed the "Minning Clever Wife" live delivery group .
"Don't say it's in front of the camera, I don't even dare to speak when there are too many people." Ma Yan recalled, not confident at first, and trembling with nervousness.
To the camera, repeat the opening sentence Li Huiqin taught them, "Hello everyone, we are Minning Qiao's wife." She said this sentence hundreds of times, to overcome laughter, tension, embarrassment, and coldness. At the beginning After speaking the first sentence, she even stared blankly at the camera, not knowing what to do next.
Li Huiqin is impatient and quick to talk.
Speaking in a heavy sip of Fujian Mandarin, he told Ma Yan and the others the knack, "Relax, these products are things you can't be familiar with. You must show their beauty and speak out."
Now Ma Yan is familiar with the live broadcast room. There are characters in the netizen’s name that she doesn’t know. She is not ashamed to ask directly, "The netizens are very good, and will give me a voice to tell me how to read." The live broadcast room became Ma Yan’s world. Another window, now she will put on makeup on herself every day before going out, "When the live broadcast starts,'Minning Qiao's wife' wants to be beautiful."
Let Minning Town "Go Out"
Li Huiqin himself also opened a video account called "Mayor Li praises Minning", and from May 2020, he will start to test the live streaming of goods to sell products in the poverty alleviation workshop where Ma Yan is located, such as red jujube rings, wolfberry, and golden silk. During the first month of the live broadcast of Huangju, Daylily, and Astragalus, Li Huiqin's fans rose from 0 to nearly 10,000, and the most sold more than 300 products in one day.
In addition to live broadcasts every night, daily visits to the village for investigations, in the white radish fields, wine estates, cattle farmers, and raspberry plantations, Li Huiqin will shoot a short video to introduce the special products, customs and folk customs of Minning Town. .
Even when he returned to Xiamen for vacation, he did not forget to say, "Friends from hometown come and support our poverty alleviation products in Minning Town. I need the support of my mother's family. I will return to Ningxia tomorrow..."
In September 2019, 30-year-old Li Huiqin came to Minning Town as the 11th batch of Fujian-aided cadres to serve as deputy mayor.
Like his predecessors, Li Huiqin didn’t come easily. He took the task, "Come here, it can’t be done in vain, right? We must work hard to bring some changes to Minning Town." The industry has different goals for the people of Ningxia. He feels that now is the time to "bring out" Minning Town.
The form and content of "Aid to Ning" have also changed over the past 20 years.
From the beginning of "feasting", to building water cellars, building hope primary schools, establishing economic entities, and developing characteristic industries.
At present, Fujian has more than 5,700 enterprises in Ningxia, paying more than 1 billion yuan in annual taxes, and hiring more than 100,000 local laborers.
In 2015, the enrollment plan for colleges and universities in Fujian Province for Ningxia undergraduates increased by 10%.
"More children have passed high school entrance exams and colleges, and we have a future." Xie Xingchang said. In the past, he had to promote the importance of going to school from house to house, and compiled a slogan, "I would rather let the family lack food than delay the baby going to school. ; I would rather let the pot be short of vegetables, not to delay the next generation."
However, after 2005, immigrant households regarded their children's schooling as their top priority at home. In the newly-built school, almost every child in Minning Town had taken lessons from Fujian teachers.
Fujian teachers brought basketball, musical instruments, and multimedia teaching equipment they had never seen before, and also told them what the outside world was like.
"In the past, farmers thought it was useless to go to school. Later, each family competed and saw how many college students could be found." Xie Xingchang said.
In 2020, 104 students in Funing Village will be admitted to undergraduate courses, and 24 students will have scores above 600 in the high school entrance examination.
From the first determination of the assistance relationship in 1997 to the inspection in Ningxia until his retirement in 2007, Lin Yuechan traveled to and from Fuzhou and Ningxia more than 40 times in 10 years, drove a batch of aid cadres, experts, academicians, and medical support teams to Ningxia to start a business in Fujian. Quotient.
In 2016, 9 years after retiring, she went to Minning Town once and found that earth-shaking changes had taken place there. "The common people all use tap water at home, they all have flush toilets, the children’s school is so spacious, and the town has a hospital. ."
At the end of 2018, the five poor villages of Funing Village, Mulan Village, Huayuan Village, Wuhe Village and Yuhai Village in Minning Town were lifted out of poverty, and Yuanlong Village was lifted out of poverty by the end of 2019.
At the end of last year, a Ningxia cadre who had worked together came to Fujian to visit Lin Yuechan, who was 75 years old, and told her that all the impoverished counties and cities in Ningxia had been lifted out of poverty. Lin Yuechan replied, "We Fujianese, we are not here in vain."
Li Huiqin feels that if Minning Town wants to go out, it must first attract more resources from the tertiary industry, but at present, the service industry level and service concept of the whole town cannot keep up.
Just like driving Ma Yan and the others, they never dared to speak until they could endorse the agricultural products in their hometown. He felt that more people should be "moved".
From "movable" to "stable"
The ideas of the young cadres coincide. Yang Qing, the deputy mayor in charge of poverty alleviation and development in Minning Town, said that poverty alleviation and removal is only the first step to complete the task, and diversified industries must be used to keep people behind and stabilize. To make everyone "active" to earn money is the further goal.
In order to make the town's 60,000 permanent residents earn money, and earn money at the door of the house, Yang Qing ran out with the resources of the town.
There is a farm in Yuanlong village that has been vacant for a long time. In 2019, he went outside the district to contact resources and introduced an Inner Mongolia company to revitalize the site. Now the farm has nearly 3,000 calves in stock, helping more than 30 people in the village to stabilize Employment.
A poverty alleviation workshop in Minning was also built by a cooperative enterprise invited by Yang Qing, allowing more than 40 women like Ma Yan, who used to be idle at home or working outside all the year round, to participate in labor at their doorsteps, and gain benefits. “There is also a Fujian Jinjiang enterprise. A clothing company invested in has solved more than 100 jobs."
In recent years, Minning Town has gradually formed a cluster industry development model in the cultivation of mushrooms, grapes, red raspberries, and medlars. There are 13 new business logistics, e-commerce, and manufacturing and processing enterprises in the town. Home.
"Allowing everyone to do something and earn money is the most stable and effective measure for poverty alleviation." Yang Qing said.
Yang Qing, born in 1985, was a beneficiary of immigration. In the late 1980s, his family immigrated from Caichuan Village in Guyuan County to Dazhanchang Township in Zhongning County.
At that time, Yang Qing knew that Fujianese had always been helping in poverty-stricken areas in Ningxia. He had never been to Fujian or seen the sea, but he had a special affection for the word "Min".
After graduating from university, Yang Qing was admitted as a civil servant in Yongning Town. In 2018, he was sent to Minning Town to take charge of poverty alleviation work, responsible for investment promotion, poverty alleviation project development, employment and entrepreneurship.
Yang Qing feels that immigration status can help him understand immigrants, their desires, and their shortcomings.
"When will we let Fujian help?" Yang Qing said, some people seem to have no special pursuits and lack of enthusiasm for earning money after eating and dressing. This is what needs to be solved fundamentally. Question of thought.
Fortunately, in recent years, he has seen many "second generations of immigrants" like himself are feeding back this land.
Yang Qing knew several young people and returned to the town middle school to teach after graduating from college.
As the Spring Festival approaches, on February 3rd, a few recent international students came to his office to ask about starting a business registration company. Young people have insufficient funds to start a business. They hope to have office space similar to office buildings in big cities for company registration and start-up. They hope to get help from Yang Qing.
Yang Qing said that these young people who are a dozen years younger than themselves are the hope of the new generation of Minning Town. They are self-reliant and are trying their best to create more possibilities on the dry beaches transformed by the fathers of Fujian and Ningxia. .
In December 2020, Xie Xingchang stepped down as the party secretary of Funing Village and returned to the village doctor's old profession. He sat in the pharmacy run by his son and treated the residents of the town.
The house he lives in has been rebuilt three times since 1997, ranging from adobe houses to brick houses. It is now a small two-story building. This is a good day he dared not imagine 24 years ago.
Ma Yan’s greatest wish is that the three children can receive a good education, and she has taken the children out of the mountains. She hopes that the children will be able to rely on knowledge to go out and see the bigger world.
At the moment she decided to buy a computer and study with her elder son. Ma Yan, who used to say that "studying in the mountains is useless," now feels that she can do a lot. At 29 years old, she is just beginning.
Beijing News reporter Zhang Jingshu and intern Niu Qingyan