Declare war on the desert and visit Wang Youde, winner of the national honorary title of "Model of the People"

Face-to-face丨An exclusive interview with Wang Youde, winner of the national honorary title of "People's Model"

　　June 17 is World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.

As soon as Wang Youde was discharged from the hospital after the operation, he discussed the drought resistance in the forest area with the staff of the Baijitan National Nature Reserve in Lingwu, Ningxia.

Although he has been retired for 8 years, the grass and trees there always make him uneasy.

Only do one thing in life

　　Reporter: You have been fighting against Huangsha all your life, so your body is actually under a lot of pressure, right?

　　Wang Youde: It’s okay, so far I think it’s okay, it’s just a minor illness.

　　Reporter: It proves that you have not stopped now, right?

Are you still doing work related to sand control?

　　Wang Youde: I have been doing it all the time, and I will continue to do it after retirement.

　　In 1985, 32-year-old Wang Youde was transferred to Lingwu County Baijitan Sand Control Forest Farm, the predecessor of Lingwu Baijitan National Nature Reserve in Ningxia, as the deputy director.

At that time, there were almost no green trees in Baijitan, and the wind and sand were raging, facing the dilemma that the sand forced people to retreat.

Wang Youde:

That is in this desert. There is no water in the desert, and there are no conditions to plant trees. If you don’t pay attention to planting, you have no sense of responsibility, and you can’t live if you plant them.

The time for the employees to plant trees is to plant trees every spring. At this time, everyone has to enter the desert, live in the desert and plant trees. After the trees are planted, they don’t care. After the wind blows in the second year, all the seedlings are blown out. Can't live without an entire army.

Afforestation is done every year, but no forest is seen every year; trees are planted every year, but there are no trees every year.

　　Since taking office, Wang Youde was determined to lead the employees of Baijitan Sand Control Forest Farm to declare war on the desert.

In 1953, Wang Youde was born in Majiatan, Lingwu, on the southeastern edge of the Mu Us Desert, and the sandstorm left him with a painful memory.

　　As a child, Wang Youde witnessed Huangsha climbing up the windowsill again and again, filling the caves again and again, and finally forcing the whole village to move out of their homeland.

Wang Youde:

In that case, there is simply no way to live, no way to survive.

After many years of governance, I now feel more and more that I am persistently fighting against the desert, and the green home that I have exchanged with hard work and sweat is like loving my own life.

Governing the Poverty First

　　In the year of Wang Youde's birth, in order to prevent yellow sand from entering the Yellow River, Baijitan Sand Control Forest Farm was established. In 1985, the forest farm was approved as a county-level nature reserve.

However, affected by the planned economic system and the outdated concept of cadres and workers, the production of the forest farm has been stagnant for many years. When Wang Youde came here, the fixed assets were less than 400,000 yuan, and 159 employees could only rely on the annual financial allocation of 100,000 yuan. spend the day.

Wang Youde:

The living environment of human beings is very, very difficult.

The forest farms drink water with high fluoride content. You can see that after drinking water with high fluoride content for several years, those babies have bulging eyes and green faces.

The workers' waists are bent forward.

The house where I live looks at the stars in the sky at night. It rains, but it stops raining outside, and it is still raining in the house.

Therefore, most of the workers are unwilling to suffer in the deep mountains and old forests, and if they come to plant trees, they have to ask to be transferred.

　　Seeing the scene before him, Wang Youde made up his mind: reform must be carried out!

He made three promises to the employees: if the employees are not rich, they will not leave, if the field is not alive, they will not leave, and if the desert is not green, they will not leave.

Faced with the mess of scattered people, Wang Youde decided to start by gathering people's hearts.

Wang Youde:

This is a matter of firm ideals and beliefs.

As a party member and a leading cadre, I focus on the needs of the common people.

Seeing that after retirement, the dual-employee has to use a car for 40 kilometers to see a doctor, and the tractor pulls it down by hand, and his intestines are broken.

Finally, I mortgaged my house, and mortgaged all the houses of my sister, brother, in-laws, and my parents.

After the loan was made, eight sets of two-story buildings were built in Lingwu County, and eight pairs of retired workers were resolved.

After moving down and moving to the county seat, the problem of two generations has been solved. The problem of a retiree's difficulty in seeing a doctor and the difficulty of buying food has been solved; the problem of going to school for a grandchild has been solved.

　　Another measure of Wang Youde is to develop a sideline business and get rid of the traditional rigid thinking of "relying on sand to eat sand".

In order to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, he implemented equal pay for equal work and paid according to work in the forest farm, breaking the "big pot of rice" and implementing the responsibility contracting system.

Wang Youde:

This has mobilized the enthusiasm of many people.

Especially for wicker weaving, the baskets are woven. One basket is one yuan. The couple can weave 25 baskets a day, and they sell for 25 yuan.

The combined wages of the two of them were only more than 5 yuan a day. At that time, they had several times their wages and a few days' wages, so their enthusiasm was gradually mobilized from here.

　　In July 1986, Wang Youde led the staff to start the first battle against poverty and desertification - planting nearly 1,000 mu of orchards in the mobile sand dune area of ​​Beishawo.

After that, Wang Youde seemed to have "grown" in the sand dunes. He ate and lived on the construction site with the employees, and did not go home for several months. With the joint efforts of all the employees, the orchard gradually took shape.

At the same time, he raised funds everywhere, led the staff to develop breeding, willow weaving, opened restaurants, hotels, and repair shops.

Just when the business was improving a little, in the late 1980s, through loans, the brick kiln that the forest farm was going to set up with another unit went wrong.

　　The setback in the joint establishment of a brick kiln became the most difficult hurdle in Wang Youde's entrepreneurial process.

Later, he looked for ways everywhere, and through re-introduction of investment, the brick kiln factory was able to come back to life.

Wang Youde:

After it was built, 1.58 million red bricks were produced that year, and the profit for that year was 40,000 yuan.

In the 1990 Asian Games, the fire for the Asian Games was lit at 8 o'clock, and our brick yard was lit at 10 o'clock.

What I decided at the time was to add bricks and bricks to the country. After it was built, this brick factory could make money for the forest farm and feed people.

　　With the industry, the income of forest farms began to increase year by year, and the income of employees also rose.

Seeing hope and enthusiasm, the work of afforestation and sand control has naturally progressed.

　　When it comes to sand control, Wang Youde always has many ways.

In the 1990s, based on the continuous improvement of traditional sand control methods, Wang Youde led the forest farm workers to carry out sand-fixing experiments on grass squares, creatively using wheat straw, a material that is spread all over the Ningxia Plain, for sand-fixing.

Wang Youde:

It means that one person digs 10,000 pits, planted 10,000 trees, and plowed 10,000 grass squares a year. The sand control area is 100 mu, and the income from the sand control is 10,000 yuan. This is done by all employees in the field. a task.

After you complete the task, you will be rewarded, and if the task is not completed, you will be punished.

For example, we set the survival rate at 85%. If you reduce it by one percentage point, we will ask you to compensate 50% of the cost of the seedlings. If you increase it by one percentage point, you will be rewarded with 50% of the cost of the seedlings. This mechanism works very well in the forest farm. In the end, the workers used the desertification control and afforestation as their own ration field.

　　Due to the harsh natural environment, many saplings could not survive in Baijitan. Wang Youde led the staff of the forest farm to introduce new seedling species and tackle key cultivation techniques.

Wang Youde:

After introducing a batch of Pinus sylvestris and planting it, the beetles eat the terminal buds, and the insects eat the terminal buds. Once the terminal buds eat the conifers, they will stop growing. In the end, the seedlings will be abolished.

I thought what should I do with this thing?

I held a meeting to call on the workers to catch the bug, the beetle shell. After you catch it at night, the sun comes up again, it climbs the tree again, and it eats the terminal bud again. I feel that the seedling will not be able to be planted.

I ended up smoking, tying the cigarette to the trunk, tying it up, and tying it to the trunk, the bug slipped and couldn't get up.

The last thing is to wear a skirt, that is, the bell mouth, tie the plastic, and first keep the head of the tree.

Life goes on, sand control goes on

　　However, in the long years of sand control, such innovative experiments are not easy.

Wang Youde and the staff of the forest farm lived and ate in the sand nest. The high temperature and heat, the wind and snow, the harsh environment and the high-intensity labor tested everyone's limits.

"I'd rather drop 10 pounds of meat than let the ecology fall behind", this is what he often talks about.

　　Wang Youde's home is not far from the forest farm, but he often does not care about going home.

Busy all the year round, he fell into a serious stomach problem.

　　Why do this drudgery?

There are also people around him who don't understand Wang Youde's choice, because higher-level departments have offered better positions, and they want to transfer him to be the director of the finance bureau and township party committee secretary, but he has rejected them one by one.

Wang Youde:

No, after the house is built, the organization will transfer me to a township to be the party secretary.

I talked to the organization at the time, and I said I couldn't leave.

Because the loans to build the house are all loans, the housing mortgage loans have been made, and they have been mortgaged. In addition to the development of multi-business loans, the field has lent six or seven million yuan, which has been done to employees and every household. Over the commitments, gradually implement the thinking of the staff and work, and finally condense together and start to work. When you are working, as a leader and a party member, you must take the lead and set an example, and you must not lose your prestige.

　　That is, with such a commitment, Wang Youde led the employees of Baijitan Forest Farm to control desertification and afforestation for 30 years, until he retired from his post in 2014.

　　In the past 30 years, Wang Youde has led the forest farm staff to build a total of 600,000 mu of windbreak and sand-fixation forest, and control nearly one million mu of quicksand. Not only has it built a green barrier to stop the erosion of the Mu Us Desert, but it has also moved the desert back 20 kilometers from the east side of the Yellow River, creating a A miracle in the history of world sand control.

Wang Youde:

Now, every time I see an oasis, every time I see a subfield, every time I see a tree, I feel very proud and proud.

In the past, the Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs often invited foreign guests and foreigners to our sand control site. They wanted to visit Baiji Beach. After they came, a foreign guest from the embassy asked me what happened to sand control at your age. when?

I said that it will go all the way to the world, for the benefit of the people of the world and for the benefit of mankind.

　　After retiring, Wang Youde founded the Ningxia Desert Greening and Sand Industry Development Foundation to remediate and restore more than 6,000 acres of deserted beaches and build more than 3,000 acres of ecological protection forests.

Currently, he is planning to build China's largest desert park.

Wang Youde:

As long as I can do it for one day, I will pursue desert control, afforestation, and ecology for one day.

Suffering, but it is bitter enough to be joyful, bitter enough to be practical, and bitter enough that people feel very good.

　　Reporter丨Wang Ning