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 | Wednesday, April 26, 2000, updated at 21:16(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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Life | ||||||||||||
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Profile: Worker-Turned-Farmer Devoted to Tree-PlantingA wide swath of trees outlines the suburbs of Pingxiang, a city in east China's Jiangxi Province, which just 20 years ago was surrounded by barren, rocky hills.Worker-turned-farmer Xiong Qidong and his family are credited with the transformation, which has created not only more pleasant surroundings for Xiong and his fellow villagers but also gives them the chance to make more money. When Xiong announced he was giving up his job at a State-owned paper mill in 1981, many of his relatives and friends jeered at his decision to abandon the security of the "iron bowl" for a life of hoeing. But Xiong was determined to rejuvenate the balding hills that once were the lifeline of the villagers. To start out, he contracted 5.2 ha of land from the community, spending all of his family's savings of 1,710 yuan (about 200 US dollars) on the purchase. No guarantees came with planting tree seedlings on the rugged land. Giving himself over fully to the project, Xiong built a bamboo hut on the hill, and moved his family of four into it. For months, the family planted seedlings into the rocky soil. Seven years later, all 5.2 ha of land were dotted with young trees. Xiong didn't allow success to lead to complacency; instead he bought more treeless hills, and asked other villagers to join him in his project. Xiong and his wife gave their neighbors free saplings, carrying them by the bundle to every doorstep in the village. Local people estimate that in the past 20 years, the Xiong's have given free saplings worth at least 200,000 yuan to the villagers. Xiong's devotion to tree-planting led him to more formal study of farming skills. He subscribed to a number of agricultural science journals and newspapers and bought books on the subject. Xiong traveled to the provinces of Hunan, Zhejiang and Guangzhou to learn from skilled farmers there. Now, many forestry experts in the region regard him as one of their own. The local forestry department said that by the end of 1999, Xiong and his family had greened over 1,200 ha of barren hills, of which 500 have been planted with fruit trees. The total assets of Xiong's "green bank" have reached over eight million yuan, and the yearly net income of his family stands at 120,000 yuan, they said. Xiong's success has set a good example for his neighbors, and now all 36 of households in the village have contracted their own land to plant trees. Their efforts have also paid off: Their annual average income from the trees is more than 300 yuan, and many of the families in the village are no longer living in poverty.
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