The Daughter from the Big Mountain

We heard the name Liu Guizhen from Zhang Shangfu when we were talking about prize winners.

Every year, the State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development presents awards to the model workers in poverty alleviation. The awards are divided into four categories, namely Endeavour Award, Contribution Award, Dedication Award, and Innovation Award. The awards were also presented at the provincial and municipal levels. Zhang Shangfu was honored with the 2017 Endeavor Award in Poverty Alleviation of Shanxi Province, along with Liu Guizhen, the party secretary of the CPC Duanjiawan Village Committee in Dai County of Xinzhou City.

According to Zhang Shangfu, “Liu Guizhen did a better job than me. She provided numerous practical services for the people in the mountainous area. She's not tall, about 1.5 m in height. She's so skinny that people worried that she could be carried away by a strong wind. It's not easy for her, but she really did a great job. This year, she was honored the National Model in Poverty Alleviation.”

“The award is hard-won. It's only presented to ten people across the country each year and Xinzhou won two of them. It's really a big deal for the city,” continued Zhang Shangfu cheerfully.

Zhang Shangfu's story is about all the daily, trivial and ordinary matters. However, it's exactly his efforts to address these matters that have changed the village. What about Liu Guizhen's story? We were intrigued to find more about her. After being honored as the National Model in Poverty Alleviation in 2017, the provincial, municipal and county governments held meetings to publicize her exemplary deeds to set a model for others. Gradually, her story circulated nationwide and countless people were touched by her.

We found online her pictures of delivering speeches, treating patients, carrying water on the country road, and lecturing to the children. It's not like what we had imagined. In those pictures, she was no different from other women in the villages of Yanmen Pass, except for the sparkling eyes that revealed her ambition and resolution.

Having been born and raised in the mountainous area, she was endowed with natural beauty and outshone many of her peers. Beautiful and graceful, she's happily married to a man who's three years younger than her. Such an age gap is auspicious in Chinese culture. We can see from the pictures that Liu Guizhen is still the apple of her husband's eyes. The look of this good-natured man in his fifties at his wife is still full of love.

The life in the mountainous area is slow and unspectacular. As the wear and tear of time wrinkled her face, she had been a mother and had to put aside her dream to take good care of her family.

This woman from the big mountain is also endowed with a special quality. After sorting out the information about her, we found it difficult to believe it. She served 39 years as a rural doctor, 29 years as a rural teacher,19 years as the party secretary of the CPC village committee, 14 years as the director of the villagers' committee, among other things. It's unbelievable: How could one manage to do so many things? In her 50s, she had done much more than any other people.

All these added weight to Mr. Zhang's comments that “She did a better job than me” and “She did countless practical work.”

Yang Yao and Chen Kehai put aside their work at hand and drove to Dai County in Yanmen Pass. Shanxi Province has been known as the home to model workers, but still a women in a county being honored as the national role model has caused a great sensation among local people. Dai County is the birthplace of Yang Yao. He never met Liu Guizhen, but he heard of her from his friends from time to time. Familiarity with the local life and culture helped Yang Yao gain a better understanding of Liu Guizhen's story.

The southern area of the party features high mountains and dense forests, with inconvenient transportation. The Yuhe River is flowing through mountains from south to north before converging with Hutuo River. Between the two mountains on the eastern and western sides in the upper reaches of the Yuhe River, there is a valley where Duanjiawan Village, Liu Guizhen's hometown, is located.

Duanjiawan is an administrative village with seven natural villages under its jurisdiction, namely Duanjiawan, Wuqiang, Jiangtang, Songwangsi, Fugeping, Pianqiao and Lugao. The Chinese names of these villages carry classic elegance. They are scattered in the surrounding gullies covering an area of over 10 km ² . At its heyday, the population is less than 200 in the least populated village in Yukou Township of Dai County. The economy is dominated by agriculture. Since most of the farm land is upon the mountains, the villagers mainly rely on traditional crops such as corn, glutinous rice and potatoes. Among a total of 69 households with 118 villagers, 49 households with 92 people were registered as poverty-stricken.

Yang Yao and Kehai arrived at Dai County on March 7th, 2018. It's the 20th day of the first month of the lunar year, five days after the Lantern Festival. While waiting for Liu Guizhen who was away at a Women's Federation meeting in the city, Yang Yao met his friends there. At 2 pm, Liu Aijun, the deputy director in charge of publicity in the county Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, informed us of Liu Guizhen's return. So we invited her to the restaurant in our hotel for a lunch, but she insisted on having a simple meal nearby.

We recognized her from the crowds immediately, though neither of us had met her before. It's not because we saw her pictures beforehand, but that this thin, simple and capable woman has distinctive eyes. She shook hands with us humbly. Chen Kehai later said that her hand was coarse and strong and that she's almost at the same age as his mother in the mountainous area in northern Hubei Province.

After a brief conversation, we decided to go to her village.

As we drove up along the Yuhe River, the plain suddenly turned into narrow mountain road. When we finally arrived at Duanjiawan, we saw a few rows of low-rise stone houses against the hillside under the rocky cliff. The houses seemed to have been there forever. Hadn't we seen with our own eyes, we would never imagine that such a place could feed over 100 people. Liu Guizhen told us that thanks to the river, the river banks turned into ideal farm land in summer. At first glance, it's a gully between two mountains; take a closer look, and you'll find it's a treasure land for local people.

Liu Guizhen spoke in a low and weak voice, which made us wonder how she delivered speeches as a model worker in front of a large audience.

Since it was in March, the icy wind could paralyze one's face. Liu Guizhen invited us to her house to keep us warm. Liu Guizhen, carrying a bulginig backpack, led the way. Li Jinfang from the publicity office of the township government offered to help her with the backpack, but was declined. We noticed her grey hair, rough skin, wrinkles around the eyes, and straight back. We know that beneath the physical frailty lurked something awe-inspiring.

Her home comprises three simple old buildings on the hillside. We went up the path, entered the room and found a middle-aged man bending down to wash dishes. We recognized him from the previous footage and that was her husband Yang Hongsheng. In the room, there was a brick bed, a cabinet, a table, and a stove in the centre of the room. The moment he saw us, he stopped the work at hand and invited us to take a seat.

Liu Guizhen prepared benches and water for us. Yang Yao told her to have a seat, but she continued to entertain us as a thoughtful hostess. She told us to stay a bit further away from the stove to avoid being burned.

As Yang Yao took out the notebook, she immediately went to wipe the table with a wet cloth and spread a newspaper on it before putting snacks like melon seeds, peanuts and candies on it. She told us the melon seeds were cooked by herself and tasted delicious.

It's not an official interview, but a casual conversation. After winning the award recently, she had been interviewed by journalists from time to time, but she still felt nervous. Seeing that they prepared the digital voice recorder, she said, “I'm not good at expressing myself, but I'm willing to answer your questions.”

In fact, we had known a lot about her from various reports, pictures, videos and local people. We knew her as Doctor Liu, Lecturer Liu, Party Secretary Liu, and Director Liu. She's 57 years old, three years older than her husband who's a farmer and would go to Taiyuan for some odd jobs in slack farming seasons, like carrying brick and shovelling slushes. They had two daughters. The 29-year-old daughter is working in Shandong Province, and the 20-year-old daughter is studying at Shanxi Agricultural University.

The villagers began to know her as “Doctor Liu.” She became a rural doctor because of a word from her father Liu Baixiao.

Liu Baixiao joined the Party during the Anti-Japanese War. He served as a sentry and courier for the Eighth Route Army and then as the Party Secretary of the CPC Duanjiawan Village Committee for decades. Her father always said that “without selfish motives, you can do everything well.” When he's in the production team in charge of allocating grains and vegetables, he thought of all others before his own family. Once, he even gave his family's share of radish sprouts away to other more needy villagers and as a result, they had nothing to eat. In her childhood, Liu Guizhen saw her mother quarrelling with her father over such things from time to time. As a man of matching his words with deeds, her father has set a role model for her. When we mentioned her father, she became talkative.

She is the fourth child in the family, with three elder sisters and two younger brothers. As the saying goes, the eldest and youngest children in the family are usually the most loved ones, while the children between them are often less loved. Her father has been strict with the kids.

After graduating from high school in 1977, Liu Guizhen thought she might have to spend her whole life in the village. Therefore, when the College Entrance Exam was reinstated later that year after a 10-year hiatus, she knew that it would change the destiny of numerous young people, including her own. Determined to seize the opportunity, she dedicated all her time after finishing the farm work to study.

Unexpectedly, the township government requested the village to recommend some candidates for the training program of barefoot doctors. It's appealing to many people, since a doctor's life would be easier than that of a farmer. At the time, Liu Guizhen was fully committed to preparing for the College Entrance Exam and didn't give it a thought, but her father recommended her. It never occurred to her that she could have been selected among a great many candidates. At the time, all she wanted was to go to college, and she didn't want to be a barefoot doctor at all. Her father yelled at her, “You are the only high school graduate in the village. If you don't do it, who will?”

In line with the policy, the “barefoot doctor” should be someone born of a medical family, or a high school graduate with certain knowledge of medicine and pathology, or an educated urban young guy working in the countryside and mountainous areas. Liu Guizhen was the only eligible candidate in Duanjiawan Village. If not her, who?

On June 1, 1978, Liu Guizhen went to Zaolin Town for the training program, but still, she secretly signed up for the College Entrance Exam. The day before the exam, she asked for leave. On the day of the exam, she got up at 5 am to ride to the county town that's over 10 km away, thinking that it would be worthwhile even if she only got to see the exam room. It never occurred to her that she ran into another bike on the way and missed the exam. Later, she came to her senses and went back to Zaolin Town with tearful eyes, thinking that maybe she's destined to be a doctor.

She returned to her hometown after completing the training program. Then, she studied Western medicine for half a year in the military hospital in the neighbouring village. As an enthusiastic and diligent learner, she accumulated rich clinical experience and could do a great job in injection and infusion, stitches and daily care of the patients. Gradually, this skilled and beautiful doctor became known by all the people along the Yuhe River.

Speaking of being a rural doctor, Liu Guizhen smiled. After so many years, she has developed a great learning habit. In 2017, she attended the training course on Huangdi Neijing , literally the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor or Esoteric Scripture of the Yellow Emperor , organized by the county government. In her 50s, she mastered the technique of acupuncture.

As we were talking, Yang Hongsheng, who was washing the dishes, told us that doctor should be there to care about others and that's it. Even on the eve of the Spring Festival, Liu Guizhen went to treat the patients. She even had to spend the Spring Festival at the patient's home. Amid the deafening firecrackers and the jovial and festive mood, I watched TV with our two daughters. The reunion dinner was heated once and again, but still we didn't see her come back home, so we had the reunion dinner without her, feeling a bit less festive and a bit sad. When she finally got home, she looked worn out, so sleepy and even thinner that she may be carried away by wind. Looking at her, he went tender-hearted and decided to swallow his complaints.

Liu Guizhen explained to us smilingly. “There was a heavy snow on the eve of that Chinese New Year. We were all at home, making dumplings and watching the Spring Festival Gala, when someone banged on the door. It was Mr. Cao from Wuqiang Village. He came to me for help since his mother got severely ill. He must have run out of options, otherwise, he wouldn't come to me on the eve of the Spring Festival. As I was on my way out with the medical kit, the younger daughter held me by my sleeve and said, ‘Mom, I don't want you to go. It's Spring Festival.’ I comforted her a bit and left, knowing that I wouldn't be back soon, since Wuqiang Village was over 5 km away and we could only walk. On that snowy night, we marched outside into the biting wind and finally arrived at the patient's home after a few slips and falls. The patient was developing the symptoms of vomiting, diarrhoea, high fever, and severe dehydration. After examination, the patient was diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis and was given a transfusion immediately. The patient got better half an hour later, but I decided to stay for a bit longer in case of any unforeseen conditions. As such, I stayed until the next morning.”

Yang Hongsheng said, it's fine to see a patient, but she's an overly enthusiastic helper. One time in Wuqiang Village, she saw a vagrant utterly destitute had to beg for a living. So she went to the township government and applied for a relief of RMB400 and two bags of wheat flour for the vagrant. Back then, there was no highway in the village, so she asked me to carry the flour to send it to the vagrant. Of course I was reluctant. The vagrant was nobody to me. We were not related in any way. Why the trouble?

“But you changed your mind later, didn't you?” asked Liu.

Yang replied with a smile.

Then Yang Yao asked her about the income for barefoot doctors.

Liu Guizhen said that in the past, the production team gave them a subsidy in the form of 50 work points every year, but the cash value of a work points varied every year, worth RMB0.8 at most. Beginning from 2016, the state government gave a subsidy of RMB700 per month to the rural doctors.

Yang said that she never went to cash the work points.

Li Jinfang, a township government official in charge of publicity, cut in and said, it's more than that. She gave the medicinal herbs she had collected to the patients for free. She said that it's not right to sell the medicine to the fellow villagers at the price in the pharmacy. She charged them the lowest possible expenses.

Then we began to talk about her role as a teacher.

Due to poor transportation and living conditions in Duanjiawan Village, the local elementary school had 15 students at most, and sometimes only five. The students of different grades took class together. None of the teachers from the cities stayed for a long time. In 1988, the County Department of Education wasn't able to retain a teacher for the school for over two months, and the school had to be closed. Out of anxiety, her father, the party secretary of the village, asked for her help. “How about you teaching them for a while? If the school is closed forever, the kids will have a much harder life ahead.”

Liu Guizhen has children too. She knew that the more courses the kids miss, the harder it will be for them to catch up. As the only high school graduate in the village, she's qualified to be their teacher. She can also help her daughters in high school with homework in math and physics. As the County Department of Education failed to send a teacher to their village for a long time, she had to keep teaching for 29 years.

In 1996, the village raised funds to expand the school building. While the school was under construction, she moved the classroom into her home. As her home had no large enough space for the desks and benches, she used the dining table, beds and sewing machines as tables for students and made a simple blackboard. It lasted for one semester.

In 2006, given the declining number of the school-age children, the Education Department decided to merge the primary schools in the villages of Duanjiacun and Wangjiahui. As such, Liu Guizhen had to go to teach in Wangjiahui Village. It's about 2.5 km away, but she had to ride on the mountain roads, carrying her seven-year-old daughter. As it's uphill road to Wangjiahui Village, she had to walk her bike. It's so strenuous that she had to rest four times along the way. The way back was downhill road, but she must ride with great care to avoid falling down to the valley.

They all said that I'm too skinny. That's because I often had to skip the lunch for businesses, or had instant noodles to save time. If I come home for lunch, I have no time to wash dishes. She looked at her husband, a bit embarrassingly, and said that, “Thanks to him, he's the backbone of our family. I cannot sew or mend clothes.”

The men in Shanxi Province have a reputation for taking good care of the family and especially his wife. Local people say that husband and wife constitute an organic unity just like heaven and earth. The wife is the apple of his eyes. Though not all couples are like this, but the one in front of us is definitely so. Many journalists curious about the couple assumed that the husband decided to be a man behind his wife after Liu Guizhen became a national model worker. The fact is it's the norm. It's her husband who has stood behind him and supported her to move on all those years.

Her husband said, “When I'm at home, I'll do the housework. When I'm away, my parents would help. Our daughters were brought up by my mother. When they went to school in the county, my wife's sisters bought shoes for them and took them to hospitals when they were ill. Because of this, the kids complained a lot about her mother. Now they've grown up and understood her mother. They often call her, urging her to take some rest.”

As we were talking, Liu Guizhen's phone rang. It was her second daughter. They had a casual chat. The mother exhorted the daughter to study hard, spend less time on screen, take good care of herself, and etc. It sounded so sweet and full of love.

Since Liu Guizhen began to serve as a teacher from 1988, no one dropped out of the primary school in Duanjiawan Village. The enrolment rate, retention rate and pass rate of primary school-age children reached above 98%. Many of her students were admitted to high schools and universities. Among them a star student was admitted to Central University of Finance and Economics.

Liu Guizhen served both as a doctor and a teacher. She examined and treated patients between classes. As the bell rang, she would go to teach the class, leaving the patients in office receiving a transfusion for treatment. Liu Guizhen made the best use of her time for both patients and students.

In 1996, Liu Guizhen was elected to be the Party Secretary with an overwhelming majority of votes, which got her scared, since there had never been a female party secretary. Her father had been the Party Secretary in the village for almost a lifetime, but it's normal, since it's believed that men are born to shoulder responsibilities and have the biggest say. She wondered whether she's capable enough.

In the election for members of the party committee and the villagers' committee in 2003, Liu Guizhen was elected to be the director of the villagers' committee.

As such, she wore four hats, being a doctor, a teacher, the Party Secretary and the Director. She was subsequently elected to be the chairwoman of the Township Women's Federation, adding another hat to her. As a teacher, she got only a few students. As a doctor, she treats mostly common diseases instead of incurable diseases. What's more challenging for her is the governance of an administrative village, since it involves a wide range of responsibilities. Beloved by villagers, she found it easy to resolve disputes or conflicts between villagers. Her top concern is to find a way to promote the development of the village.

Duanjiawan is in the valley sandwiched between mountains in the west and east. More than half of a limited area of level ground is covered by Yuhe River. The village had no underground resources, companies or collective income. The villagers planted some traditional crops to feed the family, which turned out fine in the bottomland along the river but undesirable in the land upon the mountain.

The husband said amusingly, “She looks skinny, with a weight of some 40 kilograms, but she's as stubborn as a mule. If she is determined to do something, even five mules cannot change her mind.”

Why did her husband make such a comment? Since she's the Party Secretary and Director at the same time, Liu Guizhen is determined to find a way out for the village, since farming is definitely not enough to make people rich. However, the young and middle-aged labourers have migrated for work, leaving behind old and weak people in the village. What could they do? On balance, she realized that the way out still relied on the farming.

She wanted to plant Chinese pine seedlings on the river beach.

She learned that many people from neighbouring villages migrated to Taiyuan and Inner Mongolia for work and quite a few of them got rich by contracting the local land to plant Chinese pine. As the natural villages of Duanjiawan are located along a river, the irrigated land and climate are suitable for the cultivation of Chinese pine seedlings. She brought the idea to the village Party Committee and the villagers' committee. Embracing a tradition of planting millet, corn and other traditional crops for generations, they heard of such an idea for the first time. Moreover, dibbling in the seeds requires techniques and they need a market to sell them, which they didn't have. No one supported the idea. Then she asked her husband to plant the seedlings in their own farm land on a trail basis. Her husband wasn't supportive, arguing that “you did a good job in teaching and treating diseases, but it doesn't mean that your idea of planting Chinese pine seedlings will succeed as well. It's better safe than sorry. The farmers are vulnerable to losses. Neither losing money for them nor making us a laughingstock is a trivial matter.”

However, Liu Guizhen is too stubborn to change her mind. The limited start-up funds only allowed them to trial on a land of about 200 m ² . The seedlings were bred in paper bags before being planted in the land. The cultivation turned out to be less complicated than her husband had imagined. In the first year, this plot of land along Yuhe River was lush green. Three years later, the seedlings matured for sale. They were sold like hot cakes. After the seedlings were taken away by customers, her husband asked, “How much did it sell?”

“Guess,” replied Liu.

The mysterious look on his wife's face only made him more curious. He asked again, “How much?”

“RMB75,000!” she replied.

RMB75,000 for seedlings from a land of 200 m ² ! Plus, it's not beach land. It felt like a dream.

It's like a fairy tale coming true in real life. It aroused the interest of all villagers. Then, Liu Guizhen paid a visit to each family to check the area of arable land, bought seedlings and fertilizers for them, and organized technique training programs. In this way, Duanjiawan Village developed into a famous breeding base for seedlings in the county. The planting area of the seedlings in the village covers more than 53,333 m ² .

The seedlings helped villagers earn a lot of money. Years later, the income reached over RMB100,000 for some families thanks to the planting of seedlings. Many villagers purchased apartments in the county seat. The entire Duanjiawan Village was lifted out of poverty in 2016.

As we were talking, a young woman dressed in a red down jacket entered and addressed Liu Guizhen “sister-in-law” loudly. Liu told us the family of this woman is the biggest planter of the Chinese pine seedlings. She's an early follower of Liu Guizhen and now has led all her family members to breed the seedlings for which they rented a land of over 20,000 m ² at the foot of the mountain. The woman said with a big smile, “Thanks to my sister-in-law!”

As Daizhou has been a home to military camps, the local people are mostly descendants of military officers. Men speak in a loud voice and women are straightforward and optimistic. This woman poured her admiration without reservation, “My sister-in-law is unparalleled and the best of the best. No one in the Dai County is as half good as her.”

She shared a story with us. An elder in the village was diagnosed with cerebral infarction, but he stoutly refused to go to the county hospital. Liu Guizhen went to visit the elder every other day to give him massage and acupuncture. The elder's children were too busy in the city to take care of him. Every time when the children came back, they would send some gifts to her to show their gratitude, like milk, biscuits and specialties, but instead of accepting the gifts Liu Guizhen always asked them to bring the gifts to the elder. The other day when the daughter came back, the TV reporters were in the village for an interview. The elder's daughter told the reporters that “Guizhen did much more for our father than us. She's like a sister to us.” While she was talking, she couldn't help but hug Liu Guizhen and cried out of gratitude. Having never experienced things like this, Liu totally felt at a loss.

Afterwards, Liu showed us around the village. She pointed at the land on the banks of Yu River and told us it belongs to the village. She talked about the villager's farm work and how she led the villagers to look for herbs in the mountain during the slack farming season. For the visitors, all they can see are barren mountains, wild land and snow-covered gullies, but for Liu Guizhen, it's a treasure land the whole village depends on. It's beyond description.

Liu Guizhen had her opportunity to leave. In 2012, the county government encouraged the relocation of the impoverished villages, but no one in Duanjiawan Village was willing to go away. In response to the government policy, Liu Guizhen spent all her family's savings of RMB80,000 and borrowed another RMB40,000 to buy an apartment in the county seat, in the hope of mobilizing the villagers. However, she didn't move to the county town. Yang Yao asked her why, she replied, “There are elders in the village and I won't leave them alone.”

In 2017, Duanjiawan Village was included in the county's resettlement program during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period. The program was initiated in 2017 and by October 2017, 46 houses had been demolished for land reclamation. The villagers signed the house demolition agreement before finalizing the amount of compensation. Most of the villagers moved to the urban area out of the trust in their leader. Looking at the fields on the river banks, Liu said worryingly, “The competition in the seedling market is fierce and it won't be long for the market to get saturated. I need to figure out the next step for transformation.”

As it's getting dark, we set out from Duanjiawan to head for the county seat. Outside the car window, the lush green land of seedlings emerged one after another, which was particularly eye-catching against the barren mountains in the early spring.