President Xi’s Story: hardwork on even harder land
China’s President Xi Jinping is not only widely recognised as a hard-working leader, but also known to the public for his respect for manual labour.
Today, when people visit the village of Liangjiahe in Shaanxi Province, northwest China, they are greeted by swathes of lush, green farmland.
Such scenery is largely attributed to a functioning check dam, which could not exist without the ingenuity and hard graft of Xi.
Xi arrived in Liangjiahe in 1969. During that period of time, he was just one of the millions of urban educated youth who were sent to the country’s rural areas to “learn from the peasants.”
The dam was first proposed by Xi, Party chief of the village at the time, and he personally took part in its construction.
The young Xi worked from dawn to dusk, and not merely in a managerial capacity.
He rolled up sleeves and trouser legs, and got his hands thoroughly dirty, shoveling dirt, packing earth, and carrying large stones to build the embankment.
In the piercing cold of winter, he walked barefoot to scoop up ice from the ditch’s bed.
Xi and his fellow villagers’ work transformed the notoriously harsh, dry banks of the Loess Plateau’s characteristic yellow earth into fertile farmland.
“Xi spared no effort in his work and never shrunk from hardship,” recalled Wang Xianping, a Liangjiahe villager, adding, “he never tried to coast but worked even harder than us.”
While the project illustrates how the hard labor of working people can transform the lives and prospects
of a community, it had an even wider-reaching impact. After all, Xi’s attitude toward these crucial members of society was cultivated in his seven years in Liangjiahe, and he has taken it with him throughout his political career, and across the country.
While working as the Party chief of Zhengding, north China’s Hebei Province, he joined local villagers in hoeing and seed thinning as skillfully as an old farmhand. In Ningde, east China’s Fujian Province, Xi personally participated in a canal renovation project.