A hero in the mountains
Village Party chief who alleviated poverty via road building, orchards recognized as role model
Deep in the rocky mountains of Chongqing municipality in Southwest China on Oct 1, 1999, six shirtless and sweaty men suddenly dropped to their knees, with tears in their eyes but a determined look on their livid, lugubrious faces.
The six were all residents of Xiazhuang village, laboring that National Day on the hills to carve a road out of the cliffs that cut off their village from the world outside.
Just a moment before, a large piece of rock rolled down all of a sudden from the cliffside, knocking their covillager Huang Huiyuan and sending him downward into the valley which was about 300 meters deep.
Locating the lifeless body of Huang two hours later, the leader of the villagers, Mao Xianglin, became saddened and wordless.
“Have I made the correct decision?” the short but stout Mao asked himself. “Should we stop here?”
It was only two years ago that Huang, who had settled in a neighboring province, returned to the village of his birth in answer to Mao’s call to build a road through the mountain in Xiazhuang, which had been locked out from the rest of the world for centuries.
Surrounded by cliffs in all directions, Xiazhuang village sits “at the bottom of a well” with just an old trail zigzagging 108 turns up and down outward. The trail took villagers about four days to get to the nearest town and return, and was also unsafe, claiming several lives through the years.
In the four decades up to 1997, when Mao became Party leader of the village, 23 people had died from falling off the cliff while cutting firewood or commuting in and out, and 75 others injured or disabled.
When Mao took charge, he found that most of the 397 villagers had never seen a TV set, and about 150 had never stepped outside the village. Soon he called a meeting of the villagers and floated the idea of building a road that snakes through the mountains.
“A day dream again,” some said. “Yeh, but how?” others questioned. “Bare hands are not enough. Where is the money to buy a tool even?”
That day, almost no villager agreed because they had no money, no machines and no confidence to take on the tough project.
Mao, who was 37 at that time, was patient. “We can’t stay poor like this forever,” he told the villagers. Also, he asked them if they wanted to be the “last generation of Xiazhuang people”, as young people from the village were moving out to other places for work and not returning, and as not many girls from outside were willing to marry into the village given its poor accessibility.
“I’ve initiated the project and I shall take responsibility,” he said.
To raise the first round of funding for construction, Mao persuaded his mother to take out all the family’s savings of 700 yuan (equivalent to $168.8 today) and put their home as collateral to get a 10,000-yuan loan from a local credit agency. Mao took out the loan in his own name.
“Mountains have isolated us from the outside for generations. We have to do something to ensure the next generation can have a good life,” he kept saying to villagers.
Gradually, the villagers began accepting the idea and raised 3,960 yuan in a week. By winter, around 100 villagers aged from 17 to 63 volunteered and made a pledge of “biting a path out of the cliffs”, despite being aware of the risks involved in the work, including fatal accidents.
Mao was the first to climb up the hills, the one to ignite the first explosion, as well as the organizer and supervisor.
Yet, the rocks were tricky and the first death came in August 1999, followed by a second one in October — that of Huang.
That night, Mao knelt down before Huang’s father who was known to have a hot temper, waiting for his scolding.
“I am to blame because it was I who called your son back,” Mao said.
To his surprise, Mao did not hear any reprimand from the elderly gentleman, but only these words: “Thank you for carrying my son back.”
The next day, the 72-year-old senior Huang was telling fellow villagers: “For dozens of generations we the people have suffered too much in this miserable place. Despite my son’s death, I hope all of us can continue with our strenuous efforts. Only when the road is open can we get rid of poverty.”
Deeply touched, Mao promised that even though it might take a generation’s struggle to build, they would carry on so the next generation can live a better life.
More villagers joined Mao after the burial of young Huang.
The work on precipitous slopes and against the cliffs was no easy talk. During construction, the workers lived in caves. When they slept at night, they tied a rope around their waists with the other end tied to the root of an old tree to make sure they did not fall off the cliff.
In the process of building the road, workers dangled from ropes and used hammers and drills and even explosives to clear obstacles. Falling rocks and other perils led to the deaths of six villagers during construction.
Recalling the difficulties such as gravel and stones falling on top of him, villager Yang Hengshuang said, “During my work on the middle of the cliff, my legs couldn’t stop shaking, especially when I looked at the abyss below my feet.”
To ensure the safety of other villagers, Mao lowered himself down first to check for potential dangers at the construction site.
Nearly six more years later, and the ultimate sacrifice made by six people whose names are inscribed in a monument in the village, the 8-kilometer-long, 2-meter-wide road was finally completed in March 2004 with financial support from the county government.
Mao arranged a truck for a trip along the road upon its completion, with almost all the villagers following him. At the highest point of the road, the villagers poured out liquor and laid out articles to remember the dead.
Though the road allowed many villagers to venture out and find work and increase their incomes, Mao knew more was needed for the village to prosper.
The villagers had been planting potatoes and corn, earning meager incomes. Mao introduced lacquer trees, but they died due to the unfavorable climate including heat.
He then tried raising goats, but that endeavor failed, too. When he learnt that some people in other villages made a fortune by raising silkworms, Mao mobilized the villagers to plant mulberry trees.
However, the mulberry leaves produced on the trees did not suit the taste of the silkworms, and all the worms died.
“I am not educated, and my ignorance held back the village’s economy,” Mao said while reviewing his mistakes at a public meeting in the village.
But he did not lose heart. In 2014, he invited agricultural experts who suggested planting citrus, peaches and watermelon on 53 hectares of land.
At first when Mao led the villagers to grow citrus, the 33-hectare orange fields were almost all destroyed by pests, but he did not give up. Neither did the villagers.
“We are not afraid of failure, and the key is to find out why the pests were able to cause such havoc,” Mao said. Specialists were brought in to teach the villagers how to grow the fruit. In 2019, the orange yield was nearly 40 metric tons, and it was expected to get higher in 2020 at the harvest time.
Youth from the village have taken on the baton to revitalize their hometown. About 100 migrant villagers came back to plant fruit, and young people returned to sell agricultural products through livestreaming or teach in the village’s primary school.
Mao Lianzhang, a 29-year-old, came back to Xiazhuang to start an e-commerce business selling oranges and watermelons. Peng Gan, a 27-year-old, returned to the village to be a teacher after graduating from college.
In 2019, the per capita income of villagers reached 12,670 yuan ($1,960), 40 times more than the level in the 1990s, the local government said.
By the end of 2019, 269 villagers had overcome poverty. The poverty headcount ratio has been reduced to 0.29 percent and the average per capita income has reached 12,000 yuan.
Mao, who will retire in no more than five years, said he plans to focus on ecotourism and widen the current road to boost income for the villagers and give the younger generation more opportunities.
He has a bigger dream — to not only let the villagers go out, but also bring tourists into 19 rural houses in the village that have been transformed into homestays.
“In a couple of years, when tourism continues to develop, our income will double again,” Mao said.
On Feb 25, President Xi Jinping presented medals, certificates and plaques to role models in China’s poverty alleviation fight, in a ceremony in Beijing. Mao, a role model in the fight, was one of the recipients.
“Although the conditions are better, the spirit of the Xiazhuang people can’t be lost,” Mao once said. “It has to be passed down from generation to generation.”