Essay 丨 Liu Dayin: Ten years of spring wind and nine autumns

From the 18th Party Congress in November 2012 to the spring of this year, time is like a spring breeze slowly blowing past us. Looking back, the spring scenery of ten years and the autumn fruits of nine years are as clear as photos and warmly displayed in front of the eyes like watercolors.

In August 2011, Shipai Town, Longshan County, West Hunan Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, was awarded the "National One Village, One Product (Lily) Demonstration Town" by the Ministry of Agriculture. In the spring of 2012, on the slopes of Tianba in the whole town of Shipai, in the two forks of the ravine, the lily seedlings glowed with exciting green in the bright spring light, and the faces of the villagers were filled with full and warm smiles. That year, in Shipai Town, in Longshan, lilies were people's topics, the focus of society, and the stimulants of shopping malls; that year, when my family accounts were settled, its Engel coefficient was displayed as seven percent; especially in that year, on the 30th day of the Waxing Moon, the fireworks salute at midnight, which lasted for more than an hour, and the colorful flower bombs still appeared in front of my eyes.

People are roaring with fireworks and firecrackers in laughter to usher in 2013. In the spring of this year, in addition to the lily seedlings that thrived and turned purple, more than 50 lily processing plants suddenly appeared on the land of Shipai Town. The people of Shipai Town fought in the tide of the times with stubbornness and shrewdness, they were not satisfied with the cultivation of lilies, they aimed at the broad prospects of the lily processing market, so from the late summer and early autumn of 2013, the lily processing industry boiled on the land of Shipai Town.

When you visit a noisy lily processing plant with curiosity, the first thing you see is people sitting in different postures, talking in a harmonious atmosphere, sometimes laughing because a middle-aged woman tells a humorous story. Although they smiled brightly, their hands kept flipping on their chests, and the jade-like lily petals fell from between the big female and index fingers to the basket between the feet. Most of the people engaged in this kind of labor are middle-aged and elderly women who stay in their hometowns, and in addition to the elderly and children who take care of the family every day, they seize the gap in their spare time to break lilies in the factory, sometimes earning more than 100 yuan a day; they stay at home and work at the doorstep of their homes, killing two birds with one stone.

Although the process of processing dried lily flakes is not complicated, but every link is very exquisite, raw slices should be boiled through churning boiling water to cook mature slices, cooked slices should be put in cold water to cool down, and then drained with baskets, and then on the huge dryer conveyor belt, the conveyor belt tirelessly cycled back and forth, the white as snow flap into the sealed oven. The gauges on the dryer beat, the indicator lights flash, and the operator adjusts the temperature according to the thickness of the lily petals and its own color, and then bakes the ideal color and taste product. Look at the side of the dryer, a huge boiler transports heat to the dryer, and the roar of the blower is deafening. At the other end of the dryer, the dried lily pieces slid down like a water curtain, and were manually shoveled to a vacant lot for cooling, and finally packaged.

In the past ten years, the people of Shipai Town, with their shrewdness, diligence and bravery, have not only bought lilies from all over the country, but also planted lilies in Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Guizhou, Anhui and other provinces and cities, and walked out of a kangzhuang road to get rid of poverty and get rich.

The story of this decade is warm and sweet like the song of spring; the changes in this decade are dizzying like a slide-like alternation. I don't need to dwell on the legendary urban prosperity and mountain and rural changes, but to say that the high-speed and high-speed railways that cross the thousands of mountains and rivers in western Hunan and go straight to the southwest are earth-shattering feats. The opening of these two highs has completely changed the entire pattern of life in the mountains of western Hunan Province!

In the past decade, the word "change" has penetrated into every corner. Cement hardened highways crisscross each other, the transformation of the State Grid power has penetrated into thousands of households, and the government's efforts to alleviate poverty in the agricultural economy and industry have been continuously increased, which has accelerated the pace of poverty alleviation and prosperity in the once poor and backward old mountain circles.

Longshan County Da'an Township Turnaround Village, ten years ago was still a typical poor village in the county, the village in the hinterland of the Daling Mountains, the average altitude of the whole village is more than 1400 meters, is the county's highest altitude of natural administrative villages. The poverty of the village ten years ago and the changes today, I have heard, witnessed and experienced firsthand.

Ten years ago, flash floods, crooked telephone poles, muddy roads, young people in sighs and disappointment with heavy steps helplessly out of the mountains, running to Guangdong, swimming along the coast ... In the past decade, the mountain boundary has changed dramatically, the former chaotic ditches and ditches have now been built with cement dikes, and then encountered flash floods, the floods have become docile, no longer unscrupulously rampage in the land, left and right, but with the will of the people, with its inherent roar or joy down the ditch; look at the telephone poles have been electrically transformed, the roads have hardened into two lanes, the network covers hundreds of households, and the flue-cured tobacco industry that has helped the poor is increasingly prosperous...

Flue-cured tobacco industry is an important project of the government's poverty alleviation, and it is also a topic that we cannot avoid on the road to poverty alleviation, and my personal experience can witness this historical process.

My family lives in a remote village at the junction of Shipai Town and Da'an Township, Mud Lake. In the past, transportation was inconvenient, and most villagers moved to the bottom of the mountain due to the changes of the times. Since I was a child, I was determined to build my hometown, so I subcontracted some land and set up a 100-acre family farm. My family is born with lilies and flue-cured tobacco, and for my family's economic development, it is really accurate to describe it with "planting lilies to get rid of poverty and growing flue-cured tobacco to get rich". And the villagers of Da'an Township Turnaround Village, in the past few years of the government's poverty alleviation, because of the tobacco cultivation to get rich, especially the scene of the tobacco harvest in 2021, the smiling smiles on the faces of tobacco farmers, the happy cheers of men, women and children, are still floating in front of my eyes and echoing in my ears. Young people who once went out to work, such as Mo Zhengwen, Mo Zhengyong, Lü Changlin, Xu Dingbin and a large number of outstanding tobacco farmers, are now middle-aged, and in the past few years since they returned to the countryside, they have become smoke experts, buying houses and cars in the city, so they have become a typical example of poverty alleviation and prosperity in the village. In the past ten years, 80% of the villagers in the village have bought houses in the county town and become the topic of people's tea after dinner, and 90% of the villagers have cars in their homes that have become a beautiful scenery.

Ten years of deepening reform, like ten spring rains, moisten the dry land and nourish the hearts of hundreds of millions of Chinese sons and daughters. These ten years are the shining years of my life. In the past ten years, I have set up a 100-acre family farm and have been certified and registered by the relevant departments; although the family economy has also been affected by African swine fever and the new crown epidemic, the family Engel coefficient has been maintained at about 12 percent, and the individual has been rated as an "excellent professional tobacco farmer" in the province, state and county; in the past ten years, the family has bought a house in the city, has owned 6 motor vehicles, and several agricultural production machines... In order to enrich the spiritual and cultural life, I will use my limited spare time to edit and write, with novels, film literature, prose, poetry and reportage these genres to analyze human nature, Acura era, in ten years, I edited more than 8 million words of pure literary internal materials, created more than 600,000 words of pure literary works, and won three awards in literary essay collection activities at or above the prefectural level.

When I typed this short article on my mobile phone with a piece of time in the field, it was the spring of March, the spring was bright, the mountain flowers were full of flowers, and the birds were singing. The rumbling noise of farmland deep in the mountains has replaced the jingle of cowbells in the past when ploughing the land, and the villagers are devoting themselves to this vibrant spring. I was bathed in the spring light, so my confidence was doubled, and I thought that in the tunnel of time, only by sowing the seeds of spring with the spirit of hard work and using the fruits of the tenth golden autumn to greet the opening of the Twentieth National Congress of the Party!