Huayuan, the economic nirvana of a large mining county

Source: China Youth Daily client

Hong Kefei, a reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network

Silkworm mulberry has brought new hope to the villagers of Dongli Village in Huayuan County, Hunan Province. Looking at the sturdy six-year-old silkworms, the new village secretary Wu Jun rubbed his hands with excitement.

In fact, in Huayuan County, which used to rely on mining to eat, in recent years, several townships have been excavating their own characteristic high-quality development paths to achieve a double harvest of economic and ecological benefits.

Located in the west of Hunan Province, Huayuan is known as "one foot on three provinces" and "the gateway to the southwest of Xiangchu", and is a miao-inhabited county and an old revolutionary area county, with a total population of 310,200 people, and is also the place described by the writer Shen Congwen's "Border City". Today's "border city" has a beautiful life in addition to beautiful scenery.

Silkworm babies give birth to new hope

Dongli Village in Mao'er Township is 28.28.7 kilometers away from Huayuan County, surrounded by green mountains, and more than 250 villagers in the village rely on more than 1,000 mu of dry land and farmland to survive. A few years ago, the lead and zinc mines under the green mountains were a cornucopia for the local people.

The local lead and zinc ore reserves of 170 million tons, in 1996 the village began mining, once there was a situation of over-mining, cannons opened the mine shaking, waste residue wastewater overflowed with heavy metal pollution, even drinking water has become a problem. After 10 years, the local area began to renovate, the mine was closed, and the village was quiet, but the villagers did not have the income to open the mine.

Dongli Village needs to find a new development path. "We have returned our development thinking to agriculture and focused on the sericulture economy." Shi Feng, head of the Huayuan County Court's village revitalization task force and first secretary of Dongli Village, said,

Under the guidance of agricultural experts, the villagers planted mulberry trees after covering the mines of the abandoned mining sheds, and the mulberry trees have a developed root system, which is easy to survive and can develop silkworm breeding. In a few years, more than 500 acres of mulberry trees were planted in the village.

"Now four silkworm houses have been built, and when the silkworms are six years old, the cost of mulberry leaves a day is calculated in tons." Wu Jinguo, secretary of the Mao'er Township Party Committee, said that the shutdown was a pain that had to be experienced, and rural development could not survive "with cancer". The first batch of mulberry trees has brought benefits to the village, and with the addition of 100 acres of tea trees planted on the top of the mountain, the per capita income of the village has reached 10,000 yuan.

The changes in Dongli Village are the epitome of the entire Mao'er Township. After the transformation of the original mining town, there are currently 3,000 acres of mulberry in the township, and 22 silkworm houses have been built. The ecological environment of the county has also changed, and in 2021, the state monitored the water quality of Huayuan County ranked fourth among all counties and cities in Hunan Province. Not long ago, a large sample poll showed that the local people's satisfaction with the county's ecological environment reached 97.5%.

The tobacco leaves are fragrant, and the chickens and cows are full of pens

Longtan Town, another large mining town in Huayuan County, has also tapped new growth points and changed the face of the countryside.

Shi Bangxing, who was in his early forties, transferred 80 acres of land to start planting tobacco leaves with the support of the local government, and was a famous planter in Zhang Pima Village, with a net income of more than 2,000 yuan per mu of tobacco leaves.

Wu Kun, deputy mayor of the town, revealed that longtan town after the demining of the mine, with the support of China Tobacco Hunan Company, has taken tobacco planting as one of the main channels for increasing the income of rich peasants. The original tobacco field in Longtan Town was 400 mu, and now it has expanded by more than ten times. There are 47 large local planters, driving employment of nearly 1,000 people. This year, there are 24 households planting tobacco leaves of more than 100 mu, with an output value of more than 15 million yuan. The local cooperative has also been set up to concentrate on the construction of 80 modern flue-cured tobacco houses, which can fix the temperature and humidity, and protect the environment and save energy.

Local xiangxi cattle have also become one of the main channels for getting rich. Longtan Town plans a village and a cattle farm, and each village has 300 cows that can breed, so that the former mountain mining Town has become a cattle town.

Supporting this huge plan is the multi-level support policy of the country's provinces and cities. Cattle farmers can enjoy a three-year interest-free loan, the construction of cattle barns per square subsidy of 150 yuan, for breeding cows, more than 500 pounds of finished cattle have insurance, the insurance premium government to contribute half. For every calf born, farmers are rewarded with 1500 yuan.

In Shuangping Village, a company invested tens of millions of yuan to start raising chickens and slaughtering. In the layout of the enterprise, the upstream farmers are responsible for free range, slaughtering and then processing the finished products for sale. One such business allows more than 300 people to find employment at their doorstep.

Deng Xianwei, secretary of the party committee of the "post-85" town, said that Longtan Town, with 16,000 people, is an important industrial town in the county, and in recent years, the agricultural industry chain has been expanding, and some young people who have gone out have also begun to return to the rural areas of Huayuan County to start a business.

Shilan Town Shijia is one of them. After Shi Jia, who began to start a business during college, learned that there were 1,200 left-behind children in her hometown, she gave up the water and electricity installation project that had developed smoothly and invested tens of millions of yuan to lead 486 village women (132 of them were poor households with established archives) to inherit Miao embroidery, so that they could rely on the "fingertip economy" to support their families.

Since then, she and her friends have planted golden tea in Huayuan, opened shoe factories, and set up poverty alleviation workshops in three counties, providing more than 1,400 jobs.

Industry takes the lead in cultural tourism

Chen Zhiming, head of Hunan Zhaoke Power New Energy Company, who relocated lithium battery companies from Guangdong to Huayuan, valued the abundant local resources and labor, as well as the cooperation and support of the scientific research team of Central South University.

The company mainly focuses on ternary power batteries, a large number of exports, an annual output value of 350 million yuan. In addition to the R&D team, the company employs more than 200 people in Huayuan.

Seeing that the sales situation is good, Chen Zhiming decided to expand production and build a two-wheeled electric vehicle production line in the first half of 2022.

Dongfang Mining in Huayuan County is a well-known manganese processing enterprise in China. Zhang Ye, the person in charge, revealed that in 2017, under the leadership of the county party committee and government, several major mining areas in Huayuan were integrated into Oriental Mining, with production capacity ranking among the top five in the country, and enterprises quickly invested 68 million yuan to carry out equipment and environmental upgrades, which fully met the national green development standards.

Since then, the company has invested more than 60 million yuan to open up the manganese industry chain, and the products have been upgraded.

At the end of 2021, the county's manganese mining enterprises will be integrated into 1, and a comprehensive mining enterprise group integrating mining, metallurgy, comprehensive utilization and deep processing led by Oriental Mining is taking shape.

It is understood that in 2021, Huayuan County will actually introduce 2.05 billion yuan of domestic and foreign funds throughout the year, of which 15 projects with an investment of more than 100 million yuan. The added value of the secondary industry for the whole year 302027 million yuan, an increase of 12.1% year-on-year. The growth rate of industrial profits is 722%, ranking first in the counties and municipalities of Hunan Province.

As the first place of "precision poverty alleviation", the eighteen-hole village in Huayuan County, Hunan Province has become the focus of media attention in recent years, receiving a total of 600,000 tourists in the past year. This data is more than the number of tourists in several other scenic spots in Huayuan County combined. In 2021, the county received a total of 3.78 billion yuan in total tourism revenue, an increase of 27% year-on-year.

In addition to the beautiful landscapes, huayuan county tourism development focuses on the excavation of history and culture. With the support of the Xiangxi Prefecture Party Committee and Government, in June 2021, the local investment of 1.8 billion yuan, with Shen Congwen's border city as the cultural support, built the xiangxi border city tourist town, of which the 18-hole pastoral complex and other key projects have also begun construction. A picture of a better life is unfolding.