500 youth "marched" into Dabie Mountain: from "ivory tower" to "field of hope"

China News Service, Hefei, August 15 Title: 500 Youth "Advancing" into Dabie Mountain: From "Ivory Tower" to "Field of Hope"

Author Zhang Qiang Chu Weiwei

"From the 'ivory tower' back to the 'field of hope', it may be very bitter and tiring, but the countryside is promising, and there are 'glowing points' everywhere." Fang Hong, a young entrepreneur in Yuexi County, Anhui Province, said this in an interview with a reporter from china news agency recently.

Yuexi County, located in the hinterland of dabie Mountain, was one of the first state-level poverty-stricken counties in China, with a quarter of the population working outside the home. Since 2013, Yuexi County has implemented the "College Students Return to Their Hometown Project", and nearly 500 young people have "returned home" to help their hometown "change".

After graduating from university, Fang Hong worked at an international school in Shanghai. At a China import and export fair, she found that wooden crafts have a vast international market. In 2014, Fang Hong quit her job as a teacher in Shanghai and returned to her hometown of Xiangjiao Town to "play" with wooden handicrafts.

Fang Hong introduced that the raw materials of her products are selected from local mulberry branches, tea branches, straw and other crops, aiming to create original ecological handicrafts. Among the many products, China's traditional screens are welcomed by overseas markets, and the fusion design of Chinese culture and Western customs has become a "blockbuster". "We take mulberry wood, which is called 'soul wood' abroad, because each of its minions is different, and each tree can be called an orphan."

After 7 years of entrepreneurial accumulation, Fanghong's team has developed more than 3,000 different styles of products, covering 17 categories, with annual sales of more than 30 million yuan. Among them, more than 70% of the products are exported overseas, mainly including Western festival decorations, home accessories and children's toys.

"Our products are distributed in 32 countries or regions, mainly to the United States, Italy, France, the Netherlands and so on. The U.S. market is the best, accounting for about a third. Fang Hong said.

With the continuous advancement of rural revitalization, more and more high-quality young talents like Fang Hong in Anhui have come to the countryside. They bring new technologies and ideas to the fields.

When I first saw Pan Junjie, the person in charge of Hefei Repulse Bay Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., tall, dark-skinned, and wearing a straw hat, he was pulling grass in the field under the scorching sun. The family of three lived in a small house next to the breeding base.

Pan Junjie is a native of Mingchuan Township, Feixi County, Anhui Province, and has been engaged in roller skating training and education in other places. "Post-90s" he is already a senior coach of national speed skating and a national first-class referee of roller skating.

In 2018, by chance, Pan Junjie returned to his hometown to understand and contact the aquaculture industry, and since then he has become acquainted with rice and turtles. Pan Junjie said that the main reason for his return was the plot of his hometown. "Working outside, I feel like duckweed, and when I return to my hometown, I can feel that my feet are on the ground."

At present, Pan Junjie has contracted more than 200 mu of land, mainly for the comprehensive breeding of turtles, rice and lobsters, which has led to the employment of dozens of local villagers and guided the production of local farmers. At the same time, he founded his own brand.

Pan Junjie introduced that it takes a lot of courage to give up a stable and decent job, and after truly devoting himself to the countryside, he found that there were many difficulties.

"I've been throwing money into it for the past few years, and I've invested all my money in it." Agriculture is an industry with a long return on investment, and it must be able to withstand loneliness and pressure. The good days are coming soon, and I expect that next year the company will be on the right track and will be able to see the money back. Pan Junjie said with a smile.

After several years of precipitation, Pan Junjie has become an expert in rice turtle breeding and is applying for a breeding patent. In the next step, he plans to expand the scale of breeding and take the road of green ecology and branding.

Luocheng Village, Guichi District, Chizhou City, Anhui Province, a traditional Chinese village, is close to Jiuhua Mountain and is the birthplace of Luocheng Folk Songs, an intangible cultural heritage in Anhui Province.

"It's a place of beautiful scenery, a life we yearn for, and we feel like we've seen it before, so we decided to put down roots here." Zhou Jingjing, the person in charge of the small farm yard in Luocheng Village, said.

Zhou Jingjing was previously a beauty blogger on a live broadcast platform, and she longed for a pastoral life, and she decided to "turn" to the countryside. At the end of 2020, 22-year-old Zhou Jingjing and 26-year-old Wang Kun came to Luocheng Village to rent a small farmyard, which was renovated and built into a new-style catering shop.

Zhou Jingjing is responsible for short video shooting operations, Wang Kun is responsible for the daily operation of the store, they filmed their lives on the Internet to share with netizens, and now, "at first sight" has become a place for Internet celebrities to punch cards.

"Before, most of the village was elderly, but after we implemented the pastoral village comprehensive experience project, there were more and more young people in the village, and new guarantees and new projects made aspiring young people come to Luocheng to develop." Jiang Jinzhong, secretary of the party committee of Luocheng Village, introduced that the local government makes full use of the advantages of the natural environment, deeply integrates culture and tourism, and explores a new way for the development of cultural tourism to help farmers. (End)

Source: China News Network