Harvest dreams at the "edge of the sky"
On June 28, the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the national "two excellent and one first" commendation conference. The name of Liu Shouren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and honorary president of the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural And Reclamation Sciences, appears on the list of commendations for "National Outstanding Communist Party Members".
At this time, the 87-year-old was lying ill in a hospital ward in Shihezi, Xinjiang. 11 days ago, he wore the "50 Years of Glory in the Party" commemorative medal on his hospital bed. This sheep breeder, known as the "father of the fine wool sheep of the military reclamation", has been gloriously in the party for 59 years and rooted in the frontier for 66 years.
After graduating from college, he wrote "Go to the hardest places and do the hardest work" on the assignment volunteer book, carrying two boxes of books to the frontier. He used his life's efforts to make our country have high-quality fine wool sheep, ending the long-term dependence of China's high-grade wool on imports; he also used Wei'an life to answer a choice question about light and heavy, bitter and sweet, personal and national, pay and harvest.
"Drape the fur of an Altai sheep on a Kazakh sheep"
In November 1955, at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, Shihezi Ziniquan Sheep Breeding Farm. A large truck wrapped in dust slowly stopped, and a young man "rubbed" and jumped down.
Thin figure, not very tall, slender face with a pair of shining eyes. This is 21-year-old Liu Shouren. A few months ago, he set off from his alma mater, Nanjing Agricultural College, and traveled to Urumqi for dozens of days, insisting on transferring from the Bayi Agricultural College, which was assigned to teach, to this deep mountain pasture.
Liu Shouren University applied for the animal husbandry major because he longed for the magnificent picture drawn by his father's friend: "The great development of the socialist coal industry requires carriage transportation. On one side is the roar of the machine, on the other hand is the galloping of ten thousand horses"; after graduation, I rushed to the "edge of the sky" in my mother's eyes, and the encouragement of my father rang in my ears: "There is a comfortable life in a big city, but the frontier with many grass and livestock is where you have made meritorious achievements." ”
Everything starts from the needs of the country, so that the new China, which is in ruins and waiting to be rebuilt, will become strong as soon as possible! Born in Jingjiang, Jiangsu Province, Liu Shouren, who experienced the pain of the fall of his hometown and was forced to drop out of school for three years, knows the truth that "a strong country can ensure people's security".
On the third day, he was appointed technician.
"At that time, the breeding farm only had Kazakh native breeding sheep, and the coat was coarse and colorful, and it could only be used to make felt. The new Chinese wool spinning industry is taking off and is in urgent need of fine wool. Looking at a few Altai fine wool sheep imported from the Soviet Union, Liu Shouren was moved by the thought: Can you cross and improve the altai sheep and put the fur of the Altai sheep on the Kazakh sheep?
A "long run" aimed at the forefront of the world began.
The first thing to do is to pick up the whip and learn to herd sheep and become familiar with sheep habits. The Kazakh herders were surprised to find that the "intellectuals" who they thought would soon be scared away by the hard days had become a "good way" to chase the sheep around the mountains. Within 6 months, he was out of the division and set up a test flock of 360 ewes alone.
Without a laboratory, he scavenged empty bottles of all sizes as containers and made all kinds of simple tools. The most basic job, counting wool to measure quality, became difficult because there were no density pliers, ovens and balances. He had his own "stupid method": he made a square centimeter of bamboo into a square centimeter of lattice and buckled it on the sheep, cut off the hairs in the lattice, and counted the small tweezers one by one. Each sheep had to be sampled at least around, and each small check of wool was 5,000 to 10,000, often counting the sore eyes and long streams of tears.
The greatest test is the delivery of the lamb. In 20 days, more than 300 ewes were concentrated in lambing, and the earthen shed became a world of blood, fetal clothing, and sheep dung, and it was fishy and foul-smelling. He cut the umbilical cords, numbered the lambs, weighed them, fed the ewes water, and kept his feet on the ground.
In order to make the sheep eat better, he collected and studied more than 170 kinds of pasture grasses, and also trekked for 7 days in the depths of the Tianshan Mountains, and almost fell from the Ice Daban several times, and finally found the legendary Huaniugou Grassland...
Over the past few years, Liu Shouren has investigated and sorted out more than 60,000 data, sorted out the five-generation lineage of Altai sheep, and done countless hybridization experiments.
Rather than being the "father of the fine woolly sheep", I would rather be called "the son of the Heavenly Mountains"
The harvest season has arrived.
In the spring of 1957, the first silky hybrid lamb was born in the Purple Mud Spring. The old shepherds remember that at that moment, Technician Liu seemed to see his own doll, pounced on the lamb, picked up the lamb, held it in the bed, and wiped the tire coat and blood on the sheep with a face towel. Loved and loved!
Liu Shouren was both joyful and sober. According to international experience, it takes decades or even centuries to breed a new mature variety.
Sure enough, the first batch of hybrid lambs had a mixed coat color, and there was a phenomenon of "returning to the ancestors"; nearly 40% of the second batch of hybrid lambs unfortunately died... A little bit of groping, a level of overcoming. In 1965, the survival rate of hybrid lambs increased to 98%; in 1968, fine wool sheep appeared at the Beijing National Agricultural Exhibition Hall; soon after, the Ministry of Agriculture and Reclamation officially named it "Military Reclamation Fine Wool Sheep". More than ten years of sprinting, the coveted new varieties were born!
Liu Shouren soon had a new goal. This time, "the fur of the world's top Australian Merino sheep should be draped on the fine wool sheep of the military reclamation."
It's 15 spring and autumn again. In 1985, China Merino sheep (Xinjiang military reclamation type) passed the national appraisal and reached the level of international high-quality wool spinning raw materials.
In this way, Liu Shouren's team continued to breed 2 new varieties and 9 new strains, which were promoted to 25 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country, creating economic benefits of more than 5 billion yuan.
Honors also poured in. From being commended at the National Science Congress to winning the National Science and Technology Progress Award, from being a deputy to the National People's Congress to being an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The frontier hot land has not forgotten every drop of sweat that this naked man smashed.
And what he missed most was those ordinary pastors.
Deep in the Purple Mud Spring Sheep Farm, there is a stone stele with the inscription "Shepherd's Cemetery". It was erected at liu shouren's expense. There are many pastoral workers buried in the cemetery, and he will come here to sit here every Qingming Festival.
"They are all my teachers, the heroes of the fine wool sheep." Liu Shouren always chanted such a string of names——
Xiao Faxiang, with a shepherd encyclopedia in his head, regarded the sheep as his destiny. There are key breeding sheep and sick sheep, and Liu Shouren is assured to hand them over to him.
Hassei, the happy Kazakh "Tianshan Pass". When encountering the high mortality rate of the lamb, ask him for advice, and always get a simple and effective answer.
…………
These pastoralists taught Liu Shouren an unforgettable truth: the masses are real heroes, no matter how big things they do, they will always be primary school students in front of the people.
Liu Shouren loves grasslands, pine forests, and the magnificent Tianshan Mountains. Rather than being the "father of the fine woolly sheep", he preferred to be called "the son of the Heavenly Mountains".
"His whole being and heart are 'planted' here." He Qihong, the current director of the Zi Ni Spring Sheep Breeding Farm, sighed.
Like a flag, condensing a "phenomenon-level team" on the frontier
In 1989, Liu Shouren was transferred to the President of the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Reclamation Sciences. At the beginning of his term of office, there was not a single Doctor in the whole hospital. Find a way to attract talent, but can't keep it. Then cultivate yourself! After being elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Liu Shouren began to take a doctorate at Nanjing University, Shihezi University and other institutions.
"In order to let us open up our scientific research horizons as soon as possible, the teachers contacted many parties and sent doctors to large laboratories in Beijing, Shanghai and other places to study, or jointly trained with local supervisors." Zhou Ping, vice president of the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Reclamation Sciences, told reporters.
In 2000, after two years of working in the academy from Sichuan, Zhou Ping was sent to the Academician Xurigan of Inner Mongolia University and studied for six consecutive years at the State Key Laboratory under his leadership. When you finish your studies, where do you go? Zhou Ping returned to Liu Shouren almost without thinking. "Think about his dedication to Xinjiang, and then look at his painstaking heart for us, how can he not come back."
Liu Shouren's persistence is a banner that is held high in the hearts of students.
As early as 1978, universities in Zhejiang and Nanjing invited Liu Shouren to teach. His wife and two sons, who have lived in their hometown for many years, are overjoyed. However, he declined: "A scientist, leaving a career loses value." Fine wool sheep are in Xinjiang, I am in Xinjiang. ”
Under the inspiration of Liu Shouren, a "phenomenon-level team" appeared: more than a dozen phDs who had returned from further study in large cities gathered at the Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Reclamation Sciences, brewing new breakthroughs. In 2016, the State Key Laboratory of Sheep Genetic Improvement and Healthy Breeding, with Liu Shouren as the chief scientist, settled in the hospital, which gave the team endless strength.
Almost everyone has a touching story that is hidden deep in their hearts.
Researcher Gan Shangquan remembers that Academician Liu once said to the young man "triumphantly": "Just by looking at the sheep's tail, I know which ewe's cub it is." He asked everyone to lean down and make contact with the sheep, "Just doing molecules and DNA in the laboratory, even the sheep don't know, how to do it?" ”
When Researcher Wang Xinhua was the dean, Liu Shouren often urged him: Did you come to the hospital at night to see, what time did the lights in our laboratory turn on? The same words, he also said at the general meeting of the whole hospital, which means to remind young people to cherish their youth and work harder at work. And he himself, for many years, has been doing this. ”
Today, the sick old man is still worried about his sheep. In line with the needs of national development, their team continued to tackle new strains of ultra-fine fine wool sheep on the one hand, and continued to explore the selection and breeding of multi-fetal meat sheep and meat sheep "Xinjiang White".
Every time everyone went to visit the sick, as long as they talked about sheep, Liu Shouren's face was radiant. Researcher Shi Guoqing said that the teacher must have remembered the dream he always mentioned: on the blue sky and among the green grass, a "white cloud" fluttered and fluttered. It's not the clouds, it's our fine wool sheep, floating out of an endless stream of beautiful hopes, converging into the most moving colorful music...
(Reporters Wang Simin, Wang Ser, Liu Yuhang, correspondents of this newspaper, Wu Cunyuan)
Source: Guangming Daily
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