Seeds of Dreams - Based on the book "Yuan Longping's World"

Recently, I read Mr. Chen Qiwen's book "Yuan Longping's World", and I gained a lot and wrote about it.

Seeds of dreams

Everyone knows China's "four great inventions" - papermaking, printing, compass, gunpowder. Do you know? China also has the "fifth greatest invention" - hybrid rice. Hybrid rice has increased the yield of rice per mu by 500 to 600 kilograms, and the super rice varieties have exceeded the mark of 1,000 kg per mu. Rising rice production has allowed China to feed 22 percent of the world's population with 7 percent of the world's arable land.

Who "planted" such a powerful rice? That is the "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping's grandfather. After he cultivated hybrid rice, he not only promoted cultivation in China, but also spread this advanced science and technology to other countries in the world, so that other countries' grain production was also greatly improved. People abroad call hybrid rice the "Magic Rice of the East". Due to the outstanding contributions of Grandpa Yuan Longping, he has received many honors and is known as the "contemporary Shennong", and an asteroid discovered by the Schmidt CCD Asteroid Project Team of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999 was named Yuan Longping Star. What kind of person is Grandpa Yuan Longping? What prompted him to delve into rice?

First, childhood

Yuan Longping's father was a talent cultivated by a new type of education. His mother was a big girl who taught in Wuhu, Anhui Province, after graduating from high school.

On August 13, 1929, in the Union Hospital in Beiping, Yuan Xiaoxiao was born, because the family ranked longzi generation, and was born in Beiping, so it was called "Longping". The eldest brother of the family is named Da Mao, he is the second oldest, and the small name is Er Mao. When Ermao was two years old, the September 18 Incident broke out, and he began to run with his parents and lived in his hometown of De'an for several years.

When Ermao was a child, he was like a little monkey spirit, standing without standing, sitting without sitting, and playing without heart. When my grandfather taught them to read and write, they were as strict as the teachers of the old private school, and when they accidentally took a ruler, they "beat" them, and Xiao Ermao was not less beaten. But as long as it is something that interests him, he is particularly determined. He was curious about his grandmother's hookah that bubbled up as soon as he inhaled it. I saw my grandmother pouting and sucking a cigarette bag into the clouds, and the grandmother's eyebrows fluttered and danced, almost like a god. Ermao has been wondering in his heart: How good is this thing? It's good to let me try it when. The opportunity has finally arrived! Once the grandmother put down the cigarette pole and went out, Ermao rushed over, picked up the cigarette stick and took a sip, did not expect to use too much force, the snot was smoked out, and was choked up and coughed up, and quickly threw away the cigarette pole. The hookah fell to the ground and broke. Grandmother looked at him so angry and funny, and took the pipe to knock his little brain melon, of course, just to scare this little trickster.

At that time, my father was busy outside, and occasionally took time to come home and bring them beautiful and delicious Tianjin small station rice, and the brothers ate happily. Life in his hometown was the most unrestrained childhood of Grandpa Yuan Longping.

2. Study

In August 1936, Ermao, who had reached the age of seven, was about to go to school, and the name Yuan Longping was officially registered.

In that war-torn day, the father almost exhausted his energy to support the family, but always came home with a smile, and the tenacity in the father's bones was injected into the blood of his children. But he also has strict requirements for children, and the naughty Ermao is often punished. Although the mother is busy with housework, her sunny and flower-like smile has an open-mindedness and optimism that affects the child. She often decorates the home with flowers and plants to make the children feel different and beautiful. She became Xiao Ermao's best enlightenment teacher, teaching children to read English, read Nietzsche's books, and tell all kinds of interesting stories, fairy tales, and fables. Children unconsciously understand many truths. In particular, their mother took them to visit Shennong Cave, telling the story of Shennong's life for the people and death for the people. The story deeply touched the young Ermao. Later, when Ermao was in the first grade, he visited a horticultural field under the guidance of his teacher, and a variety of flowers and fruits made him full of yearning for the beauty of the countryside and the joy of agronomy, which made Xiao Ermao set his ambition to learn farming.

In the chaos of the war, the XiaoErmao family barely maintained food and clothing, but the war caused countless people to flee the countryside, and there was a shortage of food and the price of grain soared. Therefore, Xiao Ermao has seen too many hungry people with too many mouths like black holes, seen too much hunger and death, and also understood that "the weak eat the strong." If we want to be bullied by others, we in China must become strong! " truth.

Although he traveled from place to place because of the war, his parents did not delay the children's schooling, and Yuan Longping attended three primary schools, three junior high schools, and two high schools before graduating from middle school. Because of his interest from an early age, studying agriculture became his first choice to apply for university, majoring in genetics and breeding.

Yuan Longping's learning is "follow the interest", do not like the "just to pass the line", like to pay special attention to listening to lectures and expand learning, but also like to think, have to break the casserole to ask the end. He has a wide range of interests, loves music and sports, can sing, play the violin, and swims very well. Once, he participated in the competition to select national team members, but because he ate too many Snacks in Chengdu before the game, he ate his stomach badly and did not swim well, otherwise Yuan Longping might have become a professional athlete of the national swimming team.

When yuan longping was in college, he met a teacher who influenced his life, Guan Xianghuan. The influence on Guan Xianghuan's life is Mr. Zhao Lianfang, one of the pioneers of Modern Agricultural Science in China, Rice Breeding and The Promotion of Fine Seeds in China.

At that time, China was a poor and backward country, and if it was backward, it would be beaten, and the field of science and technology was also bullied by the great powers. Because agricultural science and technology at that time was very backward, China, which was originally a big rice producer, had to import more than 20 million quintals of rice every year, which made Zhao Lianfang and Guan Xianghuan and other two generations of scientists vow to fight for the rest of their lives to improve the level of rice production in China and solve the problem of eating Chinese. From Zhao Lianfang, Guan Xianghuan to Yuan Longping, it is the inheritance relationship of Chinese rice experts and genetic breeders from master to master to apprentice.

In the spring of 1952, Yuan Longping went deep into the countryside, lived in a peasant's home, slept with the peasants in a dirty and torn quilt, stirred rice in an earthen pot, ate and lived and worked together, and truly felt the poverty of the peasants. This made him "secretly determined to transform the countryside and do something practical for the peasants." This became a turning point in his thinking.

3. Work

After graduation, Yuan Longping was assigned to teach at the Anjiang Agricultural School at the foot of Xuefeng Mountain in western Hunan Province, where he taught for eighteen years, becoming a place for him to study and sow seeds.

Yuan Longping, who has just become a teacher, is deeply influenced by the teaching and educating spirit of Mr. Huang Tai, a mentor in the school, and pays special attention to stimulating students' interest and bringing the lessons to life. When teaching Russian, Russian songs are compiled into Chinese-Russian contrast teaching materials, simple cross-talk segments are compiled, and students are taught to sing Russian songs and perform cross-talk, so that students can learn to speak Russian with laughter and laughter. It also organized correspondence between students and students of soviet counterpart friendly schools, and you came and went, writing more and more words, which not only improved the students' Russian language level, but also made students more aware of the Soviet Union. When teaching genetics and breeding, there was no ready-made teaching material, so he moved the class to the farmland and moved it to Xuefeng Mountain, collecting physical objects and specimens, making self-made illustrations, drawing tables, and compiling his own teaching materials. Hands-on and hands-on practice make students more interested and deepen their memory and understanding.

Many of mankind's great discoveries and inventions often begin with disasters. In the spring of 1959, the three-year famine began. The grain of the previous year was eaten, and the grain of the next year had not yet grown, and even the seeds had been scavenged. Even if you have money, you can't buy a grain of grain. Man is iron, food is steel, and a meal is not eaten hungry and panicked. Even if you are an iron man, you are hungry for three days, and your walking is shaky. What's more, it wasn't three days, it was three years! People ate grass roots, bark, voles, and even Guanyin soil, but many people starved to death.

Yuan Longping once personally saw five people starving to death on the side of the road, and the helpless look and the dry and stiff corpse brought him a heart-like pain, he said: "This incident touched me a lot, people who cultivate fields can't eat enough, can people like us who come from a peasant background say that they have no responsibility?" ”

This three-year-long famine not only brought Yuan Longping a cruel experience of hunger, but also brought torture of conscience. This tragic experience led Yuan Longping to start a high-yield experiment with sweet potatoes and wheat. But sweet potatoes can't replace grain, they can't be eaten as rice! Wheat is also not the main food crop in the South. Therefore, from 1960 onwards, Yuan Longping turned his attention to rice.

One day, an old farmer exchanged a bag of solid seeds and sincerely said to Yuan Longping: "Teacher Yuan, you are engaged in scientific research, can you cultivate a new variety with an output of 800 catties and 1,000 catties per mu?" How nice that would be! Yuan Longping's heart fluttered, and he never forgot this sentence in his life. He said: "I was deeply touched by the simple words of the farmers, and I realized what the farmers urgently needed, that is, good seeds. "Rice, good seeds, these two keywords added together, let Yuan Longping find the direction of his life - improve rice seeds."

Since then, Yuan Longping, an ordinary agricultural school teacher, has embarked on a painstaking scientific research journey. He said: "Knowledge + sweat + inspiration + opportunity = success." From the initial lonely battle, to the acceptance of two apprentices, and then to the continuous growth of the team, no matter what the situation, Yuan Longping has been leading his scientific research team on the road of cultivating high-quality rice seeds, challenging themselves again and again, surpassing themselves, and endlessly climbing one peak after another.

Dreams still have to be had, what if they come true?

The dream of childhood is like a seed, this seed in the body, spirit, emotional health of people, in order to have deep roots, thick branches and fruit... The seeds of Yuan Longping's grandfather's dreams took root and sprouted in him, allowing him to cultivate magical rice seeds. What is the seed of your dreams?