Song Peng, a staff member of the Office of Science and Technology at Tianjin University (TJU), pointed out a road to wealth for Dazhai Country, inspired by the local gourmet food: the minced noodle.

Aged 30, Song had been assigned in August, 2015 as the Party Secretary of Dazhai Country, a poverty-stricken village in Gansu Province surrounded by mountains. This country is nearly 1,120 miles from Tianjin University. A year later, he took up the job as the leader of the local support team. In August, 2017, he asked to postpone his work duration in this country, and will come back to TJU in this August. Over the past 3 years, Dazhai Country has changed dramatically: the roads were mended, solar street lamps had sprung up, and clean drinking water was ensured. More importantly, the farmers, the factories, the online and offline resources were further integrated, which formed an e-commerce industry chain. As a result, the total income of this country had increased to 550 thousand yuan (nearly 87 thousand US dollars), and those who made a living in big cities started to come back and work at home.

Song told us his story.

“I started my journey from Lanzhou. After 14 hours of bumping, I finally arrived in Dazhai Country. The Village Director Han Yanping picked me up at the entrance of the village. He took me to a restaurant and treated me with a bowl of minced noodle. The Chinese prickly ash in the noodle was so pungent that I couldn’t taste anything for a long time.

“On the ninth day of my stay, I paid a visit to the elder secretary, Mr. He. Mr. He had worked in this country for over 20 years, and had retired recently due to the bad condition of his health. He told me every detail in this country: The arable land per capita is only 0.2 mu (approximately 133 square meters), the mountains lie waste, and the agricultural production is on a very small scale. There is no collective economy here, yet some clever villagers make their living through wood processing and selling decoration materials. Most of the rest villagers are uneducated. They don’t speak mandarin Chinese, and they are not good at anything. They do odd jobs with low salary outside the village. He took my hand and said: ‘There has been no one before now who can lead us to wealth. It’s up to you now.’

“‘There were more than 1,000 mu of land in Yingpanshan, but they were all lain wasted for many years. He thought that if these lands could be put to use, they could bring huge benefits to the villagers. The villagers’ benefits are supposed to be the priority of rural business,’ he said. I always kept his words in my mind.

“I visited the villagers’ homes in the following days. They were warm-hearted. They treated me with delicious food. Whoever cooked delicious food like steamed bun, chicken, and mutton, they will call me to enjoy it together. Questions kept me from falling asleep in those days: The villagers are capable of breeding and farming, but they have no idea what they should plant and breed, how to deal with the management, and how to sell the products.

“A few days later, on my first attendance at the village committee, I pointed out that the villagers lacked economic development ideas, business knowhow, channels to process and sell the agriculture and subsidiary products, information and confidence. These were the biggest problems. They all agreed with my opinion.

“Now we have found the problems, so what are we going to do with them? The minced noodles passed through my mind. In the last month of Chinese lunar year, the villagers would kill pigs to make mince. They eat mince almost every meal. Since mince is in a great demand in the local area, how about making it a product, and thus develop the breeding industry? Meanwhile, Chinese prickly ash is necessary in the minced noodle, so people can take this opportunity to plant Chinese prickly ash and make it an industry too.

“In 2015, I almost covered all the supermarkets and wholesale markets in Tianjin, Beijing, Xi’an, and Lanzhou, and attended the Agricultural Expo. I found that the mince produced in Shawan, where Dazhai Country locates, was in short market supply. Its pungent and spicy taste is different from those produced in Shaanxi and Henan. People in Gansu Province love this Shawan mince very much. In addition, with the poverty alleviation policies in Longnan, people would be able to sell the mince to the rest of China through e-commerce. So I decided to turn the local mince into a collective industry, so as to create wealth.

“The villagers didn’t trust me at the very beginning. Village Party Secretary Ma Zhongchang asked: ‘What if people don’t buy them? We cannot afford to lose.’ I was aware of that, but I didn’t want to give up. So I took the village officials with me and made an investigation in the nearby towns. It turned out that people were fond of the Shawan mince.

“In November 2015, together with other village officers, I paid a visit to the Gansu Light Industry Research Institute to make sure whether a mince industry was a feasible idea. I also asked the experts to test for harmful ingredients and the microorganisms in the mince. In April 2016, Ma and I came to the Institute again, and this time we learned the processing method and the quality control requirements for mince, honey, wines, and dried vegetables and other ingredients. We also learned about food additives and the national standard for food safety. Through this investigation, we finally figured out how to make a mince industry, and more importantly, we sent two mince samples, and they all passed the quality test, which meant that it met the food safety standard.

“In 2016, I established the first collective industry in this country: Bailongwan Subsidiary Agricultural Products Development Ltd. Villagers could take a share of this company with technology or semi-finished product.

“In July 2017, the mince processing workshop began to function. In August, on behalf of the company, I signed a cooperative agreement with the Gansu Light Industry Research Institute and Gansu Public Service Platform for SME. With the agreement, the villagers are able to jointly develop their industry with others. On December 12, 2017, 20 home-breed pigs were carried to a transit farm for temporary breeding. Four days later, the pigs were all killed. After a dozen hours of work, the mince with a pungent smell finally came out of the pot.

“Once the Shawan mince came onto the market, they were out of stock many times in just several days. The villagers were excited about this situation. I was relieved, too. The collective industry provided them with a platform so that the villagers were tight together to develop their own business. With their joint efforts, the market competitiveness of the Shawan mince will be sure to increase. This is a road to wealth for all. Meanwhile, the villagers would be more confident. To develop the mince industry is really to kill two birds with one stone.

“Apart from the mince, we also develop 10 products, including wines, honey and Chinese prickly ash, and popularized them through e-commerce. As a result, the collective income reached 550 thousand yuan that year.”

“I found cultural quality is the biggest difference between the poor and the rich at the village under the same natural environment, infrastructure, and traffic conditions. And villagers who are active in thinking, good at grasping business opportunities, and accepting new ideas and new things are more likely to get rich.” Song added.

Based on these findings and focusing on the problems of the lack of rural e-commerce and business management personnel, various training, programs, organizations and institutions were carried out or established, including training like the “E-commerce Training in Rural Areas” and “Capacity Improvement of E-commerce Application in Rural Areas and Standardization Construction of Specialized Farmers Cooperatives”, the establishment of an “E-commerce Studio” and “Tanchang Youth Chamber of E-commerce” to integrate resources, collect information, build the platform and help young rural e-commerce entrepreneurs in marketing, technology, personnel, and sales channels, and the cultivation, incubation and promotion of rural youth e-commerce programs. "Zhao Guoqiang, a young man in the village, originally worked in Xinjiang and had a good income. Having seen the development of e-commerce and agricultural product processing in the village, he took the initiative to contact me to come back to start a business together. He has now become a lecturer on e-commerce in southern Fujian." Song said.　　

In addition, the village under leadership of Song Peng, actively explored the construction of a “1+X help 1” work model. The first “1” refers to the Party Secretary and the village support team. The second “1” refers to Dazhai Country. "X” refers to social forces. This working model gives full play to the advantageous resources of the Party Secretary and the support team, and to unite social forces in an extensive manner to assist the Dazhai Country in poverty alleviation development and collective economic development.

Song Peng said, “I contacted the Tianjin University alumni’s enterprises and they signed the ‘Coupling Assistance and Cooperation Agreement’ with the village to build ‘Jishixian Chinese Prickly Ash Base’ and ‘Jishixian Chinese Honey Base’, benefiting 7 villages and 200 families; five institutions in Gansu Province signed a cooperation agreement with the village; the New Year Fair and the Promotion Conference were held at Tianjin University and Jinan City, Shandong Province; I also initiated the establishment of the Shawan Dazhai Industrial Poverty Alleviation Development Fund and raised social funds of RMB 110,000 in the first phase.”

Remembering Yingpanshan mentioned by the elder secretary, Song Peng would go there whenever he was available with the question lingering in mind: how to develop Yingpanshan with both economic benefit and ecological protection. Finally in September last year, when he promoted agricultural products, he saw that the price of their Chinese prickly ash was very high. However, the Chinese prickly ash grown by the Dazhai villagers were poor in quality and price. So Song with his own money bought 1,000 non-thorn Chinese prickly ash seedlings and 2,900 plum-shaped Chinese prickly ash seedlings online, and planted them on the Yingpanshan together with ten villagers. Now Yingpanshan has grown to 1,800 mu (120.06 hectares) of plum-shaped Chinese prickly ash and walnuts, and it has become a “bank” for Dazhai Country.

Over the past two years, Song Peng has visited all 249 families in the village, 21 administrative villages in Shawan Town, 80% of townships in Tanchang County, 7 counties and one region in Longnan City. “What I see are simple and hard-working villagers who are longing for a happy life.” Song said.