Lang Ying's words ignited the passion of Han Jingru and the others.
Jiang Xiaoman nodded secretly. No wonder she had been brainwashed by Director Sun, the poverty alleviation cadre. Her eloquence was top-notch!
Chapter 245
This season is the harvest season for wild mushrooms and local honey in Langshan. After filming the wild mushroom planting and processing industry, Han Jingru and her group, accompanied by Jiang Xiaoman and Sun Zheyuan, visited the beekeeping cooperative of Shan Yan and others.
If the cultivation of edible fungi under forest cover can be considered an emerging industry in Langshan, then beekeeping can be said to be a traditional craft passed down through generations of Langshan people.
According to clues provided by Jiangxia, the history of beekeeping and honey extraction by the people of Langshan can be traced back more than two thousand years.
To make the program more interesting, Shan Yan, along with several apprentices and a film crew, traversed mountains and valleys to re-film the process of Langshan villagers climbing rocks and collecting honey.
Watching Shan Yan and his companions, with ropes tied around their waists, slowly slide down a cliff hundreds of meters high, carrying damp firewood on their backs, using the smoke from the burning firewood to drive away wild bees, and laboriously clinging to the rock face to harvest honey, even the three well-traveled reporters couldn't help but gasp in astonishment.
No wonder Shan Yan and his group wanted to go down the mountain to establish a beekeeping cooperative.
Rock climbing to harvest honey is truly risking your life for money!
With such a thrilling and exciting start, it makes perfect sense that the mountain people would use their ancestors' knowledge of wild bee habits to go down the mountain, establish a beekeeping cooperative, and develop beekeeping into a local industry.
Jiang Xiaoman also cunningly led the reporters to the Laoshan Aozi area.
Seeing the villagers still living in stone houses covered in moss, the three reporters couldn't help but choke up.
The lives of the people living in Langshan are too hard.
Look at these moss-covered stone houses; it's as if the word "poverty" is engraved on every single stone!
Then look at the little children in the village who haven't started school yet. They can't even walk steadily yet, but they're already clumsily helping their families pick the wild mushrooms they've just gathered... Han Jingru also has children, and tears welled up in her eyes.
The people in Laoshan Aozi were among the first in Langshan Town to join the beekeeping cooperative with Shanyan. The reason was simple: these people originally followed Shanyan into the mountains to collect honey and make a living.
Now that the boss has switched to business, how could the underlings not follow in his footsteps?
Shan Yan did not disappoint the villagers' trust.
The Langshan area is rich in forests and flowers, and has abundant nectar sources. The villagers do not need to plant nectar-producing flowers themselves. They can harvest 3 to 4 batches of local honey a year simply by having bees collect nectar in the wild.
The per capita forest area here is several times that of the villages at the foot of the mountain. In other words, if your family can come up with enough start-up capital, a family in the villages at the foot of the mountain can set up 100 beehives, while in Laoshan'aozi, each family can set up at least 500 beehives!
If we follow the traditional beehive-making techniques of the older generation, very few families in this old mountain valley could afford to spend such a large sum of money to make hundreds of beehives at once.
The key is that Jiang Xiaoman, a professional thrifty person, took a different approach and improved the production process of beehives in the wild. He used cheap solid wood scraps from the building materials market to make beehives, directly cutting the cost price of beehives to just a fraction of what it used to be. In this way, even the poorest families in the old mountain valleys could afford the initial cost of several hundred beehives.
After Shan Yan and his team established a beekeeping cooperative, they used their connections in the town to obtain a batch of two-year interest-free agricultural loans from the cooperative and the Agricultural Bank of China. Now they even had the start-up capital to buy native bees.
The old mountain valley has now become a well-known beekeeping village.
Don't be fooled by the dilapidated stone houses in the village. In fact, after this year's winter honey harvest season, every household in the village will be able to earn 200,000 yuan a year!
The reason why houses haven't been built yet is that Shanyan has already discussed with the town that they will set aside a separate piece of land at the foot of the mountain so that the villagers of Laoshan'aozi can be relocated there collectively.
Previously, the conditions were not available; villagers could not afford to build houses, and the town could not afford the high relocation costs to move the people from the deep mountains.
But things are different now. Shanyan has reached an agreement with the town, and Langshan Town will solve the problem of homesteads for relocation. Villagers who are willing to move down the mountain can pay for their own houses and the homesteads will be provided free of charge.
This was mainly done to solve the children's schooling problem.
As for the old houses in the mountains, they won't be demolished; the villagers will continue to raise bees there in the future.
It's fine for adults to travel a bit more, but we can't expect the children to run dozens of miles of mountain roads to school, can we? They simply can't keep up!
This is also the main reason why young people in the Laoshan Aozi area generally have low levels of education.
Although the country has long since implemented nine-year compulsory education and abolished tuition fees for primary and secondary schools, and only a small amount of tuition and miscellaneous fees are required for schooling, even farmers can afford to pay this amount. However, the problem is that the nearest primary school to the outside world, Langshan Primary School, is half a day's walk away from Laoshan Aozi!
The first class at school starts at eight o'clock. To make it to school, students in the Laoshan Aozi area have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, have breakfast at home, and then be sent off by their families with torches. This is only when the weather is good. If it is windy or rainy, they have to ask for leave and not go to school.
With such inconsistent effort, it's no wonder your grades won't be good!
Moreover, the junior high school in town is farther away than the primary school.
Many students barely manage to graduate from elementary school, vaguely recognizing some commonly used characters and being able to calculate household expenses, and then they don't go on to junior high school.
Violation of the Nine-Year Compulsory Education Law?
Don't be ridiculous! The school wants to recruit them, fine, anyway, their families can't afford boarding school fees. If the school could provide these kids with free education, the parents would be overjoyed.
The problem is that rural schools don't have the financial resources to support so many students, so they can only pretend not to see it...
Shan Yan has a natural sense of chivalry. He used to be too busy taking care of himself, but now that he has the strength, he wants to change the fate of the people in Laoshan Aozi.
And reading is undoubtedly the quickest way for children in the mountains to change their destiny.
Like Jiang Xiaoman, if he hadn't gone to university in the city, would he have known how to do e-commerce? Where could he get interest-free loans? How could he have convinced the town government to support their cooperative?
These all require knowledge and vision.
Shan Yan believed that he was no less capable than Xiao Man in terms of conduct, but whenever reporters came to interview the village or leaders from higher levels came to inspect, Xiao Man always seemed more respectable in his words and actions.
Shan Yan knew that this was one of the benefits of having gone to university.
If Langshan Village can produce a college student, why can't Laoshan'aozi?
He and Xiaoyu have no chance, but they still have three daughters and more than twenty children in the old mountain valley. They are not short of money now. If they do their best to support them, they can surely send one or two to college.
He didn't think this way because he wanted to compete with Xiaoman; he simply felt that the fate and future of the entire village shouldn't be placed on Xiaoman's shoulders alone.
They have already received enough from Xiaoman; they can't always be carried and supported. As netizens have said, they will have to learn to walk independently sooner or later.
...
Hearing Shan Yan say that he had reached an agreement with the town to relocate the old mountain valley and a nearby small village to the foot of the mountain within three years, so that the children in the village could go to school with peace of mind, Han Jingru nodded secretly, thinking that Shan Yan was a clear-headed person.
It's not that she looks down on rural people, but there are still many rural people who, once they make money, think about building houses and buying cars as if that would allow them to stand tall and be respected in the village.
Little did they know that for ordinary people to change their fate, how could they possibly earn that little money by working hard in their youth? The best way, of course, was to strive to support one or two students to go to university.
Are college graduates worthless? That depends on the context.
In highly competitive big cities, undergraduate degrees are as common as dogs, so of course they're not worth much.
In Langshan, if a family produces a college student, it truly changes their social standing, and even the family's status in the village improves.
Take Jiang Xiaoman, for example. If he hadn't been the first college student from Langshan Village to be admitted to a key university, would the villagers have listened to him?
In big cities, a degree may just be a stepping stone to finding a decent job, but in remote mountainous areas like theirs, it's the key to whether a young person can have a voice in the village.
Shan Yan himself built this empire with his own fists, but he didn't want future generations to suffer the same hardships.
Especially since they only have three delicate little girls in their family, how can a little girl convince people just by being good at fighting? She also needs to be smart!
Education is the best weapon for your mind!
"That's so well said! President Shan Yan, could you please say those words again in front of the camera? Our Xiao Song was filming other shots and didn't record what you said..." Han Jingru looked at Shan Yan with shining eyes.
To make Jiang Xiaoman, the "Advanced Figure in Assisting Rural Revitalization in the Province," be convincing, it's impossible for him to rely on self-promotion. No matter how emotional the program's narration is, it's not as convincing as having local people speak out.
With the testimonials of Shan Yan and Lang Ying, Han Jingru is convinced that Jiang Xiaoman is destined to win the title of "Advanced Figure in Supporting Rural Revitalization in the Province"!
Shan Yan isn't one to fawn over others, but the relocation of the old mountain valley is a dream he's vowed to realize since childhood. Now that his dream is finally seeing hope, he's even more excited than Jiang Xiaoman and can't help but talk to the camera.
Why were the people of Laoshan Aozi able to collectively become wealthy?
Ultimately, it all comes down to benefiting from policy dividends.
Why is it that among the hundreds of villages, large and small, in Langshan, only Laoshan'aozi has benefited from this?
It's all because they have Jiang Xiaoman!
Back then, Jiang Xiaoman dragged the poverty alleviation cadres to stay up all night writing materials, spending his own money and time to hire people for typesetting, design, and printing. But he never expected to ask them for benefits. Ironically, every time Jiang Xiaoman came to him to buy rock honey to give as gifts, Shan Yan actually accepted the money!
"If I had known earlier that Xiaoman bought those rock honeys to help our fellow villagers in Langshan get out of poverty and become rich, I would have given them to him for free, and I would have risked my life to get him as much as he wanted!" Shan Yan finally said his unspeakable apology to the camera.
This matter had been weighing on his mind for a long time. Last year, when the cooperative distributed profits, he overruled all objections and insisted on giving Jiang Xiaoman a separate public relations fee, all for this reason.
He knew Jiang Xiaoman wouldn't mind spending this little bit of money.
But they can't pretend to be confused and keep taking advantage of Xiaoman.
Helping them once or twice is a favor Xiaoman has done for them.
But if they take advantage of this relationship and keep making Xiaoman put money into it, then they are shameless.
Facing the provincial TV station's camera, Shan Yan seemed to confront his own heart for the first time: the people of Laoshan Aozi owed Jiang Xiaoman a huge debt of gratitude! Not to mention repaying kindness in kind, at the very least, as long as they were still eating the cooperative's food, everyone in Laoshan Aozi had to listen to Jiang Xiaoman!
Jiang Xiaoman never thought about establishing any "authority" among her fellow villagers.
However, without realizing it, he gradually gained the recognition of his authority from more and more villagers through his hard work.
Jiang Xiaoman no longer needs to compete for the position of village chief or village party secretary. Now, his words carry more weight in Langshan Village than those of the village chief himself.
Shan Yan's words not only shocked Jiang Xiaoman, but also moved Han Jingru.
Hearing that they planned to start arranging the village relocation by the end of this year, Han Jingru, who usually disliked meddling in other people's business, couldn't help but speak up—
"Your relocation involves a lot of planning approvals, right?"
"Well, my husband works at the Municipal Urban and Rural Planning Bureau. He should be able to help a little with the planning for the relocation of villages and towns..."
Jiang Xiaoman and Shan Yan exchanged a glance, their hearts filled with joy.
It's more than just "being able to help in a small way"?
They're relocating entirely, but where to? What size area will be approved by the authorities? How will the supporting facilities be built? These are all things the Urban and Rural Planning Bureau is responsible for!
Sister Han, you're truly our dear sister!!
Chapter 246
After seeing Han Jingru and her group off, Jiang Xiaoman was exhausted. When she got home, she took a shower and collapsed onto the bed, lying flat on her back.
In a daze, I felt like I had forgotten something.
What is it?
Before he could figure it out, he fell into a deep sleep.
I slept until the sun was high in the sky.