Tan Gaoyan, village official of Xianxian County, Hebei Province: a tomato enriches a village

The picture shows Tan Gaoyan recording the growth of tomatoes on the spot.

The 33-year-old Tan Gaoyan is not tall and has a round face. When he sees me smiling foolishly, at first glance, there is nothing remarkable about him.

However, he is the deputy secretary of Danan Shao Village, Xianxian County, Hebei Province, and an excellent college student village official of the province. After seven years in the village, Tan Gaoyan has been thinking about how to help the villagers get rich. "I just want to do something in a down-to-earth manner so that farmers can really benefit." Tan Gaoyan's words are simple, but the story is very vivid.

Tan Gaoyan grew up in the countryside of Xianxian County. After graduating from Tangshan College in 2006, Tan Gaoyan took a job in electrification management in a local iron and steel company with a monthly salary of 3000 yuan, which was decent at that time.

However, Tan Gaoyan is like a transplanted plant, with field soil on its roots. He said that the enterprise where he works is located in a township. Looking at the familiar rural environment, he often thinks of his hometown.

Fate changed in 2008. Hebei Province recruits the first batch of college student village officials. Tan Gaoyan applied for the examination and was admitted. In October of that year, he came to Danan Shao Village, Shanglin Township, Xianxian County, and served as the assistant secretary of the village party branch.

If you want to be a village official, you must first be a good villager. The first thing Tan Gaoyan did was to walk into the village and get to know the situation of the village. At first, when he was walking down the road in fashionable clothes, the villagers muttered curiously, "where did this come from?" When they heard that they were university student village officials, the villagers did not trust them, saying that the young people came to be gilded and left in two or three years, and some people asked, "have you brought money to the village?"

It is difficult to communicate, but if you concentrate on doing something, the problem is no longer difficult. Tan Gaoyan decided to repackage herself and put on plain clothes. Sometimes when he saw the villagers turning to the ground and dusty, he just leaned up to talk about the harvest. Tan Gaoyan's hometown is only 25 kilometers away from Dannan Shao, but he doesn't go home very often. He lives in Dannan Shao every day. When it gets cold, he goes to live with village cadres.

Over the past six months, Tan Gaoyan went to every corner of the village, drew a plan of the village, replanned the streets and houses, and worked out a detailed development plan for the village. The villagers changed from strangers to kindness to the young man. Hou Guangchun, 60, director of the village committee, said of Tan Gaoyan: "although you are young, you are very down-to-earth as soon as you go to work."

Tan Gaoyan understands that the villagers all want to be rich, but they just suffer from the lack of technology. "Why don't I use my own skills and knowledge to help the villagers get rich?"

Danan Shao is a pure agricultural village, growing tomatoes for more than 30 years, but it has been limited to retail investors with poor income. In 2008, the per capita net income of the whole village was less than 3000 yuan. As there is no trading market in the village, the villagers have to drive tricycles to Hejian, Qingxian, Renqiu and other places to trade, and the price goes with the local market.

Tan Gaoyan is an engineering major and knows nothing about growing tomatoes, but he doesn't want to see the villagers suffering and not making any money. Considering the cost, benefit, soil and other conditions, he put forward some suggestions for the development of open field tomatoes. Everyone agreed. Tan Gaoyan first standardized the mutual aid society as a cooperative, then raised funds, leveled the dirt road, and built a simple vegetable wholesale market.

It is not enough to have a fixed trading venue, and the villagers reflect that the varieties of tomatoes are not good, they crack as soon as it rains, they are not resistant to storage and transportation, and their appearance is not good.

In the face of the expectant eyes of the villagers, Tan Gaoyan contacted the Beijing Academy of Agricultural Sciences to purchase excellent varieties, invited experts to provide regular technical guidance, and standardized management by cooperatives. Where there's a will, there's a way. During the wheat harvest season in 2009, more than 500 mu of tomatoes planted in the village had a bumper harvest. It was red and fruity, and merchants from all over the country came one after another. Tan Gaoyan said that when the tomatoes are ripe in the open field and the tomatoes in the cold shed are not yet on the market, it is a time difference to make money.

With the increase in production, the sales site is restricted. It took Tan Gaoyan half a month to complete the market planning and construction budget, and after the study and demonstration of the village party branch and the village committee, and the villagers' Congress vote, decided to expand the trading market. During this period, he stayed on the front line of construction every day, coordinating the construction, from earth landfills to ground hardening, from the construction of rain shelters to the installation of lighting facilities, and often worked with the villagers in order to save money for the village. Two months later, the high-standard vegetable market and its supporting projects covering an area of more than 10 mu and accommodating hundreds of merchants, which raised 700000 yuan, were completed.

In the following year, the planting scale of tomatoes doubled. At the "Autumn Agricultural products Network Fair" held by the Ministry of Commerce, the transaction volume was 2 million yuan, and the annual income of the whole village reached more than 7.5 million yuan. Trucks loaded with tomatoes rushed from Dannan Shao to the surrounding counties and cities, as well as Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Harbin and other places. By 2011, the per capita net income of the whole village will exceed 6000 yuan.

The village of Da Nan Shao became famous. Three surrounding counties and cities, seven or eight townships have come to learn from the experience, driving more than 2,000 farmers to increase their income and become rich. In 2012, Tan Gaoyan was elected Deputy Secretary of the Village Party Branch and won the honorary title of "Outstanding College Student Village official" in the province.

Looking at Danan Shao Village, happiness arises spontaneously in Tan Gaoyan's heart. In Tan Gaoyan's view, his youth is destined to be bound with the countryside, and life is becoming more and more colorful because of this land.