赋闲的意思12 BEIJING REVIEW JANUARY 19, 2017
THE MAN WHO CHANGED A VILLAGE
A primary-level Party chief leads his fellow villagers out of poverty By Jiao Yuanyuan
A brightly lit, two-story shop on
the business street of Peizhai
Community in central China’s
Henan Province is lined with racks
full of neatly arranged goods. The first floor features products for mothers and children while the cond floor boasts a swim-ming pool for babies. The shop is owned by Pei Longhui, who returned to the village after work-ing in south China.
“Now I can make at least 150,000 yuan ($21,665) a year, which is veral times what I made while w
orking on ships in southern China,” Pei said.
There are more than 600 such shops on
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Pei Chunliang, Secretary of the
Peizhai Community General
Branch of the Communist
Party of China
the street. The area, once a stretch of rural
wasteland, is now full of tall buildings. There
rumor has it
are villas, a primary school, a basketball court,
a plaza, and other amenities that one can
find in cities.
Peizhai has undergone tremendous
change in recent years, thanks to one
man—Pei Chunliang, Secretary of the
Peizhai Community General Branch of the
Communist Party of China.
A lf-made man
On the wall of the exhibition hall of Peizhai
hangs an old black-and-white photograph
in which a boy, wearing shabby and grubby
clothes, stands akimbo. It is Pei Chunliang when
he was young.
The boy had to drop out of school at the
age of 13 becau of poverty. When his fa-
ther died three years later the family was too
poor to afford a casket. So the village head
led villagers to chop down a tree and make
one. They also donated money to buy grave
在线金山词霸clothes for the dead man and buried him. Pei
Chunliang felt grateful to the villagers, think-
ing he would return their favor someday.
His first job was working in a brickyard.
Becau of his diligence, his boss gave him
a rai. Later, he left the brickyard to learn
TV repairing at a technical school. But after
completing the cour, he found that not
many people needed the rvice and he had
to look for other ways to make a living. He
decided to learn how to cut hair at a barber’s
shop.
In the beginning, the barber refud to
teach him for fear that he would become a
competitor. But Pei Chunliang won him over
by doing chores like fetching water. Moved
by Pei Chunliang’s earnestness, the barber
finally relented and taught the boy his skills.
At the barber’s shop customers liked to
chat with Pei Chunliang. When he learned
through such a conversation that the
neighborhood needed a photographer, he
learned photography. He cut hair and took
photographs during the day and repaired TV
ts at night, working hard and saving some
money.
But he did not stop there. After learn-
ing that some out-of-town merchants who
had come to the village to buy walnuts and
hawthorns could not find a place to eat, he
rented a hou, opened a restaurant, and
started lling stewed noodles. His noodles
sold well and he invested his saving in a big-
ger restaurant, hiring more than 20 people.
His life finally began improving.
Pei Chunliang always kept an eye out
vesl是什么意思for business opportunities. He would carry
a pen and a notebook with him everywhere s
s
JANUARY 19, 2017 BEIJING REVIEW 13
An elderly woman pass the newly built residential buildings in Peizhai Community QIN BIN
he went, jotting down all the uful things he saw, even advertiments stuck on electric posts. In this way, he found many business opportunities unnoticed by others.
From the customers eating at his restau-rant, he heard that lling marble in Beijing and Shanghai was a lucrative business. That inspired the ambitious Pei Chunliang, and leaving the restaurant under his fiancee’s care, he went to Beijing to ll marble.
In Beijing, Pei Chunliang zipped around the city on a bike day after day to peddle marble. He made a fortune, amassing as much as 90,000
are you free tonight
yuan ($12,980) from one order.
“My experiences in tho years taught
me that as long as I am down to earth and
do things one step at a time, nothing is im-
possible,” he said.
A gregarious man, Pei Chunliang likes
to make friends and help others, which has
contributed to his business growth.
After returning to his hometown from
i dont want to miss a thingBeijing, he partnered with his friends to
buy mines and began trading. His busi-
ness grew bigger and bigger. He became a
successful entrepreneur, who business
included hotels, casting rvices, mining and
cement production.
Repaying the village
In 2005, the villagers of Peizhai, led by their for-
mer leader, came to e Pei Chunliang, urging
indicatorhim to return to the village and be its new chief.
Mindful of the favors he owed them, he agreed.
On returning to the mountain village
as its new leader, Pei Chunliang put it onto
a fast growth track. He invested nearly 90
million yuan ($12.98 million) out of his own
pocket to build villas, farmland ponds and a
make it to the endrervoir, improving villagers’ lives and ad-
dressing the acute drinking water shortage
the village had suffered for generations.
In 2010, under a government plan, resi-
dents of other impoverished villages with
drinking water scarcity were relocated to
Peizhai.
Guided by Pei Chunliang, villagers built
爱抚“We are developing rural tourism and sighteing
agriculture. We are going to build Peizhai into a
prosperous, modernized community, where people
can lead more happy lives.”
—Pei Chunliang, Secretary of the Peizhai Community General Branch
of the Communist Party of China
heal
14 BEIJING REVIEW JANUARY 19,
JANUARY 19, 2017 BEIJING REVIEW 15
Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar
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When veral young and middle-aged villagers died of high blood pressure in quick succession in the past, Pei Chunliang real-ized it was becau the villagers did not have basic medical knowledge. “They died young due to a problem that could have been solved by a simple do of medicine,” he la-
mented.
To prevent such tragedies from recur-ring, he has put up community bulletin boards that inform people about common dias such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Besides, every year, the village invites doctors from a hospital in Huixian County, which Peizhai is subordinate to, for free medical check-ups and advice. Sport equipment has been installed in the village so that people can exerci to stay fit.
In addition to improving people’s health, Pei Chunliang wants to give the village chil-dren a better education. The village has built a new primary school, and during every sum-mer and winter vacation, college students from the cities are invited to come and teach
Peizhai’s children singing and dancing as well as tell them about the outside world. Pei Chunliang also sponsors impoverished stu-dents’ university tuition fees.
However, despite the achievements, he feels rural areas still lack adequate educa-tional and medical resources and he wishes the government would give rural areas more support in the aspects. Pei Chunliang is waiting to address the issues at the annual National People’s Congress (NPC) ssion in early 2017. As a NPC deputy, he would like to put forward a proposal on rural healt
h rvice and education. Also, in the future, he hopes to popularize the u of the Internet and e-commerce in rural areas.
“We are developing rural tourism and sighteing agriculture. We are going to build Peizhai into a prosperous, modernized com-munity, where people can lead more happy lives,” Pei Chunliang said. n
Students in the playground of the newly revamped school in Peizhai Community
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greenhous, grew organic vegetables, and engaged in other forms of high-efficiency agriculture. A commercial street was de-veloped, providing a vending platform for business owners. This spurred the develop-ment of the rvice industry.
In 2016, Pei Chunliang invested 80 million yuan ($11.6 million) in residential buildings to accommodate people who were being relocated to Peizhai from two villages 60 km away.
Today, Peizhai has shaken off poverty. Local residents’ per-capita annual income in-cread from just 1,000 yuan ($144) in 2005 to $11,000 yuan ($1,588) in 2015. Peizhai has been enriched by cultu
ral, sport and entertainment facilities so that villagers can enjoy urban amenities. Its official name has been changed to Peizhai Community.
Going beyond food
With the villagers’ basic needs met, Pei Chunliang is focusing on medical care and education for them.
