Agricultural researcher Lin Wanxing opened his eyes and became the widow Lin Wanxing of Shiwa Village in the 23rd year of Guangxu's reign. Her husband died young, her son Xiao Shitou had a fever from hunger, and the three acres of thin fields were washed away by heavy rains, leaving only rotten ears of rice. This was a poor village that had almost dug out all the wild vegetables, and the shadow of starvation was so heavy that people could not breathe.
But she held on to the blisters on her palms and didn't panic. The rice seeds cultivated in the laboratory, the drainage and irrigation knowledge memorized in her mind, the principles of cross-breeding... These are her confidence.
"Dig ditches for drainage!" She led the villagers to dig drainage ditches in the mud, taught them to use straw mixed with mud to ram the field edges, cut unplanted potatoes into pieces and bury them in the soil, and sow short-growing buckwheat seeds. Some people questioned, some waited and watched, but watching the round potatoes rolling out of the soil, watching the buckwheat ears bending the branches, the numb eyes finally lit up with light.
She built canals to divert mountain springs, taught people how to compost and fertilize fields, and improved rice seeds to increase yields. She made excess grain into vermicelli and made wine, and took the villagers to the town to sell the goods. From three acres of experimental fields to contiguous fields with stable yields, from chewing tree bark to filling warehouses with grains, from adobe houses to building small buildings - the smoke from Shiwa Village gradually wafts out the fragrance of rice, cakes, and the sweet fragrance of good days.
This is not a counterattack by one person. It is a pair of hands and a heart that erases the word "hungry" from the land and allows hope to take root on the ridges of the fields along with the ears of rice.
