Fertile Soil, 1975: A Scientist's Wife Reclaims the Wilderness

In 1975, at a construction corps in the northwest, Lin Wan’s entire dowry consisted of half a broken piece of jade and a notebook on agricultural science.

Watermelons in saline-alkali soil? The villagers called her crazy! But when the melon fields yielded a bumper crop, the whole battalion stood guard with guns that night!

Her aunt encouraged her cousin to steal her techniques? Lin Wan held a “Planting Contest,” offering drip-irrigation blueprints as the prize. The thieves were caught, and the crowd erupted in cheers!

When foreign companies coveted her patent for upland rice, she took her newborn to an international court: “You can’t steal the Chinese people’s rice bowl!”

Ten years later, at the podium of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, she held up her weathered notebook. “This is what a real golden finger looks like.”