Deep in the Loess Plateau in 1975, Taohuagou was still shrouded in the haze of poverty. Wang Mantun, a member of the commune, looks at the barren slopes of his home every day and worries about it. His family's livelihood depends only on the meager work points of collective labor. When a new policy came from the commune that allowed for "small freedoms", allowing members to reclaim their own land and develop family side businesses, Wang Mandun was both excited and worried. The shadow of "cutting off the tail of capitalism" in the past few years was still there, but the days when he was afraid of poverty made him determined to take the risk.
With the support of his wife Xiulian, Wang Mandun walked more than 30 miles of mountain roads with only five yuan at home to buy apple saplings and cultivate an orchard on the barren slope outside the courtyard. His hands were worn out by the hoe he used to open up wasteland. During the drought, he made more than ten trips a day to carry water for irrigation. He even kept guarding the saplings while repairing canals. Faced with problems such as soil alkalization and insect infestation, he consulted an experienced horticulturist on foot. He wrote down the technical points on cigarette paper and pondered over them over and over again. He used plant ash to improve the soil, learned to prune branches, and managed to get the thin saplings to take root.
After the policy gradually relaxed, Wang Mandun's orchard ushered in the harvest, and the red apples brought 20 yuan of income to his family for the first time. His success ignited the hope of the whole village, and team leader Zhao Laoshuan invited him to take the lead in building a collective orchard. Wang Mandun took his members to open up wasteland and plant trees, and went to the county Agricultural Science Institute to learn techniques. They innovatively adopted the "fruit-livestock cycle" model, interplanted beans and raised bees in the orchard, turning the wasteland into a cornucopia.
