In 1953, in rural North China, Wang Shugen, a modern engineering management graduate, traveled through time and became Wang Shugen, a young man who had just returned to his hometown. The village was running a "mutual aid group", but there were few farm tools and poor water conservancy, so everyone had to rely on manpower to pull the plow during spring plowing. Looking at the small river in the village that had been dry all year round, he recalled the knowledge he had learned about "small water conservancy projects" in his previous life, and decided to start with "canal construction": he persuaded the leader of the mutual aid group and led everyone to use "soil surveying" (bamboo poles + ropes) to plan the canal, and then used "rammed earth technology" to reinforce the canal banks, diverting river water to irrigate farmland, and doubling the mutual aid group's spring plowing efficiency. Facing the jealousy of neighboring villages (who wanted to steal the water from the canal) and the doubts of the village elders (who said he was "messing around"), he responded with the fact of high yields after irrigation; later he helped the village build a "simple reservoir" (to store water in the rainy season and use it in the dry season), and taught everyone how to make "simple agricultural tools" (such as improved hoes and sickles). From an ordinary young man who returned to his hometown to a "construction leader" in the village, he used his engineering knowledge to help villagers improve production conditions during the mutual aid group era in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, turning barren land into "high-yield fields."
