Light Through the Mulberry Grove

When the Yellow River changed course, it left behind hundreds of thousands of mu of sandy land. The soil was arid and barren, so our ancestors planted drought-resistant mulberry trees to improve the environment. Generation after generation of my family lived on this land. Drought kept crops from getting enough water, leaving harvests meager and people struggling to survive from one day to the next. But we caught the wave of reform and opening up, seized the opportunity, and put the mulberry groves our ancestors left us to use. With help from the town government, we attracted investment from businesses and built a resort on this land, along with a fruit-picking garden, an apricot grove, and a fragrant snow garden. We turned mulberries into dried fruit and fine wine, then shipped them around the world. We developed livestock farming, built greenhouses, and produced handicrafts, helping everyone in the village grow prosperous together and completely transforming its poverty-stricken appearance. Later, after the county recommended us, we successfully secured heritage status and were named a “China Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Site” and the “Hometown of Chinese Mulberries.”