Chapter 150

How did Houzhai Village’s collective economy become so profitable? At the end of the day, it all goes back to the poverty alleviation plan Wei Sheng had mapped out for them. The long-term impact of that plan turned out to be incredible.

Who would’ve thought that simply hiring a few experienced farmers to teach kids how to grow vegetables, raise pigs, and feed chickens would turn into such a booming business for the village’s research and practice education base?

Now, nearly every piece of arable land in Houzhai Village has been fenced off and designated as part of the “Research and Practice Education Base.” To ensure that children can come experience rural life year-round, the village has carefully planned out the land usage so that no matter the season, there’s always something new for them to try.

They even fenced in the collectively owned bamboo groves. In spring, kids are brought up the mountain to dig for bamboo shoots and pick wild greens. In winter, they search for winter shoots and gather wild chestnuts.

More importantly, as Wei Sheng once pointed out, if this land were still being farmed the traditional way, even with specialized crops, you’d only get two or three harvests a year. And with how little agricultural products sell for these days, after a year of backbreaking work, how much could you really earn?

But under the current education base model, one class can come visit today, another tomorrow. As long as the vegetables are still in the ground, the land can keep hosting new groups of visitors. When the crops mature, the harvest can be sold to the tourists for even more income.

There’s another perk to partnering with schools for these research trips: the village barely has to spend anything on planting or weeding. With proper scheduling, the schools organize student visits to experience farm work like planting and weeding. It not only builds the kids’ hands-on skills but also gets the fields taken care of for free.

According to the villagers, there are so many students coming these days that sometimes there aren’t even enough weeds in the fields. Ahem—just to make sure every class gets the chance to “weed,” they sometimes have to secretly scatter grass seeds in the fields. After all, what’s the point of a weeding activity if there are no weeds?

Thanks to the village’s few hundred mu of “Research and Practice Education Base” and two bamboo-covered hills, Houzhai Village now earns over four million yuan annually just from selling various “educational experience packages.”

With the influx of tourists, the village also converted a nearby gravel lot into a parking area, which brings in a tidy sum in parking fees each year. Add to that the revenue from the village’s tourist center selling local specialties and the village-run vacation inn, and the total income is nothing to scoff at.

But none of that is the most profitable part.

The real money-makers are the factories the village collectively invested in early on. Forget the wild vegetable and pickled goods processing plants for a moment. Just the bamboo and wood crafts factory run by Hou Pengfei has already expanded to three branches. Word is, their online sales alone surpassed 100 million yuan last year. The village collective invested land as equity, and just from that, they bring in over ten million yuan in annual dividends.

Looking at it this way, if it weren’t for the heavy investment spending in recent years, forget ten thousand yuan per person per year—give it another couple of years, and fifty thousand per person wouldn’t be out of reach.

That means a family of four could do absolutely nothing all year, just stay home, and still collect 200,000 yuan annually from the village collective. Even in the city, a dual-income household might not pull in that much.

What’s more, according to Village Chief Hou Tianbao, most villagers are highly motivated these days, working hard to earn more. Some have paid out of pocket to get driver’s licenses and now run shuttle buses in the village. Others have opened small shops or started their own businesses. There are those running farm stays and countryside restaurants, and many young people have even become social media influencers.

Take Grandma Guiping’s family, for instance. Her daughter and son-in-law accidentally went viral with their social media account. They’ve now got hundreds of thousands of followers, and mother-in-laws across the internet are envious of how filial they are to Grandma Guiping.

It’s said that her son-in-law no longer works at the factory. The couple now makes a living filming short videos and livestreaming product sales. Even on a slow year, they earn several hundred thousand yuan. Add in their share of the village dividends, and life couldn’t be better.

In contrast, Grandma Guiping’s two ungrateful sons are a different story. The younger one used to look down on the village for being poor and didn’t come back for years. His old house practically fell apart. Now that he’s heard the village economy is booming, he wants to move back with his whole family and get in on the action. But relationships are built over time. He doesn’t know anyone in the village anymore—who’s going to help him get rich?

Sure, he’s back now, but aside from the few tens of thousands he gets annually from the collective, no factory wants to hire him (Hou Pengfei has no interest in hiring someone like that). Even when he wanted to build a house and open a farm stay, no one was willing to send customers his way.

That’s just how it is in the village. When it comes to recommending business, people always prioritize those they know and trust. Otherwise, if a guest gets scammed and complains, the person who made the referral gets dragged into it too. Who wants that kind of trouble?

As for Grandma Guiping’s heartless eldest son, he’s in even worse shape. He thought he was shedding a burden by cutting ties with his mother. But both he and his wife are all talk and no grit. Without Grandma Guiping to help with the chores, they’re constantly fighting.

Seeing others in the village make money with farm stays, they got jealous and scraped together their life savings to renovate their house. But when it came time to hire workers, they tried to cut corners. Instead of hiring a professional crew, they brought in the husband’s drinking buddies and the wife’s relatives. Every one of them acted like royalty, eating and drinking their fill while doing next to nothing. Over a year later, the house still isn’t finished, and their savings are gone.

The village has been cracking down on appearances and cleanliness these past two years, and that half-finished eyesore of a house is a real blemish. So the village issued an ultimatum: if they don’t fix it within three months, next year’s collective dividend for the whole family will be cut off!

Now the couple started to panic. They hurriedly cleaned up the outside of the unfinished building, slapped a coat of white paint on the interior walls, and copied others by placing a few bamboo beds, tables, and chairs in the rooms. They couldn’t even bring themselves to install a bathroom, air conditioning, or a water heater. Any guest who stepped inside would be scared off immediately—no one was willing to stay there.

They ended up wasting hundreds of thousands of yuan without earning a single cent. All they got in return was a shoddy, leaky building plagued by dampness. The eldest son and his wife had now become the laughingstock of the entire village.

It was only then that they finally realized how valuable Grandma Guiping had been. Unfortunately, the old lady was now living a comfortable life with her daughter and son-in-law, enjoying days of ease and contentment. There was no way she’d come back to be their servant again.

What the two ungrateful brats didn’t know, however, was that once this year’s Spring Festival special aired, their reputation as unfilial children wouldn’t just be known in the village—people across the entire country would know their names.

After leaving Houzhai Village, pressed for time, the production team rushed straight to Huazi Village.

What they hadn’t expected was that this episode of the “Return to Huazi Village” Spring Festival special, originally intended to follow up on poverty alleviation efforts, would unexpectedly turn into a large-scale reunion of abducted children and their families.

It was the dead of winter. The crew had expected to film a withered flower field, but as soon as they entered the village, they saw a group of people loading trucks by the roadside. Pots of brightly colored cineraria were wrapped in plastic bags and stacked layer by layer onto the trucks. Judging by the scene, it looked like a flower nursery had made an early bulk purchase to prepare for New Year’s decorations.

The production team’s vehicle got stuck in traffic for a while. The village committee had been waiting for them, and when they didn’t arrive, a few village officials came out to look for them. That’s when they discovered the crew’s car had been blocked by a large freight truck.

The villagers loading the truck were startled too. People in the village might not know who the current provincial governor was, but mention the name Wei Sheng, and even the three-year-olds would nod in recognition.

“No rush, let’s finish loading the truck first. This is the hard-earned money of our fellow villagers,” Wang Qun said with a cheerful smile, stopping the villagers from trying to move the truck. So everyone just stood by the roadside and waited for a bit.

Wang Qun asked them why they had switched to growing cineraria.

Weren’t they growing roses before?

“Haha, we flower growers plant whatever sells best on the market. Roses are seasonal for spring and summer. Once autumn hits, we switch to cineraria, gerbera, lilies, and the like. We’ve also got plenty of moth orchids and daffodils in the village, all stockpiled to sell at a good price before the New Year.”

After the pandemic passed, people’s lives gradually got back on track. One of the clearest signs was that more and more people were willing to spend money during holidays, which in turn boosted Huazi Village’s flower business.

Don’t be fooled by how these flower vendors used to roam the streets looking idle and carefree. In truth, they were incredibly well-informed. Especially those still running flower stalls at night markets—they knew exactly which flowers sold well in which season and which ones had the highest profit margins. They probably had a better grasp of the market than actual flower shop owners, simply because they interacted with so many customers. Sometimes, if several customers asked about a particular flower in a row, the vendors would head straight to the market the next day to stock up.

But buying from the market couldn’t compare to wholesaling directly from the village’s flower nurseries.

So over time, villagers who sold flowers outside began regularly sending back information about which flowers were currently in demand and which had the best profit margins. That way, if someone in the village was growing them, there would always be some lower-grade or leftover stock from the nurseries. The vendors could buy these at rock-bottom prices, do a bit of arranging and pairing, and still sell them for a good price at the night markets. The profits were far better than buying from the flower markets.

With such a stable and accurate “intelligence source,” it was no wonder Huazi Village’s flower business was thriving.

Apparently, the buyer was in a hurry. The batch of cineraria was quickly loaded and sent off. The production team’s vehicle made its way to the village committee office, where the newly appointed Village Party Secretary, Hua Yushu, had already prepared the meeting room. Locally made flower tea was steeping, and several fruit platters were laid out on the table.

Normally, even when hosting higher-level officials, they wouldn’t go to such lengths. The rules didn’t allow it. But today was different.

Hua Yushu was originally from Huazi Village. Having endured countless hardships in his short life, he understood better than anyone what the arrival of the “Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation” production team meant for the village.

Calling them “second parents” wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Hua Yushu had thought he would never set foot in Huazi Village again. But fate had other plans. It seemed his life was destined to be forever tied to this place.

No one, least of all Grandpa Jin, could have imagined that the new Village Party Secretary of Huazi Village would turn out to be the very child he had personally sent away twenty years ago.

Back then, Huazi Village had an even worse reputation than it does now. The villagers weren’t just lazy and gluttonous—many were professional beggars. What made people truly grit their teeth in anger was that some of these beggars had colluded with human traffickers, using the cover of street begging to kidnap and sell women and children.

Hua Yushu had been one of those children, abducted to Huazi Village over twenty years ago. At the time, Grandpa Jin was still working under a local gang boss collecting protection fees. He hadn’t wanted to get involved and didn’t dare to either. Everyone in the underworld knew that those who trafficked people were the most dangerous kind. Many of them had blood on their hands. Guys like Jin just wanted to scrape by—they had no interest in crossing paths with such ruthless criminals.

But when he saw Hua Yushu, bloodied and bruised from being beaten by human traffickers after trying to escape through a window, that last shred of conscience buried in Grandpa Jin’s heart suddenly surfaced.

In the dead of winter, he feigned madness and played the fool, picking a fight at the night market. In the end, both sides were taken to the police station. It wasn’t until he was pinned down in the interrogation room, staring at the officer across from him, that he finally let out a long breath. Trembling, he revealed the location where the traffickers were hiding the children.

Later, Hua Yushu and five other abducted children were rescued by the police. Unfortunately, perhaps due to a head injury, after several days of emergency treatment in the hospital, Hua Yushu woke up with no memory of his name or where he came from.

Grandpa Jin later heard that Hua Yushu and another child whose family hadn’t been located were both sent to a welfare home. At least under the care of the state, it was better than falling back into the hands of traffickers.

Because the children had been rescued from Huazi Village, the welfare home temporarily gave the boy the surname Hua, to make it easier for any future family members to find him. As fate would have it, on the day he arrived, a potted yushu tree that had been growing in the director’s office for years suddenly bloomed. The director took it as a good omen and decided to name the child Yushu, hoping that this sign of fortune would help him reunite with his family one day.

But over twenty years passed. Raised by the state, Hua Yushu grew up, built a life, got married, and even passed the civil service exam. Yet he still couldn’t remember where he was from or who his family was.

Eventually, after starting his own little family, Hua Yushu gradually gave up on the idea of finding his birth parents.

What he never expected was that a seemingly ordinary discussion forum would end up leading him straight to them.

(End of Chapter)