Popular cadre dies for the cause of fighting poverty

For seven years, Wen Weihong worked and lived in different poverty-stricken villages as a resident cadre. Once a village shook off poverty, he headed to the next.

The year 2019 was supposed to be a year he could finally spend time with his family, as his wife came to settle in Daping village, Zhongzhai township, with him.

But last July, he died in an accident after getting an electric shock while inspecting some local industrial sites, and the villagers mourned his sudden death at the age of 45.

Ever since 1997, he had been working as a cadre in Yanhe Tujia autonomous county, a severely impoverished county in Southwest China's Guizhou province. Between 2013 and 2019, he worked in five of the county's outlying villages, and helped lift four of them out of poverty.

These villages are destitute and remote. Without a car, Wen rode a motorbike to and fro, on a journey which often took around four hours.

In March 2018, he once again volunteered to work in the impoverished villages, and was assigned to work as the secretary of the village.

Wei Kefei, now leader of the village's poverty alleviation team, arrived there two months after Wen, and worked closely with him for over a year.

To alleviate poverty, the cadres had to visit more than 100 households one by one and understand their individual needs, to ensure that they could support their everyday living costs, and get access to education, medical services and secure housing.

"He truly respected the farmers, and had a clear grasp of the residents' conditions," Wei says. Sometimes even before visiting a household, Wen could analyze the financial condition based on the limited information, and his judgment often proved to be accurate.

The farmers were usually unfamiliar with governmental policies, and Wen helped them assess their individual conditions and apply for government subsidies.

"He also put great emphasis on developing local industries, because solving the villagers' problems or relocating them to new homes was a temporary relief. To target the root cause of poverty, we must boost the economy, and we explored a lot of measures to do that."

Wen inspected the main local produce, and decided to give priority to the honey industry, because of the favorable local natural resources. He then applied for government funds to develop beekeeping.

"He was still talking to me about beekeeping two days before his accident. Our first harvest was last September, generating a revenue of more than 60,000 yuan ($8,472). The number may seem small to the outside world, but is actually a lot for a remote village," Wei says.

He explains that a prerequisite for the village to eliminate poverty is for the annual collective earnings to exceed 30,000 yuan, so the honey revenue alone met this requirement, while many other industries can only earn thousands or even less.

"He was a very optimistic person, always smiling, always maintaining a positive attitude. He was also very diligent. Apart from fulfilling his work duties, he spent his free time helping out the villagers with chores and farm work. He was always busy around the village," Wei says.

Wei recalls that Wen bought a car half a year after he started working in the village. Every time he saw the farmers walking, he offered to give them a lift, even if the farmers had just finished working and were dripping with mud.

"They all respected Wen greatly and treated him as their own family, their own son."

Wen's son left home for university in 2018, so earlier last year, he persuaded his wife Li Zhengfen to come to live with him in the village and to help with the local industry of tobacco curing.

"My husband was really a very honest and kind-hearted man," Li says. "Two months after the accident was supposed to be our 20th wedding anniversary. Ever since we were married, he worked in different villages, and the conditions at the time were sometimes much worse than those of recent years."

In early February, Li went to the Red Cross office of Yanhe county and donated 5,000 yuan to support the COVID-19 pandemic control.

"It's nothing, not even worth mentioning," Li says. "I simply felt that I had received a lot of help, so I wanted to contribute as much as I could."