HAIKOU, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Yang Ying was busy teaching farmers how to trim the rose branches in a rose garden while asking for their expectations for the future, before leaving for Beijing for the annual "two sessions."
Yang, 46, is a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress, China's national legislature. She is also head of a company running rose businesses in the city of Sanya, south China's Hainan Province.
Yang focuses on rural revitalization. She has put forward a proposal for villagers to reach common prosperity through industry.
"By integrating production experience, shopping, and cultural exchange, more jobs and opportunities will be created to help villagers increase income," she said.
Over the years, she has led many local villagers to prosperity through hard work.
In 2006, Yang, who ran flower businesses in Shanghai, took a trip to the tropical island of Hainan, where she saw the potential for an out-of-season rose plantation.
"Thailand had already successfully cultivated roses of high quality at that time, so maybe we could plant roses in Hainan, which has a similar latitude," Yang recalled.
With the support of the local government, she started to cultivate roses there.
But the idea was hard to be turned into reality.
In the beginning, the rose seedlings did not fit well in the conditions of Hainan and withered in batches.
To find out the reasons, Yang traveled back and forth between Hainan and Shanghai, taking water and soil samples from the Sanya planting base to Shanghai for testing. She found that the soil there was too alkaline.
Yang then hired local college students, experienced farmers, and technicians from Shanghai to work together, and invested heavily to improve the topsoil condition.
After two years of unremitting efforts, she made it. The roses were successfully planted in Hainan.
In 2009, Yang rented about 184 hectares of land in the villages of Bohou and Liupan in Sanya as a planting base for large-scale rose plantations and for related cultural industry development.
ROSY PROSPECTS
In the past, Bohou Village was an enclosed and backward place. Typhoons would cause seawater to flow back into farmlands and turn the land into saline-alkali soil.
The poor harvest made it difficult for local villagers to increase their income. In 2012, the average per-capita annual income in Bohou was 5,200 yuan (about 822 U.S. dollars).
Owing to the development of the burgeoning rose industry, however, villagers get paid by working in rose gardens, and they receive dividends at the end of the year. Even for the farmers not planting roses, they can also get handsome payments by renting their land.
Li Yumei, a local villager in Bohou, once made ends meet by planting rice paddies. Her family could hardly save any money throughout the year.
Now, she and her husband both work in the rose base, taking charge of trimming, weeding, and irrigation. The company covers their meals and accommodation, and their living condition has improved greatly. Recently, they built a new house.
Yang and her colleagues also developed an international scenic spot featuring roses. In 2014, the Yalong Bay International Rose Valley opened to the public. In 2018, the number of tourists exceeded 1.5 million, and the tourism income exceeded 100 million yuan.
The construction of the rose valley also led locals to develop rose-featured homestays, restaurants, and a number of tropical fruit shops and convenience stores.
"Thanks to the development of the rose industry, our salary is going higher and our lives are better and better," Li Yumei said. ■
