Through her engagement in grassroots work, Mao Zhenfang, deputy Party secretary of a village in Southwest China’s Sichuan province, has earnestly served her fellow villagers over the years. 

Mao, also a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), is proud of her hometown – Yuangen village, Liziping Yi ethnic township, Ya’an city in Sichuan,– which is located in the Liziping National Nature Reserve. The reserve is an ecological defense in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and is home to the country's first wild base for giant pandas. The protection of this unique ecological treasure has been a thought-provoking issue for Mao in recent years.

The implementation of the Grain for Green Program in recent years has yielded significant ecological and social benefits. However, the economic benefits were inadequate while management and protection costs have continued to rise. After rounds of visits to villagers and experts, Mao realized it was urgent to change the village’s traditional production model, which was heavily dependent on ecological resources.

Mao suggested establishing a long-term compensation mechanism for returning farmland to forest to the NPC’s annual session in 2021. The National Forestry and Grassland Administration highly valued her suggestion and issued a response, stating that the related departments will ramp up efforts to promote both ecological and economic benefits.

Ecological protection has boosted tourism in Yuangen village, with crowds of people  flocking to tourist destinations there. More and more villagers are serving as tour guides or become farmstay owners, moving towards a better life.

Thanks to Mao’s suggestion, the cultivation of mountain cabbages, a new crop with high yields, has become a pillar business for local people. Offseason growing of the cabbages has not only increased villagers’ incomes, but also made good use of the fallow winter fields to produce additional benefits.

Mao received a special response from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in August 2022, after she submitted a motion on advancing the development of the Ya’an green organic agricultural demonstration zone to the fifth session of the 13th NPC. The reply said that the ministry will introduce policies to support rural vitalization and agricultural modernization in Ya’an.

"With timely response to my suggestions, life is full of hope,” Mao said with excitement.

The NPC deputy has also impressed  villagers with a more beautiful and comfortable living environment. There used to be no lights on the village roads and night life remained inconvenient for years. Mao made great efforts to raise funds to install solar-powered street lights, which lit up the village in 2019.

With the road lights lighting up villagers’ hearts, Mao’s sense of mission as an NPC deputy grows stronger. She said she will continue to take root at the village and voice the thoughts and expectations of the local people, and make new painstaking efforts to shine for their common prosperity and the country’s rural vitalization.