Huang Wenxiu (right) is remembered for making a difference in the lives of impoverished villagers through her work. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

In heavy rains around midnight of June 16, 2019, on a winding and slippery highway in South China’s mountains, Huang Wenxiu was in high spirits as she released a video onto social media that showed lightning, thunder and water covering roads outside her car. 

“Watch out! Be careful!” Some of her colleagues warned the young woman, while others asked her to quit the trip and stay in a safe place. The mountains and stones were enveloped in darkness and the road was so bumpy that the car struggled to navigate across its surface.

Huang was traveling about 200 kilometers from her home to Baini village in Leye county in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region’s Baise city. 

The night before she drove into the rain, her father Huang Zhongjie, who was recovering from liver-cancer surgery, noticed the bad weather and urged her to stay until the next morning. But she insisted: “That’s why I have to go now. The village could be flooded tonight.”

The village of Baini was one of the worst poverty-stricken ones in the area. All 472 households are separately located in 11 narrow grounds in deep mountains with adverse conditions. 

When Huang Wenxiu volunteered to suspend her post at Baise municipal publicity department to work in the village in March 2018 and became its Party leader, 103 households were rated as extremely poor with no sufficient food and clothing, housing, schooling and medical care access.

Since China’s leadership announced its goal of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society by eliminating absolute poverty in remote and rural areas in December 2012, the nation had been mobilized to join the arduous task. Volunteers at Party and government departments at all levels were selected to station themselves in each poverty-stricken village to help locals.

Huang was among a group of more than 2.7 million young people who had been working shoulder to shoulder with villagers in impoverished areas since 2012. 

That night, she was concerned with the shabby houses of some villagers and unsatisfactory floodwater channels in and around the village set in mountains, and she wanted to be right there with the people whose attitude toward her had changed so much. 

She had earlier graduated with a master’s degree from a Beijing university. Instead of seeking a career in the capital, she decided to work in Baise, her hometown. 

Her own family had suffered from poverty as well. A bed and a “sofa” made of tires and planks were once all the furniture in her house in De’ai village in Baise’s Tianyang county. Her elder sister Huang Aijuan said the young graduate counted on a government subsidy for her studies in high school and university. 

“She always said she wanted to help develop her hometown and bring hope to more people,” her sister said. In her own document, Huang Wenxiu once wrote: “One has to live an interesting live, one of value, and not for the self alone.”

However, much to her surprise, many poor villagers gave her the cold shoulder.

To figure out solutions to help the poor families, she needed to walk up the mountain every day, visiting each household who lived apart to learn more about them. But some villagers refused to talk and some even refused to let her in.

Some said: “We have been poor for so many years. Is it possible to change?” And others said: “Is she really coming to help? Maybe she just needs some grassroots experiences to get a promotion.”

After spending some time without success, Huang approached Liang Jiannian, a former Party chief of the village, for help. Liang told her to make friends first. “If they know you, they will accept you.”

Huang Zhongjie is moved to tears as his daughter is honored. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

Soon villagers found the woman not retreating but returning time and again. Her family visits, field inspections and group discussions busied herself seven days a week. 

Then she entered villagers’ homes and occasionally cleaned their yards or washed vegetables with them. If they were not at home, she would go to the farmlands to help them plant seeds and pick fruit. She even learned the local dialect to chat with them.

In her diary, she noted: “Every day is real hard work, but feels really happy.”

Huang Bangxuan, from one of the poor families, did not open the door for her at first. Huang Wenxiu visited his house three times to tell him that “an allowance can only meet basic living needs but to shake off poverty, we should use our own hands”. She then helped him get a subsidy of 7,000 yuan (US$1,023) to begin his own business of growing fruit.

In months, she was leading dozens of Party members and quick-minded villagers in planting special oranges, cash crops and woods. She also invited agricultural experts in to have free training classes and helped sell their fruits and crops online from the e-commerce stations she helped build in the village.

Wei Naiqing, 53, also from a poor family, said the woman Party leader helped him to plant tea oil trees on a discounted loan. “She was like my daughter.”

With Huang’s help, a mother of four children took a bank loan and learned to raise silkworms. After some considerable persuasion, another villager, a man who used to be addicted to alcohol, made a fortune by planting fruit trees.

Huang promoted the development of agriculture based on firs, oranges, star anise and loquats. She invited experts to tell the villagers about improving production and quality, and contacted customers online and offline to boost local sales. 

During her stint, the area growing oranges increased from 33 hectares to 133 hectares. Buyers from the nearby provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou sent trucks to the village. An e-commerce service station was also opened. The incomes of poor families growing oranges increased by 2,500 yuan annually on average.

In another diary entry, she wrote: “Whoever works for poverty alleviation should be as proud as soldiers during wartime.”

In half a year, the village won a city honor for local construction; in about a year, 418 villagers in 88 of the 103 poor households were lifted above the poverty line.

A year on, the mileage of her car added 25,000 kilometers, the length of the Red Army’s Long March in the 1930s. A note she sent to friends read “The journey is a Long March in my heart” and “Happy one-year anniversary for my village stationing”.

But her fruitful march ended in downpours and floods in the early hours of June 17. At around 1 am, social media contact with her was lost. By late afternoon, her body was confirmed in the car washed into a valley by rain-triggered flash flood. 

Villagers in Baini mourned her death, lamenting their loss of a good daughter, a caring sister and a capable leader. Her demise drew wide attention among netizens as well, some finding her devotion to the well-being of others inspiring. 

And the villagers carried on. All the poor households said farewell to poverty by the end of 2020 thanks to joint efforts of the government, the society and the villagers themselves.

“She achieved the goal of poverty relief in the poor village,” Qin Weifeng, deputy director of the publicity department of Baise said after her death. “We call her a role model because she devoted herself to the battle against poverty and the improvement of people’s livelihoods.”

In October 2020, an opera titled On the Way to Alleviate Poverty, based on Huang’s story, was presented at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. In February, her images and voices appeared in documentaries on poverty relief.

Huang was one of those cited by President Xi Jinping on Feb 25 when a grand gathering marked the nation’s victory over poverty, with medals, certificates and plaques presented to role models in China’s poverty alleviation fight. 

Sitting in the audience with a red flower on his breast was her father Huang Zhongjie, who was seen on live TV wiping his eyes. “She did something for the Party’s undertaking. I feel proud for her,” he said earlier.

President Xi also noted that over the past eight years, more than 1,800 people helping in the poverty relief work sacrificed their lives.

Xinhua, Deng Zhangyu, Shi Ruipeng and Zhang Li contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at chenmeiling@chinadaily.com.cn