From farmer to Party delegate
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Ding Yousheng before the Hall of the People in Beijing during the National Congress of the Communist Party of China. |
As a veteran Party member, Ding Yousheng has a disability in his right leg as the aftermath of infantile paralysis in childhood. Fortunately, he is optimistic in nature and never feels discouraged by the disease. When he graduated from a Chinese medicine vocational school in 1983, he opened the first private clinic in Xinyu City, southwest China's Jiangxi Province, to provide health care services for over 3,000 local people.
To help his fellow villagers shrug off poverty and live a better life, in 1995, Ding made a deal with the village authority for a fruit farm that had run at loss for years. After years of hard work, the fruit farm began to turn a profit and Ding decided to recruit all the 80-plus surplus labors in his village. Of them, more than 10 were disabled people. Moreover, in the years that followed, Ding set up a clinic to treat patients suffering from mental illnesses and founded a factory with others to handle construction materials.
"Thanks to the Party's leadership, farmers are living a life far better than before. I was very happy that my fellow villagers said their affluence was partly attributed to me," Ding said.
Due to Ding's outstanding contributions to the village, all Party members nominated him as a preliminary candidate for Party delegate in the village's Party committee conference and he later became the only farmer delegate from Jiangxi to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which took place in October 2007.
Ding has a specially designed business card. On the front, characters in large font are printed to remind people of his Party congress delegate capacity, while on the back, there are two close-up pictures of the tangerines and pears produced in Ding's fruit farm. "I never miss a chance to advertise our organic fruit farm," laughed Ding heartily.
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