“I seek neither official position nor wealth, but only to do solid work for the people in earnest,” he often says.

On July 12, the Xinhua News Agency reporters visited Gupi Township.

“Our Party secretary is working at a construction site!” the reporters were told by some township officers who received them at the township offices. With their directions, the reporters found the Zhangtang Canal Project site.

Under the scorching sun, a sweaty old peasant in a straw hat, with mud all over him, came up to the reporters and stretched out his huge hands.

“Hello, welcome here!”

“Could you tell us where Secretary Chen is?” we asked.

“Ha ha! I am the Chen Shilu you are looking for!” he said with a laugh.

The reporters could hardly believe their eyes: Is this old man dressed in peasant’s clothes really Gupi Township’s Party secretary and vice chairman of the People's Political Consultative Conference of Suining County?

Chen invited the reporters to sit down and fetched them several bowls of plain boiled water.

“The excavation work for the Zhangtang Canal Project was scheduled to be completed in one month, but we’ve brought in two excavators to finish the job 20 days in advance. With the canal, the peasants working the fields nearby will be able to achieve stable yields even in drought or excessive rain. Now, isn’t that wonderful!” Chen said and laughed to his heart's content.

Yes, this old man is really Chen Shilu.

“I was born into a poor family. If it hadn’t been the Party, I wouldn’t have my today. I just work crazily to serve the Party and the people,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

On January 22, 2001, Suining County’s Party Committee appointed Chen Shilu Party Secretary of Gupi Township, a place in which many officials had found it difficult to work.

Chen got hold of a hot potato as soon as he took office. Teachers in the local schools reported to him that they hadn’t been paid for two-and-a half months.

“Tomorrow will be [lunar] New Year. How will these teachers spend it without money?” Chen said to himself.

Despite not having lunch, Chen got on a bus and hurried to the county seat and then went to Gaozuo Township. In the two places he scraped together 1.1 million yuan (US$133,066) by borrowing here, there and everywhere. The same night, he returned to Gupi and distributed the money to the needy teachers. After that, he immediately took his own salary and gave it to the five poorest families in the township.

On the following New Year’s Day, without stop, Chen visited over 60 impoverished families and families of revolutionary martyrs, servicemen and old cadres. Refusing to have meals at their homes, he just swallowed some pancakes and pickled mustard tubers with boiled water. On the third day of the New Year, Chen began the morning by studying the results of his interviews in the 38 villages of Gupi Township, and, in the afternoon, convened a meeting of leaders with the township’s Party committee, government and people’s congress to discuss how to improve the township government’s style of work, lighten the peasants’ financial burden and help them increase their income.

Apart from visiting 1,000 or so peasant families during his early days in office, Chen devised a questionnaire on 15 key local issues of restructuring agriculture, appraising the levels of diligence and honesty of local officials, developing the rural economy, identifying and finding ways to deal with peasant’s difficulties, discovering and meeting their needs, and so on. He distributed the questionnaires to 15,000 local families. The survey revealed that most villagers thought that village-level accounts were unclear. Learning this, Chen Shilu immediately organized four auditing teams, with their members selected from the township’s disciplinary inspection and finance departments, to audit the 38 villages. The auditing lasted over one month.

Jushan and Shanxi villages, with a total population of over 5,000 and with 4,500 mu (300 hectares) of cultivated land, had suffered from severe drought for many years. In the chilly early spring, Chen Shilu went to the two villages, and took the lead to dig canals and build an electric pumping station. Thanks to the completion of the project, that year saw a harvest of wheat and a per mu yield of rice topping 500 kg for the two villages.

When he assumed the office of a major township leader, Chen Silu set a motto for himself and his colleagues: Take a look at me! In the three townships where Chen has worked, all the local cadres and masses know Chen’s famous five negatives: No image on TV, no appearance in newspapers, no voice on the radio, no acceptance of invitations to dinner and no visit to villages by car. To curb local cadres’ habit of wining and dining, Chen once told a township assembly attended by thousands of people that anyone who reported a township cadre’s acceptance of an invitation to dine at a villager’s or another cadre’s home or a restaurant would be financially rewarded. Last year, the dining expenses for the 38 villages of Gupi Township was zero, which is a fact affirmed by the Party secretary and magistrate of Suining County through secret inquiries.

“As long as one discipline himself well, a sound social atmosphere can be readily created,” Chen Shilu often says.

A local regulation of Gupi prescribes that township cadres should ride a bike to villages to direct work and conduct inspection. Anyone can stop a public car ridden by township cadres who are not accompanying officials from higher authorities on an official trip to villages, and the informant will receive a reward of between 50 (US$6.05) and 100 yuan (US$12.1) for each offense reported. This provision caused a drop in township expenses for vehicle maintenance by 70 percent from the year before the regulation took effect. According to Dong Weijie, an official with the organization department of the township’s Party committee, Chen Shilu never goes to villages by car, yet each year he travels some 9,000 kilometers on village tours. He has never submitted an expense account for repairing his bicycle to the township’s finance department.

Chen has reimbursed numerous persons, but none of them is his family members.

“If the family get some money, Lao Chen would take it to help the poor or lend it for local projects,” Chen’s wife said.

Before he came to Gupi, Chen worked in another township in Suining County -- Gaozuo Township. Chen’s personal furniture, which he took to Gaozuo, hadn’t increased in the slightest when he left for Gupi. As he bid farewell to the township, Chen found that a hot & cold water dispenser, allocated to him by the township, had been loaded on the truck carrying his furniture. He refused it resolutely and had it offloaded. Local people spontaneously queued up beside the roads to see him off, according to Wang Shulou, the Party head of the Gaozuo Township, who had been Chen’s colleague for more than ten years.

This February, Chen Shilu was elected vice chairman of the People's Political Consultative Conference of Suining County. Hearing the news, many residents of the Gupi Township wrote or visited Party leaders of the county requesting to keep Chen Shilu in Gupi Township.

“If we have Chen Shilu, we get rich rapidly and lead peaceful lives!” they said.

(china.org.cn, translated by Chen Chao, August 23, 2002)