Yu Xiaolan was born in a cadre's family in Kaiyuan City of southwest China's Yunnan Province. In 1989, with the hope of starting a new life, she gave up a formal job in Kaiyuan City and left the comfortable city life and her parents, and followed her husband Shan Gong, a demobilized soldier to come to Nancuijiayao, an impoverished village in Yuoyu County.

Yu Xiaolan did not break down in the adverse environment and poor living conditions. She and her husband contracted 30 mu (5 acres) of deserted flood land in front of their house and 4,000 mu (659 acres) of barren hills to the south of their village and planned to plant an economic forest of fruit trees. The plan would not only improve their living condition but also green the hills. Making up their minds, they began to cut into hills, blast rocks, make cofferdam and prepare the soil for sowing. During the hard times of greening the hills, they got up early in the morning and came back late in the evening. They ate steamed bread, potatoes and instant noodles to stave off hunger at noon. They had to carry water from the foot of the hills to the top dozens of times a day in order to irrigate the saplings.

With the support and assistance of Party and government departments, 2,500 mu of the 10,000 mu (1,647 acres) of contracted barren hills was under effective management. Currently they have planted 100,000 fruit trees, 200,000 apricot trees and 300,000 sallow thorn bushes.

However, ambitious Yu is not satisfied with the current state of affairs. She has decided to link forestation with developing animal husbandry. She plans to open a large-scale grain processing factory and set up a forestry farm specializing in financially viable forest, a ranch specializing in raising cows and lambs so as to find a way for the impoverished peasants in the mountainous and rural area of Nancuijiayao village and surrounding areas to shake off poverty and attain prosperity.

(China.org.cn translated by Wang Qian, November 14, 2002)