A Beam of Light

At three in the morning, a white light squeezed in from the gap between heaven and earth.

Old and young men and women of Beigou Village entered the greenhouses one after another. Strong big hands pulled spray cans, and the fine water mist hit the small yellow flowers that had just bloomed; fingers wrapped in white tape manipulated shears dexterously to remove all the excess branches. This is the second crop of tomatoes that are about to bear fruit. Farmers plant beans on the south side of the tomatoes, which can not only harvest more beans and earn more money, but also the wide bean leaves can shade the ripening tomatoes to ensure that the tomatoes on the market do not have “yellow buttocks”.

There are 770 households with more than 3,000 people in Beigou Village, Bahao Township, Yushu City. The planting area of vegetables in greenhouses and mulched cultivation accounts for 42% of the total agrarian land, and each household has an average of 1.5 greenhouses. In the 23rd greenhouse from south to north, 58-year-old Yan Guifu was carefully "walking a branch" for tomatoes with two fingers. Only two fingers of his right hand were left due to an accident.

In the 24th greenhouse, Yan Guifu's wife tilted her head and was laboriously picking tomatoes. "I have the illness of swollen neck (iodine deficiency disorders). I had an operation sometime ago, and then it grew again." Yan Guifu's wife told reporters that she and Yan Guifu both had "little problems" and needed to take medicine all the year round.

One handicapped and one sick, they must support their mentally ill son and two school-going grandsons. It can be imagined what life was like for them. Yan Guifu was once in a poor household in the village and was not lifted out of poverty until 2017.

"We paid off out debts a long time ago. Now we have a motorcycle, a four-wheelers, and all kinds of carts at home, and we still have a net income of over 200,000 yuan left a year..." Speaking of the present day, Yan Guifu's voice showed confidence and pride.

A four-wheeler was parked steadily in front of the opposite greenhouse. Che Yanwei and his wife got into the greenhouse with plastic buckets. After a while, the vegetables in the small buckets were poured into a big basket, which was loaded onto the four-wheeler. Che Yanwei started the four-wheeler and was ready to send the tomatoes to the purchase point.

"I can sell them for more than 3,000 yuan today, I guess." Che Yanwei had three greenhouses. He grew only one crop of tomatoes in one of the greenhouses, and he had two crops in the other two greenhouses a year, planting beans in the first half of the year and tomatoes in the second half. His annual income was somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan.

The ethos of "Loath to lag behind" had been formed in Beigou Village. In the village, the elderly in their 70s would do odd jobs in the greenhouse as long as they had agile legs and feet. The income from odd jobs was nearly 30,000 yuan a year. On the way, some village cadres told reporters that in Xujiapozi Village alone, there were no less than 20 farmer households each with bank deposits of 2 million yuan. The greenhouse and mulch economy had really enriched farmers in Beigou Village.