In the middle of the winter, a village in Dashitou Town, Dunhua City, Northeast China's Jilin Province, is freezing cold. But for Liu Bo, his current happy life warms his heart like never before. 

"The family debt has been paid off this year," Liu said. "Thanks to the secretary of the village's Party branch, I earned nearly 100,000 yuan (US $14,512) from raising cattle and farming in 2019."

The secretary mentioned by Liu is Gu Fengjie, who is also director of the Sandaohezi Village Committee. Since taking the post of the village in 2010, Gu has led the locals to change the village into a well-known village of livestock farming and helped the villagers become rich.

Gu became the secretary of the Party branch of the village after succeeding her husband, who had worked in the village for 12 years. Her husband made all-out efforts to lead the locals to shake off poverty.

In May 2010, Gu's husband died of a sudden heart attack, leaving Gu in great grief. "People in the village all came to my home to bid farewell to my husband and comfort me, which moved me deeply," Gu said.

"We believe in you and you should become our new secretary," said the villagers to Gu, earnestly. 

"Since my fellow villagers trust me and have elected me to be the secretary, I will shoulder the responsibility of leading them to live a better life," Gu said.

Based on her experience of raising cattle, Gu chose cattle raising as the way forward for the development of the village's ecomomy. 

In 2011, Gu decided to guide the villagers to raise cattle, but the locals were hindered by the lack of start-up funds. A head of cattle costs nearly 10,000 yuan (US $1,451), which was a lot of money for many families in difficulty. 

To address the problem, Gu personally guaranteed more than two million yuan (US $290,242) in loans to the villagers. It was the money that supported the village to start its booming development.

Under Gu's leadership, the village also established cooperatives to develop egg industry, soybean and corn planting, and ginseng planting, generating millions of yuan in income for the villagers.

Given her efforts, Sandaohezi has become the first women's entrepreneurship demonstration village in Dunhua City.

In 2019, Gu arranged shuttle buses for villagers who work part-time for an engineering project. The village saw a total income of 2.09 million yuan (US $303,302.95) from villagers' working part-time, or an average increase of more than 10,000 yuan (US $1,451.21) per household.

As the local industries thrive, Gu has paid more attention to building up the village with good living environment. She improved the rural public infrastructure and increased efforts to help impoverished households create a tidy living space.

In 2020, Gu will work on a nursing home project for the elderly people in the village, providing home care and entertainment activities for the elderly.

"As the environment in the village is getting better, we will develop rural tourism soon," Gu said with confidence.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)