Deceased Couple in Battle Against Poverty Alleviation Inspire More People

On December 16, 2018, the couple Wu Yingpu and Fan Zhenzi, who worked in the frontline of the battle against poverty, died at age 28 and 23 in a car accident. The stories of their helping impoverished families get rid of poverty have encouraged their former colleagues in poverty alleviation to redouble their efforts.

Wu Yingpu was the Major Secretary of Yayang Village, Fuyuan Town of Xiushui County in East China's Jiangxi Province. The village has 29 extremely poor households with 261 people. Fan Zhenzi was a poverty-alleviation official of Dachun Town. At the end of 2017, Wu and Fan fell in love at first sight and married on November 7, 2018.

They respectively worked in Fuyuan Town and Dachun Town which are 126 kilometers apart. Therefore, they didn't have much time to be with each other.

As poverty-alleviation officials at grassroots level, Wu and Fan cared whole-heartedly about villagers.

Wu visited all 59 poor households and more than 50 percent of the villagers in the first month after he arrived at the village. At the home of Gu Helin he found that Gu's bedclothes were worn-out and purchased new ones for him. On the second day, Wu left 50 yuan (US $7.07) for Gu, and then went to visit another household.

Wu introduced e-commerce for poverty alleviation. He organized beekeepers to better pack honey products for online sale. He applied for 7.67 hectares of land for silkworm breeding.

Jiang Xiuqin of Dachun Town, 38, lost her husband in a car accident in 2017. Jiang and her three children were grieving. After learning about her situation, Fan began to visit the woman and her family members. She used her own low income every month to support Jiang and help her children go to school. "Fan's assistance to me made me have courage to face my life," Jiang cried.

Fan's father was very sad about his daughter's death. Also grieving for her was You Chengzi, 75, a lonely elderly man in the town. "She was just like my granddaughter. Her death breaks my heart," he said. 

Since You had no source of income, Fan made a plan for him to raise chicken and called on her relatives and friends to buy the chicken and also promoted his business in her WeChat Moments.

Fan's colleague Cheng Ling recalled that before Fan died she estimated that if You's 50 chicken sold out, he would increase his income by more than 10,000 yuan (US $1,413.55) in 2018.

According to the statistics of the poverty alleviation and migration office of Xiushui County, so far more than 60,000 people have escaped poverty. The poverty rate has dropped to 5.4 percent.

In Yayang Village, 261 impoverished people now have safe drinking water, 10 rural construction sites have been completed and 8.6 kilometers of road have been built.

Although Wu and Fan passed away, the efforts in poverty alleviation will never stop. "Wu and Fan are our role models. We will continue to push forward the poverty alleviation cause that Wu and Fan were unable to complete," said Huang Zelin, a poverty alleviation official born in the 1990s.

(Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph /Translated and edited by Women of China)