In the late '60s, when I was just a teenager, I went from Beijing to Liangjiahe, a small village in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, China, to work as a farmer, where I spent seven years. At that time, my fellow villagers and I lived in an earthen kiln and slept on an earthen kang, and the villagers lived in great poverty, often not eating a piece of meat for several months. I understand what the folks need most! Later, I became the secretary of the party branch of this village, leading the villagers to develop production. I understand what the people need. One of the things I look forward to is to let the villagers have a full meal of meat, and eat meat often. However, this wish was difficult to achieve at the time.

This year, I returned to this small village. Liangjiahe has built asphalt roads, villagers live in brick houses, use the Internet, the elderly enjoy basic pensions, villagers have medical insurance, children can receive a good education, and of course eating meat is no longer a problem. This has made me realize more deeply that the Chinese dream is the people's dream, and it must be combined with the Chinese people's yearning for a better life in order to succeed.

-- "Speech at the Washington State Government and U.S. Friendship Group Joint Welcome Banquet" (September 22, 2015)

Further reading:

More than 60 kilometers away from Yan'an, Shaanxi, at the foot of the mountains of the northern Shaanxi Plateau, there is a small village called Liangjiahe. At the beginning of 1969, the small village welcomed a special team: Xi Jinping, who was not yet 16 years old, together with 14 educated youths from Beijing Bayi Middle School, walked to Liangjiahe, where he began his seven-year queue cut.

Life in the yellow earth is hard. At that time, there was no electricity in Liangjiahe at night, and Xi Jinping lived in a cave and slept on an earthen kang with five other educated youths. There were a lot of fleas in the cave, and he was bitten all over his body, so he could only sprinkle pesticide powder under the kang mat to kill fleas. In the beginning, he didn't even know how to dig the land, plant corn, or cut wheat, so he could only follow along, and he did whatever the farmers in the village did. From farming to pulling coal, from damming to picking manure, Xi Jinping has hardly stopped and done almost any work in those years. Zhang Weipang, a villager, recalled, "Xi Jinping has endured hardships, just like us."

Life in the yellow earth is also very fulfilling. Liang Jiahe's life in the queue not only allowed Xi Jinping to exercise the perseverance of "picking one or two hundred catties of wheat and walking 10 miles of mountain roads for a long time without changing shoulders", and learned the skills of "rolling noodles, steaming dumplings, pickling sauerkraut, everything", but also gave him a stage to display his talents. In Liangjiahe, Xi Jinping "spared no effort in his work", was considered to be "knowledgeable, thoughtful", and a "good offspring who endured hardships and stood hard work", and gradually won the trust of the villagers, joined the group and the party successively, and also served as the secretary of the party branch of the brigade. Once, Xi Jinping saw in the newspaper that some villages in Sichuan were engaged in biogas, so he went to Sichuan at his own expense to learn from experience, and after returning to the village, he led the villagers to build the first biogas digester in northern Shaanxi, solving the difficulties of cooking and lighting the villagers. In order to increase the area of farmland, in the cold winter, he took the villagers to build a silt dam together, and each time he took the initiative to take the lead in standing barefoot in the ice water to dig ice and clean the dam foundation. In addition, Xi Jinping also helped build a mill, a tailor shop, and an iron industry in the village, improving everyone's lives.

In 1975, Xi Jinping left Liangjiahe Village to study at Tsinghua University. Before leaving, everyone lined up to see him off, and many people cried reluctantly. The villagers also gave him a frame with "a good secretary of the poor middle peasants" to express everyone's respect. On the eve of the Spring Festival in February 2015, Xi Jinping, who had become the leader of 1.3 billion Chinese, returned to Liangjiahe. Seeing the villagers who had lived and fought together, Xi Jinping said emotionally: "Back then, I was gone, but I left my heart here." ”

The president of a large country, standing in the center of the world stage, explained China to the world, did not use grand scenes to describe it, nor did he use any statistics, but chose a village that was most meaningful to him personally. Such a choice stems from Xi Jinping's unchanged "original intention", and the changes in Liangjiahe have also allowed the world to see China's development and changes.

Don't forget the original intention, you have to always. After 7 years of rural life and 7 years of sharing weal and woe, Xi Jinping has reaped growth and strengthened his faith. He recalled in an article: When I came to the yellow earth at the age of 15, I was confused and hesitant; When I left Loess at the age of 22, I already had a firm purpose in life and was full of confidence. From confusion to firmness, from hesitation to self-confidence, such a change lies in the fact that the northern Shaanxi Plateau has cultivated his unchanging belief: to do practical things for the people, to be with the people's hearts, to work together, to work together. His initial understanding of the word "people" came from Liang Jiahe and from the villagers who always haunted Xi Jinping's dreams.