After a honeymoon lasting more than ten days, Zhou Yi returned to Shaohua with his wife and immediately threw himself back into the city's battle against poverty.
Within a single week, Zhang Xianming, director of the Investment Promotion Bureau, was summoned by Mayor Zhou three times to report on the progress of the investments.
This was one of Mayor Zhou's chief concerns. It involved not only establishing poverty alleviation bases in the townships, but also developing and expanding Shaohua City's pillar industries.
Fighting poverty required money. Besides asking the national government and the Province for earmarked funding, Shaohua had to stand on its own feet and find ways to increase its fiscal revenue. It could not survive on handouts alone.
So at least half of the more than two billion yuan in investment they had secured went into the city's pillar industries, including automobiles, mining, and local specialty products.
What surprised Mayor Zhou was that Hong Dawei, head of the Poverty Alleviation Office, seemed to have become a different man lately. He personally led his staff into villages across the countryside to guide the construction of poverty alleviation bases. Apparently, he had not been home in over a month.
When he came to the Municipal Government offices to report on his work, goodness, he had lost at least twenty pounds and was tanned all over. It was clear that he really had been working himself to the bone.
Fine. For that alone, I'll spare you for now...
"Mayor, this month I've mainly been visiting six townships in Zhiyuan County. Laifeng Township and Taiping Township have made the fastest progress on their poverty alleviation bases. Following your instructions, they've adopted a development model combining companies, bases, and farming households. They plan to expand tea cultivation vigorously and are encouraging villagers to