Top: Photo provided by Xiao Shiying shows Xiao and his wife Zhang Mulan posing for a photo with wild tea plants in southwest China's Yunnan Province in 1954. Bottom: Photo taken on May 27, 2019 by Xue Dongmei shows Xiao (2nd L) giving a lesson to students at a modern ecological organic tea garden in Puer City of Yunnan. In the 1950s, most of the tea plants in Puer were wild and low-yield breed. Xiao and his wife Zhang were two of the first batch of college students trained after the founding of the People's Republic of China. For decades, they carried out experiments in Yunnan on tea seedling cultivation, tea plant cuttage and grafting, which effectively solved the problem of tea seedling supply in large-scale planting. Today, the land utilization rate and the yield of tea in Puer have been greatly increased, helping tea farmers boost their income. In 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded, the Chinese people faced a devastated country that needed to be rebuilt from scratch after decades of warfare and chaos. After decades of unremitting endeavors and dedication by the Chinese people, China has grown to be the world's second largest economy. In 1952, China's GDP was 30 billion U.S. dollars, while in 2018, its GDP reached 13.61 trillion U.S. dollars, an increase of 452.6 times. A group of combo photos give you a glimpse of what Chinese people did decades ago and what they do right now. Undoubtedly, people from all walks of life in China with hard work and wisdom have made contributions to the country's development. (Xinhua)
