Family story: Pick 20 cucumbers and 15 tomatoes for Chairman Mao

Li Dexi, now 53, doesn’t take a pride in being a big-time vegetable farmer. “My father owned plastic greenhouses that had a higher yield than mine.”

Li Dexi’s father Li Molin, along with six farming families, established one of the first batch of cooperatives after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. As the earliest pioneers of Beijing’s “Vegetable Basket Project”, they also left Beijing a place name “Sijiqing.”

Researchers from China Agricultural University  came to the cooperative to exchange views on  agricultural technology. They are “giving the  ground an injection”.

On Mid Autumn Day in 1942, when the War of Resistance against Japan was in full swing, 31 year-old Li Molin came to Beijing from Baiyangdian on foot to make a living. It took him three days to reach Beijing, with only 5 kilograms of buckwheat biscuit as sustenance.

Ten years before coming to Beijing, Li Molin had been a coolie at various places, and he came to Beijing for a better situation. Later, he found a large family that planted vegetables in a greenhouse near Xibianmen, and started to learn greenhouse planting. In 1945, Li Molin took his wife to Beijing.

At that time, greenhouse workers were called “Bashi”, which means apprentice. “Bashi Masters” always withheld something from apprentices in case they overtook them, leaving them out of a job. However, Li Molin studied assiduously, and people praised him, saying that his heart was attached to the land.

At that time, there were few greenhouses in Beijing. The vegetable yield was low in winter, and prices were expensive. Consequently, ordinary residents could not afford them, and had to eat stored cabbages in winter. As residents could only eat cabbage throughout the winter, they cooked them in different ways to add some variety.