The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the All-China Youth Federation has awarded 30 young people the 27th China Youth May Fourth Medal.
The decision is part of the campaign to fully study and implement the guiding principles of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and to give full play to the exemplary role of exceptional youth. The medal aims to inspire young people to embark on the new journey of building China into a modern socialist country through endless determination and fighting spirit. Among those who received the award was Yu Xiaolong, an outstanding student of Hunan Open University.
“Prince Lily,” the director of Yinjiajie Ecological Agricultural Development Company.
Yu has a grade three physical disability, but this has not stopped him from excelling at the Hunan Branch of the Open University of China (OUC). In the fall of 2018, he enrolled in the “Rural College Student Cultivation Programme” and studied Agricultural Economic Management as a junior college student. He graduated in 2021. Then, in the fall of 2021, Yu moved up to undergraduate studies in the same programme, majoring in Administrative Management. As an undergraduate student at OUC, Yu also serves as the general manager of Yinjiajie Ecological Agriculture Development Company in Longshan County and is known as “Prince Lily” among locals.
In spite of his physical disability, Yu has returned to his hometown and started up a Specialized Farmers’ Co-operative, with a focus on the lily cultivation industry. In doing so, he has led 93 impoverished households and 117 disabled farmers to increase their income through employment. He has also committed himself to charity projects, such as constructing roads for the welfare of local people, donating materials to fight against the pandemic, helping seniors who live alone, fighting floods, providing relief, and caring for children left-behind in the village. In short, he lives up to the name “great youth of the new era”.
By Hunan Open University