Harvesting profits from leadership

Her facility has reached an agreement with Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group, which will help send more students from across the nation her way.

Over the years, Qi has carried out more than 200 tours that attracted over 100,000 visitors.

The booming operation has helped many of her fellow villagers to increase their incomes, as they get to work at Qi's operations or start up homestay businesses, or have their farm produce sold to cater to the needs of travelers from afar.

To date, her learning-tour business has provided employment for more than 90 villagers who used to struggle to keep their heads afloat by solely living off the land.

In 2022, four women followed Qi's lead in developing rural homestays, with each household seeing an income increase of more than 20,000 yuan ($2,753) that year.

Seeing the profitability, more households have renovated their homes to join in the cause of developing rural tourism, Qi says.

She says she takes pride in that many villagers around her now seem very motivated about the future.

Her name Xiaojing has even evolved into an epithet for enterprising young people committing themselves to rural vitalization, leading locals to prosperity.

Under her influence, more college students have returned to their rural hometowns in Hinggan League.

Her contribution to improving living conditions in her rural hometown has also won her multiple national awards, including the title of March 8 Red-Banner Holder in 2020 — one of the nation's highest honors for women for their outstanding work.

The Hinggan League initiated a plan in 2022 to cultivate more industry-leading talent like Qi. The plan has trained more than 1,200 talents and helped 38,000 farming and herding households increase their annual income by 4,900 yuan per household by the end of 2023. The cumulative operating income reached 358 million yuan.