Yuan Longping, 9 1 year old: "Son, I'm leaving. You must eat well!"
Can there be such an old man who devoted his life to the dream of "rice is as high as sorghum, ears are as long as brooms, and particles are as big as peanuts" in his youth?
In his eighties, he worked hard all his life. He should have enjoyed his family and supported himself, but he was still running around in dilapidated farmhouses and grassy fields. His busy back was deeply engraved in the rippling fields by sweat, and he bowed his back until the pendulum of life stopped.
He once wrote in his own article:
An old man determined to solve the problem of food and clothing for the whole world resolutely embarked on a lonely life with rice as his partner and millet as his friend. He once said that he was most sorry for his mother, and his failure to be filial became the biggest regret in this life. Now, he can finally rest assured to see her missing mother.
This man is Yuan Longping, a scientist who is known as the "father of hybrid rice in the world", a devotee who won the medal of the Republic, an approachable, amiable old man who never puts on airs.
"A grain of food can save a country or trip a country. You young people have never experienced famine. I don't know. When people starved to death by famine in the last century, everyone didn't have enough to eat. I have seen it with my own eyes. "
Every time I talk about that turbulent and hard time, Yuan Longping will cry with excitement. He experienced those days and knew that many people lost their lives because of lack of food.
His childhood was spent in the years when the Japanese aggressors bombed Chongqing, so whenever he recalls this history, he will be extremely nervous and excited. He knew that the law of the jungle, backward will be beaten, and he was determined to devote his life to the strength of China!
1 930 September1day, Yuan Longping was born in the delivery room of Peking Union Medical College Hospital. He is the second son of Ms. Hua Jing and Mr. Yuan Xinlie. He was ranked according to Yuan Jiapu's word generation, so his father Yuan Xinlie named him Longping.
Yuan Longping had a colorful childhood. His father is a typical intellectual, who often teaches Yuan Longping to read and practice calligraphy, and his mother is a kind and intelligent woman, who often tells children stories about Emperor Yan's hard work, growing grains and cowherd and weaver girl, laying a solid foundation for Yuan Longping's ideal.
Yuan Longping should have had a wonderful childhood, but the indiscriminate bombing of the invaders ended the dreams and daydreams of Yuan Longping teenagers. After the July 7th Incident, many people who didn't want to be conquered people compatriots began to flee to the rear area, and Yuan Longping followed his parents and sisters around.
This period of life, Yuan Longping once recalled:
In Chongqing, he saw with his own eyes that buildings and beautiful mountain cities turned into a sea of fire under the pouring of Japanese plane bombs, and unrecognizable buildings collapsed and bodies were everywhere. It was also from this time that Yuan Longping was determined to become a useful talent who shared weal and woe with the people of the motherland.
1948, the Yuan Longping family came to Nanjing. His early experiences and ideals made him resolutely apply for the Department of Agriculture of Chongqing Xianghui University at the age of 19, regardless of his father's opposition. Later, the school was renamed Southwest Agricultural College, and Yuan Longping opened the door of life by studying agriculture.
1953, Yuan Longping graduated from Southwest Agricultural College. After graduating from college, Yuan Longping responded to the call of the school and the country, and decided to go to the grassroots, the countryside, the hard places and the places most needed by the motherland. He resolutely filled in Anjiang Agricultural School, the most remote school in Hunan Province, and stayed here 16.
When Yuan Longping was young, he often compared himself to a rice seed. Since it is a seed, it will take root and sprout wherever it is sown.
Anjiang Agricultural School, located in the mountainous area of western Hunan, gradually instilled the flavor of crops into Yuan Longping. He always leads his students to do business in rice fields. Yuan Longping willingly stayed on the land. He loves the land and rubs his feet with dirt, which makes him feel very comfortable.
During his teaching, he experienced three years of natural disasters, resulting in three years of famine. The wind of hunger soon blew to Xiangxi, swept away the city of Qianyang, and also blew to Anjiang Agricultural School where Yuan Longping was located.
196 1 In Anjiang Agricultural School where Yuan Longping is located, teachers and students live on barely enough food every day, with no oil, water and non-staple food. Almost all teachers and students are hungry every day, including Yuan Longping.
In that famine era, Yuan Longping witnessed painful scenes: disease, hunger, pain and death. That solidified history has become the driving force for Yuan Longping's progress. Yuan Longping looked at the loneliness of the students' faces and the bodies lying on the ground, which made him really understand what food was for the first time.
From 1960, Yuan Longping began to take artificial hybridization experiment as its own scientific research topic, and began experiments on the half acre of land allocated to it by the school.
196 1 In July, Yuan Longping suddenly found a rice that stood out from the crowd during the inspection of his own rice. This ear of rice is handsome and tall, as big as his palm. For Yuan Longping, who was at a loss at that time, this discovery was tantamount to a long drought, and it was this accidental discovery that finally affected his life.
He carefully collected 170 rice seeds produced by this rice plant and planted them in clay pot culture soil the next year, trying to cultivate more rice with full ears, but the result of this experiment disappointed him. The young prospects with obvious advantages have actually reversed and obviously failed.
It was from this experiment that Yuan Longping realized for the first time that this rice plant was probably a natural hybrid rice.
Inspiration began to flash in his mind. If hybrid rice can be cultivated artificially, it will be great, rice production will be greatly increased, and the problem of food and clothing for human beings will be solved. The idea of using this hybrid advantage to increase rice yield germinated in his mind.
However, his view is contrary to the traditional classical genetic view. When Yuan Longping put forward this plan, he was opposed and even ridiculed by many authoritative scholars, and some even said that he was ignorant.
However, in the midst of doubts, Yuan Longping did not give up his insistence and still insisted on rice hybridization as his scientific research goal.
1in the early spring of 962, the production team leader of Yuan Longping always worried about getting rid of hunger and increasing food. His unintentional words touched Yuan Longping greatly. He said:
These words moved Yuan Longping very much. His idyllic childhood dreams are intertwined with the smoke of war that has gone away. Coupled with the expectations of the Chinese people, Yuan Longping was determined to solve the problem of food and clothing for everyone from the root, so he also accelerated the research.
Soon, he learned from a magazine that genetics had made a major breakthrough in theory. He was deeply attracted by Mendel and Morgan's genetic theory, and he decided to use their theory to explore in scientific experiments.
Although the summer in the south is scorching, it is also the season of rice flowering. So Yuan Longping stood on his waist all day and identified the male sterile lines in the rice fields one by one. The intensity and difficulty of this kind of work can be imagined.
In this way, until 1965, Yuan Longping and his wife Deng Zhe searched in the rice fields of Anjiang Agricultural School. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, they have investigated more than 6.5438+0.4 million flowering rice ears and found 6 male sterile plants. When they mature, they harvest the seeds of the first generation of male sterile plants. Since then, he has also tied his fate to the fate of food.
In the days to come, he has regarded Rice as his own son. The first thing after eating every day is to visit the rice fields, and I can't bear to leave every time.
Two years later, May 19 was the low point of rice research in Yuan Longping. Seeing that our experiment is about to achieve certain results, a natural and man-made disaster has brought an unprecedented blow to Yuan Longping.
Yuan Longping, who cares about the experimental field every day, hurried to the experimental field on his bicycle after breakfast, but after midnight, a terrible scene happened:
It turned out that a sudden storm destroyed the experimental field in Yuan Longping last night. Actually, it's not that simple. Four days later, Yuan Longping found several beads of seedlings in a well, which also confirmed that someone was deliberately destroying his experimental field. This is the "May 18th" grain destruction case that shocked Qianyang area.
Seeing this, this once strong man can no longer control his emotions, his eyes are full of tears, and his heart is bleeding at the moment. Because of this, his plan to train only the department instead of the department has been delayed for many years.
He fought back his grief and looked for seedlings for the rest of his life. He stumbled for a long time and finally found five experimental seedlings half buried in a pool of mud. Fortunately for him, he found hope again. He carefully picked up these residual seedlings with both hands, held them in his arms and took them home.
After returning home, his colleagues who worked with him not only did not sympathize with his experience, but also maliciously slandered him, saying that he pulled out his own seedlings because he was afraid that his experiment would not succeed.
Even so, Yuan Longping didn't lose heart. His body may be born with a resistance to setbacks and failures and will not give up what he thinks is right easily.
In order to speed up his cultivation experiment, he went to Hainan with his team. Hainan has unique climate and terrain conditions, so it is called "a paradise for breeders".
At the same time, the harsh living environment in this place can not be ignored. Most areas are still thatched cottages. No matter day or night, the sky is as hot as a dome, and Yuan Longping and others were bitten by swarms of mosquitoes and got black and blue, groaning.
There is a jingle in Hainan Island:
In order to prevent mosquito bites, Yuan Longping sometimes has to wrap himself up with a film covering the seedlings. But in that extremely hot environment, coupled with the airtight film, Yuan Longping was directly covered with hot sores several times.
This is not the most serious. The most serious is 1970, a strong earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in Eshan County, Yunnan Province, and Yuanjiang County, where Yuan Longping is located, was also affected by the earthquake. When the earthquake just happened, Yuan Longping's first thought was not to leave immediately to save his life, but to grab the seeds quickly, because these seeds were all his.
Although the land in this place is still shaking and aftershocks are frequent, Yuan Longping did not leave this place, because the rice just sprouted at that time, and choosing to leave at this time means giving up, so all previous efforts were in vain.
Later, one thing sounded the alarm for Yuan Longping, that is, in 1970, Yuan Longping learned that Professor Nagato of Ryukyu University had bred a sterile line, but the advantages of the hybrid combination were not obvious, so it was not put into production.
But even so, Yuan Longping also felt the seriousness of the situation, and his sense of urgency was even stronger. He is determined to seize the commanding heights of the world in the field of hybrid rice, surpass Japan and the United States and win glory for the motherland.
So he began to race against time to find wild rice. In the end, his persistence was not in vain. 1October 23rd, 1970 165438+ Two apprentices of Yuan Longping discovered a wild male sterile plant in a swamp. News came that Yuan Longping, who was in Beijing at that time, took the train back to Yunnan overnight.
Since then, Yuan Longping led his disciples to carry out thousands of experiments in Yunnan, and experienced failures and successes. Finally, God paid off. 1974, Yuan Longping finally succeeded in cultivating a strong and superior combination "Nanyou No.2" with its own inspiration, and successfully planted it that year.
You know, at that time, the average yield of ordinary rice seeds could only reach about 200 kilograms, while the average yield of Nanyou No.2 rice seeds transformed in Yuan Longping could reach more than 500 kilograms.
But while harvesting joy, new problems have emerged. The current situation of low seed production, less than six kilograms per mu, makes Yuan Longping laughed at by people around him. Many outside scientists began to pour cold water on Yuan Longping's experimental results.
Life itself is a carrier under pressure. If we turn the bumpy road ahead into motivation, we will move towards success and glory. Driven by this pressure, Yuan Longping successfully cracked the secret of low seed production, and the yield per mu of seed production increased from 5.5 kg to 50 kg, even reaching 100 kg.
After the success of tackling key problems, Yuan Longping and his assistants started the large-scale popularization of hybrid rice in China with their scientific practice and hard-working wisdom. 1976, China began to popularize hybrid rice. By 1998, nearly half of the paddy fields in China had used the new varieties developed by Yuan Longping's team.
Therefore, he is also known as the father of global hybrid rice, and his hybrid rice is also known as "Oriental magic rice".
But he didn't stop there. He is not satisfied with his present achievements, because his childhood dream of enjoying the cool under the grass and his dream of covering the whole world with hybrid rice have not yet come true.
It is this insatiable "insatiable heart" that makes Yuan Longping never stop. He studied paddy fields, deserts, saline-alkali land and sea rice, and went abroad at the same time, so that thousands of people in Qian Qian could have a full meal.
In the past, when cultivating seeds, in cold weather, he could only tie the seeds to his body and use his body temperature to accelerate the germination of rice. After years of artificial germination, Yuan Longping had problems with his lumbar spine, but he persisted.
Because of his persistence, the problem of food and clothing for many people in the world has been solved. Although many people in the world have never seen Yuan Longping, they all affectionately call Yuan Longping "Dad".
He was busy in the field day after day, so he missed his mother's dying moment. At the same time, he seldom spends time with his wife and children.
Yuan Longping can really be called an unparalleled master of Chinese studies. In today's materialistic society, he lives in a corner with a gentleman's heart and is indifferent to his own ambitions.
There was a documentary about the room where Yuan Longping lived. In his room, most cats are old furniture from decades ago, and most of the clothes they wear are bought from street stalls, but only a few tens of dollars.
Yuan Longping likes to indulge in his rice career and has no distractions outside of work. Lighting the stage will only make him more embarrassed. He doesn't like to shine on the world stage, and he likes to be the one who works silently behind his back.
There are still some misleading rumors about such a man who is indifferent to fame and fortune on the Internet. A few years ago, Yuan Lao was attacked by the internet because he bought a mobile phone. There are also rumors that he is worth hundreds of billions and is the richest man in Hunan, and so on. Have you touched the conscience of those who said these things? It's really chilling
In today's world, there are not a few people who are indifferent to fame and fortune like Yuan Lao. He is an example for us to learn from. He taught us how to be a truly indomitable China people with his own actions, and we should also inherit Yuan Lao's wishes and devote ourselves to the great cause of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
What we should do now is not to waste a grain.
Pay tribute to Yuan Lao! May Yuan Lao go all the way!