Create a land of hope with digital means

BIJIE, China, Nov. 15, 2023 /PRNewswire/ --  A news report by Guizhou Daily:

"This land is used to collect data for the Land Ecological Restoration System. After the data collection is completed, we will return the land to the villagers."

Huang Mingli, a student from Bijie Vocational and Technical College, was introducing the Land Ecological Restoration System to reporters. It's hard to imagine that she's already a legal person of a company, considering she's only 22-year-old.

In fact, she was no different from her peers in the past. She began to change the day she arrived at a place called "Digital Courtyard".

In 2019, the Central Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party selected Shuangyan Community, Zhuchang Town, Qixingguan District, Bijie City as a pilot community for rural revitalization, and appointed Pan Zhiyuan, a member of the China Zhi Gong Party, as the first secretary of the community to build a smart ecological breeding base. Coincidentally, Chen Dehui, as a member of the Central Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party, has certain experience in that field. So at the invitation of Pan Zhiyuan, Chen Dehui and his team came to Bijie to start the WuMeng Red Black Phenix project which requires brain power at a large scale.

"There are more than nine million registered residents with a median age of around 32 years, which is lower than the median age of Shenzhen's population." After learning about Bijie's advantage of human resources, an idea popped into Chen Dehui's mind.

In 2022, under the financial and intellectual support provided by the Central Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party and Tianhe District of Guangzhou City, he and his team established a "Digital Courtyard" at Luosi Village, Zhuchang Town, Qixingguan District, Bijie City, and began to cooperate with Bijie Vocational and Technical College.

Learning at "Digital Courtyard" is a new experience to the seniors of Bijie Vocational and Technical College. "When I went to college, I never thought one day I would become a 'farmer'. But later on, I found it quite meaningful," said Wang Yang, a student from Bijie Vocational and Technical College.

As the cooperation steadily continues, a new model of teaching and learning has gradually formed. Chen Dehui named it Apprentice of Metaverse which includes four steps: digital innovation education, social service training, digital assistance and digital intelligence contribution.

According to Chen Dehui, they stick to the idea of investing knowledge first and then capital. There are currently six subsidiaries founded by BiJie HengQu Information Technology Co., Ltd, having students from Bijie Vocational and Technical College as legal entities and shareholders, and operating four self-owned projects and six external projects. Simply by taking orders with a unit price from 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, the annual income of the software development part reaches more than one million yuan.

Now the "Digital Courtyard", with Apprentice of Metaverse program as its core, operates like a spring that never runs out of water, continuously delivering talents and technical services to Bijie's rural areas and eastern China.

"Youths of Bijie have strong desire to grow. I think they are crucial contributors and even leaders in the process of comprehensive digital upgrading and transformation of the society." Chen Dehui remembers the kids were nervous and insecure when they first arrived at "Digital Couryard". But now he feels something different.

When being asked about his feelings about the past four years in Bijie, he only answered with five simple words:"A land full of hope."