The “great trees” of the village

As scheduled, Village Party Cell Secretary Lỳ Xá Lòng led us to the house located in a prime position right in the middle of the village. This is the house of Sừng Sừng Khai, a reputable person and also one of the “great trees” of the village.

Khai said that many years ago, A Pa Chải was a poor and backward village due to its geographical location in the “deep forest, high mountains,” isolated on all sides and affected by opium. There were many addicts in the village. His mother was the oldest addict in the village. He himself also spent 4 years by the “opium lamp.”

It was not until the 2000s, when border guards came to campaign for the eradication of opium, listening to the soldiers’ encouragement, that Khai was determined to quit. He took his mother to the border guard station to ask for help with detoxification, while he detoxed himself at home. For several months, tying his hands and feet, running down to the stream and up to the forest to cut off the cravings, he finally succeeded.

Successful in detoxification, Khai switched to campaigning for the villagers. For those he could not persuade, he proposed to the border guard station to gather them for concentrated detoxification. It took several years for A Pa Chải to be free of addicts.

Khai was then promoted to further his studies. From here, the leadership quality in his blood had more conditions to be revealed. Decades of “following the revolution,” from working as a self-defense militia member to Chairman of Sín Thầu commune, Chairman of the People’s Committee then Party Committee Secretary of Leng Su Sìn commune, 4 years ago (in 2021), Khai retired according to regulations. In his house, the walls are covered with his certificates of merit.

In A Pa Chải village, there is also Lỳ Xuyến Phù, nearly 70 years old this year, who has spent his whole life caring for, protecting, and preserving the border milestones. Being one of the first Hà Nhì teenagers to follow his parents to Sín Thầu to establish the village, almost his entire life has been attached to this land, so his life is tightly bound to forestry; long trips to the forest are very normal for Phù. Therefore, for many years, Phù has still regularly participated with border guard officers and soldiers in patrolling and protecting border milestones.

In his family’s earthen walled house, Phù confided: I consider the milestone as my “soulmate.” Every time I go up there, I clear the obscuring weeds and check if the milestone is intact. There is no water around the boundary marker, so I have to cut banana trees and use banana sheaths to clean around the milestone. Going up there, standing solemnly to salute the milestone, I feel very proud.

After the trips, Phù also actively goes to every alley, knocks on every door to mobilize people to protect the border line and milestones. Accordingly, Phù has directly mobilized 7 households (40 people) to register for self-management of 19.5km of the border line with 7 national border markers.

Building prosperity on the frontier

A Pa Chải village is home to 47 households, with over 220 people, of which over 96% are Hà Nhì people. Following Khai and Phù... people in the village tell each other to unite for economic development, abolish backward customs, and protect the peace of the village and the border lines and markers.

Typical in the village is the cattle raising model of Chang Váng Sinh. He is one of the billionaires in Sín Thầu from pioneering large livestock farming.

Sinh recounted that in 1998, from Program No.135/QĐ-TTg of the Prime Minister, his family was entrusted with 10 breeding cows. After 3 years of care, the herd increased to over 20. He returned 10 “F1” cows for the project to assign to other households to raise, then built a large livestock farming model from the remaining herd. At that time, while many people were still farming on slash-and-burn fields and letting cattle roam free, he built barns and gathered all his family’s buffaloes, cows, and pigs in one area for better care.

Just like that, through each season of hard work, Sinh reaped the results, saved up, and continued to expand the production scale. At one point, he built a herd of buffaloes and cows up to 200 heads. To date, when his health is weak, he still maintains a herd of about 40 buffaloes and cows, yielding an income of hundreds of millions of VND per year.

Not only developing livestock, realizing that the climate of Sín Thầu is suitable for some medicinal plants with high economic value, many households in A Pa Chải village boldly invested in planting amomum (sa nhân) for economic development. Pioneering this model was Sừng Sừng Khai. In 2019, Khai bought seedlings to plant over 1.5ha of Amomum. After 3 years, the Amomum started bearing fruit. In the first crop, he harvested 2 quintals, selling for VND 14 million.

Learning from effective economic models, the people of A Pa Chải village have reclaimed land to grow wet rice, plant medicinal herbs, and build farms for stall-fed buffaloes and cows. Lỳ Xá Lòng, Secretary of the A Pa Chải village Party Cell, said: The whole village currently has about 5 households with medium and small farm models producing under the VACR model (a traditional, integrated ecological farming system from Vietnam that combines a garden, pond, barn, and forest in a closed-loop, sustainable cycle) with income over VND 100 million/year. Typical in economic development are the households of Sừng Sừng Khai, Chang Váng Sinh, Lỳ Xuyến Phù, Chu Khai Sinh, Chu Khai Phù... In addition, the village has about 50ha of Amomum cultivation; many households have good income from this crop. For example, in the recent crop, the family of Pờ Lòng Cà planted over 2ha. With selling prices ranging from VND 70,000 - 71,000/kg of fresh Amomum, Cà’s family earned over VND 200 million.

In the border village of A Pa Chải, we also heard many stories of education and economic development where the people here are striving every day to create sweet fruits. With many practical support policies, along with positive changes in the thinking and awareness of the people here, the appearance of the border village A Pa Chải is increasingly “transforming,” developing in prosperity.