This year marks the 50th anniversary of Yuan Longping's overcoming the difficulty of supporting three lines of indica hybrid rice. The original ethnic concert "One Seed Changes the World" will be performed at the Changsha Concert Hall on the evening of September 13. The concert has a total of 7 original music programs, using diversified national music languages and rich and diverse music performance forms to highlight the spirit of the times and commemorate and pay tribute to Yuan Longping, the "father of hybrid rice in the world."
Praise love and dream back to the magical land of Hongjiang
"One Seed Changes the World" original ethnic concert led by musician Du Mingxin. Among them, "Mom, the Rice is Ripe" takes a letter written by Academician Yuan Longping to his mother as the main line of creation. It is presented in the form of poetry recitation with music. The music changes the mood and melody around the content of the letter, which is deeply touching. In 1953, Yuan Longping was assigned to Hunan Anjiang Agricultural School in Huaihua City to engage in teaching and hybrid rice research, where he stayed for 37 years. Yuan Longping's mother also came to a remote mountain village from a bustling city to take care of him and help him take care of his children. At that time, Yuan Longping immersed himself in research and wanted to realize the grand vision of "feeding everyone in the world", but he neglected it all his life. What are the difficulties for mothers living in big cities to survive here. Even when his mother was dying, he missed seeing her for the last time because he had to work... Later Yuan Longping was obsessed with Anjiang Agricultural School, not only because it was the place where the dream began, but also his mother's last hometown.
Anjiang Agricultural School is located in Hongjiang City, Hunan Province, in the southwest of Hunan Province, which is the birthplace of hybrid rice in the world. "The Fragrance of Rice Blossoms" was composed by Liu Yizhang, a composer living in the United States. It eulogizes Yuan Longping's great spirit of loving the party, the people, and the motherland, and his endless life and struggle. It praises Yuan Longping's firm belief, perseverance, courage to innovate, and simplicity. Unpretentious noble quality. Since Yuan Longping was assigned to Anjiang Agricultural School, he has embarked on the difficult path of researching hybrid rice. No matter in spring, summer, autumn, winter, day or night, he can always be seen bending over the field with his trouser legs rolled up, looking for the plant that can create miracles. "Rice of Hope", in October 1973, Yuan Longping's team announced the success of China's three-line indica hybrid rice. A seed went from Anjiang Agricultural School to the world and changed the world. But Yuan Longping's feet have never left the land he loves deeply for a moment. At nearly eighty years old, he still rides a motorcycle on the field ridges. Some ramps in Anjiang Agricultural School were built to facilitate the movement of his motorcycle.
With the world in mind, the "dream of enjoying the cool under the grass" takes off in Anjiang Agricultural School.
Yuan Longping's biggest wish is to develop hybrid rice and benefit the world. He said that I have two dreams, one is the "Dream of enjoying the cool under the grass" and the other is the "Dream of covering the whole world". He wants hybrid rice to go abroad and contribute to world food security and world peace. "Civilized and enterprising, diligent and pragmatic" is the school motto of Anjiang Agricultural School inscribed by Yuan Longping's assistant Li Bihu. In the middle is "May everyone in the world have enough to eat" written by Yuan Longping himself. This is his encouragement to the teachers and students of Anjiang Agricultural School. , which is also Yuan Longping’s self-encouragement.
Starting from Anjiang Agricultural School, Yuan Longping forged a lifelong bond with his motherland. In 1960, our country suffered from natural disasters and severe food shortages. He once recalled, "It was a difficult period of three years. I saw five people starve to death." This is the origin of the belief of "dream of enjoying the cool under the grass". With this original intention in mind, Yuan Longping devoted himself to scientific research. "After lunch, he went to the fields to look for rice. He checked tens of thousands of rice ears every day and looked at them with a magnifying glass. Every day he left with excitement and returned disappointed." On the afternoon of July 5, 1964, one of the 140,000 rice ears caught Yuan Longping's attention. He quickly picked its anthers, returned to the school laboratory, and used potassium iodide staining to confirm that this was the rice ear. They are looking for male sterile strains. This means that a critical step has been taken to overcome the problem of hybrid rice. Anjiang Agricultural School has witnessed the entire process of Yuan Longping and his team's development of hybrid rice, and has completely preserved the experimental fields, scientific research buildings, teaching buildings, school mottos, and former residence where Yuan Longping lived during his research on hybrid rice.
2023 marks the 70th anniversary of Academician Yuan Longping’s teaching at Anjiang Agricultural School. Hongjiang City has resolutely shouldered its responsibility as the birthplace of hybrid rice, and has taken many measures to organize primary and secondary school students, cadres and the masses in the city to carry out the “Learn Yuan Longping to Be a Good Seed” activity to let the “seeds” The spirit takes root and blossoms in the land of Hongjiang, helping to polish the city image brand of Huaihua as "one seed changes the world".
