Liang Jixing (b. 1929), a professor at Hainan University, is among the early surveyors and pioneers of China’s natural rubber industry. “Rubber is my mission, and it will forever be rooted in my heart.” For nearly a century, he has lived by these words.
In 1948, he was admitted to National Sun Yat-sen University to study soil science in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry. In the early years of the People’s Republic of China, natural rubber was a strategic material subject to a Western embargo. Building a domestic rubber industry became a critical battle to break this stranglehold. In 1951, while still an undergraduate, Liang Jixing took part in an emergency training program with hundreds of faculty members and students from universities across the country, preparing for a large-scale campaign to survey land suitable for rubber in South China. Transport was rudimentary in those days: the journey from Guangzhou to Zhanjiang took five arduous days, and the surveyors spent their nights in village schools, sleeping on desks pushed together as makeshift beds. Drawing on his solid grounding in soil science, Liang Jixing served as deputy leader of the survey team and wrote most of its reports. The team covered potential rubber-growing land across Guangdong, Hainan, and Guangxi, completing surveys of 8.25 million mu (about 550,000 hectares) and providing an essential blueprint for the large-scale development of rubber cultivation in New China.
After graduating in 1952, he joined the South China Reclamation Bureau. In 1953, when the national rubber development strategy was adjusted to prioritize Hainan over the mainland, he relocated to Hainan and became one of the first group of key technical specialists in rubber cultivation. In 1955, he was sent to Harbin to study Soviet land-management practices, and brought the concept of scientific farm planning back to Hainan. In 1959, during a period of national food shortages, he traveled the length and breadth of Hainan Island to survey and select sites for planned grain farms, contributing to the food self-sufficiency of the reclamation areas.
From 1981 to 1996, he was entrusted with leading the creation of the Hainan Soil Exhibition Room. With a budget of only 50,000 yuan, supplemented by funding from a major research program, he mounted 18 field expeditions to the island, covering a total voyage of 2,400 kilometers to collect specimens. The exhibition room he built eventually housed 124 soil monoliths, 115 of them on display, forming a comprehensive showcase of the province’s tropical soils that drew visiting experts from the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, and other countries for academic exchanges. Through this work, he became the founder of China’s tropical soil exhibition room. In 1989, he took part in the comprehensive survey of the natural resources of Hainan’s islands organized by the State Oceanic Administration, and the achievements earned a certificate of honor jointly issued by five ministries and commissions.
He was honored as a First-Class Model Worker by the South China Reclamation Bureau, received multiple provincial and ministerial-level science and technology awards, and was granted the Special Government Allowance from the State Council in 1992. Looking back on his life, he said: “Why, at so many critical junctures, did I defer to the arrangements of the state? Because I have a heart devoted to my country.” From a pioneer of rubber surveys to the founder of China’s tropical soil exhibition room, he lived out his lifelong vow: to follow the nation’s needs and devote himself wholeheartedly to whatever work he was given.
Original link：https://res.hndaily.cn/file/news/20260514/cid_211_650591.html
Translated by Ma Nonghua
Proofread by Liu Sujun
