Statue of Yuan Longping Photo: web

Wednesday marks the fourth Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival. Students honored the memory of the beloved "father of hybrid rice." They put flowers and cards in front of the sculpture of Yuan Longping holding the ears of rice in Southwest University, Yuan's alma mater. 

"You must be happy that we came to visit you during such a season with a bumper harvest!" One card read. "We will remember what you taught us and fulfill your dream of sitting under the ears of rice to enjoy the cool day."

The hashtag 'flowers filled Yuan Longping sculpture' has become a hot topic on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform, with more than 60 million views and comments as of press time.

"Grandpa Yuan, have you seen that we ate up our meal without wasting it?" said one netizen.

Yuan died of illness in Changsha at on May 22 at the age of 91. He was the pioneer of the research and development of hybrid rice in China and the first scientist in the world to successfully utilize the heterosis of rice.

China has achieved another year of a bumper harvest in 2020 with its grain output hitting record high. According to the statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, China's grain output increased to 669.5 million tons in 2020, which marks the sixth consecutive year of grain output hitting over 650 million tons.

Global Times