20-Year-Old Wins Top Spot on Village Committee
A 20-year-old girl in Waidang village, Yongjia Zhejiang province, received 200 of the 353 votes cast during an election to choose a chief for the village committee on April 17.
Hu Xiaoji, who was born on Feb. 6, 1988, left the village when she was four and seldom returned. After graduating from a sports school, she returned to the village and found it very poor. Most of the young residents had left for jobs in the city and only the old remained.
She wanted to help the villagers so she competed in the village committee election. She pledged to let villagers have access to cable TV, build a path linking the mountainous village to the outside, help plant cash crops and develop the aquaculture.
--Shanghai Morning Post, May 7, 2008
