But her father's company forced him to compel Zhang to go. "They threatened to stop paying him," she says.

Marrying a farmer Zhang remembers vividly her first night at Lishui, going to bed and pulling down the quilt to find lice and fleas. She had a sleepless night and was more desperate to go home the next morning.

"I was missing everything back home in Chongqing - broad roads, food and electric lights," she says. But return was impossible, as it contradicted the revolutionary cause and was deemed shameful.

Zhang was soon sent to Kaohe Production Brigade to work the farms.

A year later, owing to a severe shortage of housing, she moved into a compound shared by several households all surnamed Tan.

There she met Tan Shunfa, a widowed farmer with three children. He was 14 years older than she, and his family was one of the poorest in Kaohe. With only a primary school education, Tan was also the accountant of Lishui Commune.

At first, she rejected suggestions of a match, but slowly, she softened to Tan's honesty and warmheartedness as he helped her in her work.

Zhang was especially moved when Tan took care of her after she broke an arm while collecting firewood in the mountains.

From 1972, marriages between zhiqing and farmers were encouraged - despite the huge gulf in cultures - and putting personal considerations first was incompatible with the revolutionary cause.

"At that time, I thought there was no hope of a return to the city, so marrying a farmer was inevitable, and I was willing to stay in the countryside. So I decided to make friends with him," she says.

Her father objected fiercely and her brothers threatened to break her leg if she went ahead with the marriage.

More surprisingly, she tore up a recruitment form for a job in downtown Chongqing that her father had obtained by pulling strings. It was an opportunity that many zhiqing dreamt of.

Her actions angered her entire family and they cut off relations with her until 1989.

"Most villagers knew of my relationship with Tan. If I'd left, they would have called me a liar and spoken badly of me. I would have tainted the image of the zhiqing," she explains.

In April 1972, they married.

"We were destined to be together. My mother had dreamed that I married a farmer here before she died in 1970. She was 11 years younger than my father, so the age gap with Tan didn't worry me," she says.

Zhang worked hard.

"She quickly learned to be a good wife. She never looked down on me though I am an almost illiterate farmer," Tan says. "She is really an able, strong-minded and optimistic woman. No matter how grueling the farm work was, I never saw her cry."

The family remained poor until the early 1990s, when they began to have enough food and more money. Largely thanks to Tan Dongfu, the first son of Zhang and Tan, they were no longer the poorest family in the village.

Dongfu left the village in 1992 - at the age of 19, the same age that Zhang became a zhiqing - for coastal Zhejiang Province, more than 1,500 kilometers east of Chongqing. He got a job at a hardware factory and his wages became the main income for the whole family.

In 1995, Zhang was elected head of Kaohe's 800 farming households. She led the fight against poverty with the construction of roads and power supplies and by encouraging people to seek jobs and better pay in cities.

"Had the young people not gone out to find jobs in cities, there would have been big problems in the village and the entire town," she says.

She estimates that at least half of more than 16,000 people in Lishui are working most of the year in places such as Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces and Shanghai.

In 1997, the entire village was connected to power grid for the first time. Zhang had an electric light for the first time in 28 years.

Her biggest challenge came after Tan Hongbin - their younger son - who passed the national college exam and was enrolled at the Southwest Nationality College (now Southwest Nationality University).

Tuition for the first semester cost about 4,500 yuan (US$660), bearable for most urban households, but too much for her family.

Zhang's pride at bringing up a university student in a poor mountain village was tempered by her anguish at being unable to afford his tuition.

Tan Zhiqiang, the younger son of Tan and his first wife, sold his only buffalo, and Tan Dongfu contributed his wages. Zhang got a loan from a credit union, and borrowed another 500 yuan from an acquaintance, at a five-percent interest monthly. She paid it back in eight months.

After five tough years, Tan Hongbin graduated in 2002.