When Wang Xingfu was elected head of his village by an overwhelming majority, he felt it was merely a first step in his one-man crusade for villagers' well-being and their democratic rights.
He was a household name in the largely agricultural Henan Province long before he stood out in the early summer grassroot-level election with 1,009 votes, or 65 percent, of the 1,552 valid ballots.
The 52-year-old had been a "troublemaker" to under-performing local officials, a voluntary spokesman for peasants and an unbending activist to promote democracy and rule of law in China's rural areas, where millions of farmers are yet to learn to exercise their democratic rights.
Local media referred to him as one of China's most popular farmers due to his biting criticism of abuse of power and an independent survey into at least 230 cases of wrongdoing his fellow farmers suffered, including violence by tax collectors.
His complaints, mostly lodged to higher authorities in the provincial capital Zheng-zhou and even in Beijing, cost dozens of local officials their jobs over the past decade.
Wang, whose name means "felicity," was under the media spotlight again after he became head of the villagers' affairs committee of Lucun Village, in Yiyang County.
"The election campaign was a test both for me and the government," Wang said. "A test to see whether I'm really favored by the locals and whether the local government administers by law."
An avid campaigner, Wang won 1,250 out of the total 1,525 ballots in the 1999 election, but was not given the top job in the village because some officials with the township government feared he might make more trouble for them.
Wang petitioned as usual and worked even harder to correct local governance mistakes.
His success in this year's election, as Wang put it, was "a victory of democracy and the rule of law."
"We elect those who can do concrete jobs for the villagers," said a villager who voted for Wang.
Wang had promised to repair village roads, and drinking water pipes as well as renovate ramshackle school buildings, the locals' three biggest headaches.
Similar has been the case in the recent round of grassroot-level election across 300,000 villages in 18 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Activists with no official background but who have been in the vanguard of public opinion have shown their rising influence and popularity to take positions with villagers' affairs committee, a self-ruled farmers' panel in China's vast rural areas.
Among them are petitioners, migrant workers as well as environment protection campaigners.
Tian Guirong, an environmentalist who collected 65 tons of discarded battery from the villagers at her own expense, was elected to the villagers' affairs committee of Fanling Village, in the province's Xinxiang County.
Tian beat her rivals in the final election with pledges to build an ecological village and offer clean air and drinking water.
In China, a nation of about 680,000 rural villages with about 900 million farmers, functionaries to administer village affairs have been directly elected by villagers since the law on villagers' affairs committee organization took effect in 1998.