He was crazy about peaches, and made tens of millions of yuan from them

What kind of peach can withstand being stepped on like that? Stepped on and thrown around, what business opportunity is hidden in these repeatedly abused peaches? See how Liu Guangzhan from Suzhou, Anhui, challenges tradition, strikes gold in peaches, and achieves his dream of wealth!

Xiao Taoyuan especially loves eating peaches, and her father is the protagonist of today's program, Liu Guangzhan.

Liu Guangzhan: So do you want Daddy or do you want peaches?

Liu Guangzhan's daughter, Liu Taoyuan: Peaches and Daddy.

Liu Guangzhan's peach orchard covers more than 2,800 mu, with up to a hundred varieties. According to differing degrees of firmness, they can be divided into soft peaches, half-soft peaches and non-soft peaches.

Liu Guangzhan claims that his non-soft peaches will not be ruined even when stepped on. To prove this to the reporter, he specially called over a challenger.

Liu Guangzhan's daughter, Liu Taoyuan: What are you stepping on this for?

Liu Guangzhan's employee, Liu Mi: Don't film me!

Reporter Qian Fenping: Auntie, how much do you weigh?

Liu Guangzhan's employee, Liu Mi: 150 jin.

Liu Guangzhan: More than 150 jin.

So what exactly happened to the peach that was stepped on?

Reporter Qian Fenping: Is it ruined from being stepped on?

Liu Zhangguang: Not a problem at all, it's this hard.

Reporter: It's ruined from being stepped on, I can't break it open.

Liu Zhangguang: This one is fully ripe, ten-tenths ripe, and still not soft.

Stepping on peaches with his feet is a promotional method Liu Guangzhan often uses. Besides this, he also uses this simple and blunt way of demonstrating:

An ordinary peach thrown like this probably could not be eaten anymore, but Liu Guangzhan's peaches are not affected in taste:

Grower Ren Zhiyuan: Sweet as honey.

Reporter Qian Fenping: Sweet.

Grower Ren Zhiyuan: Sweet as honey.

For people who sell peaches, the advantage of non-soft peaches is very obvious: ordinary peaches must be picked and sold immediately once ripe, otherwise they easily soften and rot within a few days, but non-soft peaches can hang on the tree for more than a month, greatly extending the sales period. Non-soft peaches are also Liu Guangzhan's flagship product. In his peach orchard there are 33 varieties of non-soft peaches, and anyone who knows him knows that Liu Guangzhan's feelings for peaches are far from ordinary.

Liu Guangzhan's cousin's wife, Zhu Cuiping: My cousin, this man, he treats those peaches like his own life.

Liu Guangzhan: 365 days a year, every single day it's this business.

Reporter Qian Fenping: With peaches every day?

Liu Guangzhan: This comes first. I told my wife I put peaches first, and she quarrels with me about it.

Liu Guangzhan has grown peaches for 18 years. Four years ago he was still an ordinary fruit farmer living at the mercy of the weather, but now he has built a whole industry chain from seedling cultivation to planting, sales and deep processing. In 2016 sales reached more than 30 million yuan, and the planting area soared from more than 300 mu to more than 2,800 mu. Behind this astonishing change, what exactly happened?

This is Liu Guangzhan's hometown. Liu Guangzhan's family was poor, and he dropped out of school before finishing junior high, but he always held one belief: he had to start a business, he had to accomplish something.

Liu Guangzhan: Because others who did well in school got jobs, and I just thought that in my whole life I want to accomplish one thing, to do one thing and make it a lifelong career, that's how I want to do it

Growing peaches is a local tradition. After running a street stall and opening a shop without making money, Liu Guangzhan pinned his hopes on his family's few mu of orchard, and came up with an idea that others saw as nonsense: he wanted his peach trees to reach full production in two years!

Reporter Qian Fenping: In the past, how many years did peach trees need to mature?

Grower Cao Shuying: Generally, there was an old saying in the past: peaches three, apricots four, pears five years; three years to take shape, and only in the fourth year can there be full production

Just as everyone needs a haircut and has their own hairstyle, peach trees also need pruning and shaping before they bear fruit. For growers, three years to take shape and four years to full production is an unchangeable rule, but Liu Guangzhan could not wait!

Liu Guangzhan: I wanted it to show results a bit faster.

Reporter Qian Fenping: Why can't you even wait three years, why must it be two?

Liu Guangzhan: Right, I can't wait. I'm rather impatient in whatever I do. The more others say something won't work, the more I feel it will, and I want to try it.

In 2002, Liu Guangzhan transferred more than 70 mu of land, planting peach trees on part of it and cultivating peach seedlings on another part. He signed contracts with the villagers to defer the land rent, paying only at the end of the year after selling the peach seedlings. But Liu Guangzhan's subsequent actions made him the laughingstock of the whole village.

At that time, other people's peach orchards looked like this, with enough growing space left between trees, about 30-plus trees per mu, but Liu Guangzhan actually planted 330 trees per mu, nearly ten times more peach trees per mu than others!

Reporter Qian Fenping: How come I can't find you?

Liu Guangzhan: I'm in here.

Reporter Qian Fenping: This is like a maze.

In the densely packed peach grove, the reporter got dizzy as soon as he squeezed in! Not only was the planting density high, Liu Guangzhan also tied a bamboo pole to every peach tree. As for this practice, the villagers all said they really could not understand it.

Grower Lu Shenghong: That's planting trees. One bamboo pole costs five or six mao. If you want to make money, go sell bamboo poles. One pole five or six mao, plant 300 trees and that's one or two hundred yuan. He said he made money selling bamboo poles

Liu Guangzhan's mother, Yin Jianfang: I said, Guangzhan, everyone is laughing at you, you're making trouble. Everyone else is digging up peach trees, what are you planting peach trees for? You see everyone laughing at you, and you just keep at it. He said, you wait and see, once they see the peaches they won't laugh anymore

Liu Guangzhan: When I first planted them, everyone said I was messing around, I was messing around. I said, I'll grow them and let you see

Liu Guangzhan began a contest with time. He set a goal: to bring the high-density peach orchard to full production in two years. The reason he was so confident was that Liu Guangzhan discovered that peach trees themselves grow very fast, and even by traditional methods they can bear a small amount of fruit in the second year. It was just that the old method emphasized growing the tree first and shaping it later, so nutrients could not be absorbed in time, and combined with neglect of management, growth was slow. Liu Guangzhan believed that as long as he worked out a precise and effective method to promote growth, he could definitely achieve full production in the second year. Among these, one thing was crucial: the bamboo pole.

Liu Guangzhan: This bamboo pole has to be used when planting. We grow the tree and shape it at the same time. Without this bamboo pole, the tree shape could not grow like that.