He returned home for love and searched for treasure deep in the mountains

For love, he did everything he could to buy a house in Beijing. But the surging housing prices shattered his dream of buying one. Deep in the mountains of his hometown lay endless treasure that helped his wealth explode. How did Zhu Yuguang, who returned home to start a business, protect the fruits of love and break out of life's predicament!

This is the forest frog, also known as snow frog or Chinese forest frog, with very high economic value. Forest frogs mainly live in the mountain forests of Northeast China. This is Zhu Yuguang, and he raises forest frogs across more than 1,400 mu of mountain forest.

Zhu Yuguang: This is our Changbai Mountain forest frog. This spot here has a mark shaped like the Chinese character for "person." Here, once it dries, look, there is a bump shaped like the character for "person." This is an authentic Changbai Mountain forest frog.

The Changbai Mountain area is one of the main producing areas for forest frogs. The main way locals identify Changbai Mountain forest frogs is by checking whether there is a bump shaped like the Chinese character for "person" on the back. Locals believe this kind of forest frog is the best quality.

Reporter: For a mountain this big, how much is produced in a year? (visual overlay)

Zhu Yuguang: For this big an area, about 500 jin. Roughly more than 300 mu.

Reporter: More than 300 mu only produces just over 500 jin?

Zhu Yuguang: That is already very high, and this year the rainfall has been relatively good.

This stretch of mountain forest alone covers more than 300 mu, and this year about 500 jin of forest frogs can be harvested. How do you catch 500 jin of tiny forest frogs from such a large area of mountain forest?

The night the reporter came was exactly the right time to catch forest frogs, and Zhu Yuguang took the reporter into the mountains to catch them.

Zhu Yuguang: You have to move fast and grab it in one go.

Reporter: It feels sticky.

Zhu Yuguang: It has a protective membrane. Try catching this one.

Every autumn, as the weather turns cold, forest frogs begin coming down the mountain in large numbers. Night is the peak period for forest frogs coming down the mountain, so when catching them, people generally catch once in the first half of the night and once again the next morning.

Zhu Yuguang: It is autumn now, and the weather is turning colder. Forest frogs need to go to the river to overwinter, so they are eager to come down the mountain and hide in the river.

To catch forest frogs, Zhu Yuguang set up a ring of plastic sheeting at the foot of the mountain. After the forest frogs come down from the mountain, they are blocked by the plastic sheeting. In this way, the frogs coming down gather in groups near the plastic sheeting. You only need to pick them up one by one to catch them all. Catching forest frogs this way can continue from mid-September to the end of November.

Reporter: I see a lot of forest frogs hitting this with their heads.

Zhu Yuguang: That is why we enclose the whole mountain, so the workers do not have to search all over the mountain. If they had to search all over the mountain, the cost would be high. We make good use of the habit of forest frogs coming down the mountain to overwinter. At night the temperature is relatively cold, and forest frogs choose to come down when it is humid. This, here. See it, here. Our forest frogs here sell for about one to three times the price of those outside, because the forest frogs here are all raised in a wild environment, so the price is very high, and they sell very well. Almost every year there is not enough to sell. So I brought together local farmers and set up this forest frog breeding cooperative.

Zhu Yuguang mainly sells products such as forest frog oil through the internet. Forest frog oil is the oviduct of the female forest frog, and the dried product sells for more than 5,000 yuan per jin. From forest frog oil alone, Zhu Yuguang's annual sales reach 7 million yuan. Now, the retail price of the female forest frogs Zhu Yuguang raises can reach 400 yuan per jin, while the average retail price of male frogs is only 18 yuan per jin. So the forest frogs caught need to be strictly separated into male and female.

Zhu Yuguang: Almost all of them are wild.

Reporter: Look. One came up onto the boot. Is it a female frog?

Master Shi: Female frogs are different from male frogs.

Zhu Yuguang: Look, the belly of the female frog has oil on both sides. This one has a red chin, and this one a white chin. The white one is male, and the red one is female.

Master Shi: You can also tell from the claws.

Zhu Yuguang: Let's look at a male frog. See that? What are these two small bumps for? When the mating season comes, the male frog can grip the female frog firmly around the waist and never let go. That is what they are for. It evolved this way naturally. Just like this, holding on, gripping tightly. These all jumped down naturally. As long as we take good care of this natural environment, they are born this way.

By the next morning, Zhu Yuguang carried a bag of forest frogs to a pond in the mountain forest. He released all the forest frogs caught the night before into the pond. Why release the forest frogs that were caught?

Zhu Yuguang: These are relatively small ones, because the small ones are less than 3 years old and need to be put into the overwintering pond. Ones like these are all less than three years old. Forest frogs begin reproducing and laying eggs from the third year, and we always keep the third-year forest frogs, so the forest frogs on the mountain will keep coming without end. If all the forest frogs under 3 years old were caught out, there would be fewer and fewer Changbai Mountain forest frogs. Another reason is that if they are put into the overwintering pond at this time, by winter the quality of their forest frog oil will be better.

It is now mid-September, and the things the female forest frogs have eaten have not yet been fully digested, so the forest frog oil is not pure enough. To ensure the quality of the forest frog oil, Zhu Yuguang puts the female forest frogs into the overwintering pond and waits until November, when the quality of the forest frog oil reaches its best, before catching them out. Forest frogs under 4 years old will stay in the overwintering pond until the following spring and then be released back into the mountain forest.

Zhu Yuguang returned home to start his business in 2012, and in less than 5 years he was already a well-known local rich man.

Cui Lin: In monthly sales volume, he is equivalent to 10 times that of other people's online stores.

Reporter: 4 times?

Cui Lin: 10 times. In our entire park, he ranks among the very top in e-commerce.

But although he made more and more money, his family was not satisfied with him.

Father: He is always thinking about it all day long, never content. In plain words, he is addicted to making money. He does not eat at regular times, and he stays up too late. Sometimes I tell him to stop, I say take a rest, but he does not listen.

Wife: I never demanded how much money he should make, I really never did. I just said I would give him two more years. If after another two years it is still like this, and he cannot even spare time at home to keep our daughter company, then I definitely will not accept it.

Even late at night, Zhu Yuguang still sits in front of two computers maintaining his online store business. He works this late almost every night.

Reporter: Sleepy?

Zhu Yuguang: I really sleep too little.

Reporter: Your eyes are all red.

Zhu Yuguang: Before buyers go to sleep, there is a small peak. Once we get through this peak, we can rest.

Reporter: Your dad says you are addicted to making money.

Zhu Yuguang: E-commerce alone reached 12 million in a year for me, plus offline sales, plus goods supplied to small and medium-sized hospitals.

Reporter: It made your ambition swell, I feel.

Zhu Yuguang: Yes, yes, yes.

Zhu Yuguang returned home to start a business, and his business grew more prosperous year after year, but he worked even harder at what he did. He said this all stemmed from an experience in Beijing.

Zhu Yuguang: When I think about it, it still feels bitter. The days in Beijing are truly unforgettable.

Zhu Yuguang is from Tonghua County, Jilin Province. In 2006, while working in Beijing, he fell in love with a girl.

For love, Zhu Yuguang took the initiative to promise that he would buy an apartment in Beijing and give his girlfriend a home.

Zhu Yuguang: I wanted to marry her, have a child, and become a complete family. But the prerequisite for a complete family is that first I have to give her a house.

In Beijing, to save money to buy a house, Zhu Yuguang and his girlfriend lived very hard lives. To earn more money, he worked several jobs at the same time. He worked as a typesetter in a printing factory, set up a street stall, ran an advertising company, and starting in 2008 he ran a full-time online store for clothing, bags, and suitcases, saving more than 10,000 yuan a month.

Wife: Running the online store, he got up every morning and worked, kept working until 9 p.m., and then ate his first meal.

Mother: Every time I went to see him, my heart ached

Reporter: What was the scene like at that time

Mother: As a mother, I felt he was pitiful.

Zhu Yuguang: Living in a basement, poor environment, one room of 3 sq m, crowded, and inside the 3 sq m there was even a kitchen. I always felt that if I saved a bit more, next year I would definitely have enough for the down payment.

However, Beijing housing prices soared year after year, and Zhu Yuguang found that although his savings grew larger and larger, he was getting further and further from the down payment for a house. Thinking of this, Zhu Yuguang could not help feeling somewhat wronged.

Zhu Yuguang: Frustrated. I felt my pace could never outrun the growth rate of Beijing housing prices. (pre-positioned) I felt I was too incompetent, unable to fulfill the promise to my wife.

Wife: The promise was not fulfilled either. Actually I do not hate him, because I do not like living in Beijing either.

Seeing that buying a house in Beijing was already unlikely, in 2011 Zhu Yuguang and his girlfriend returned together to Zhu Yuguang's hometown, Tonghua County, preparing to marry there. However, as soon as he got home, he discovered a strange phenomenon.

Zhu Yuguang's hometown is Chaoyang Village, Xinglin Town, Tonghua County. This area belongs to the Changbai Mountains. His father contracted a stretch of more than 70 mu of mountain land in the village and planted ginseng under the trees on the mountain land. This kind of forest-grown ginseng grows in forests on relatively steep slopes. After ginseng seeds are scattered, it grows naturally and enters the harvest period at 15 years. At that time the ginseng had already been planted for nearly 10 years, and in a few more years it could be harvested. Yet his father was preparing to transfer the mountain forest together with the ginseng at a low price. This stretch of mountain forest had not only cost his father 10 years of care, but also more than 20,000 yuan in maintenance every year. Selling it for 100,000 yuan would not even cover the cost.

Zhu Yuguang: At that time many middlemen had already come to appraise it, saying this whole stretch of mountain forest was worth at most only 100,000 yuan. The whole stretch of mountain forest had roughly more than 23,000 plants.

Reporter: Are you willing to sell the mountain?

Father: If you are not willing, there is no other way.

His father's move left Zhu Yuguang very puzzled. What surprised him even more was that at this time many villagers in the village were also transferring, at low prices, the mountain forest land where they grew ginseng. For a stretch of more than 50 mu of mountain forest, together with the ginseng, many people were willing to sell for just 50,000 to 60,000 yuan. Why was that?

Villager: If you sell, at least you can still get some money back. Many give up halfway. After planting for five or six years, they cannot get a single cent back, so they just abandon it.

Villager: Thirty thousand, twenty thousand, some even sell the whole plot

Villager: In the last few years, it is very hard for most people to hold on. They have to live.

It turned out that although forest-grown ginseng grows naturally in the forest, to prevent it from being damaged by wild boars or stolen by people, villagers need to spend money hiring forest guards to watch over the mountain forest. For a stretch of mountain forest of about 50 mu, more than 20,000 yuan needs to be invested every year, continuously for 15 years, with no output. This pure investment of more than 20,000 yuan each year made it hard for many villagers to persist, so they had no choice but to transfer it. Zhu Yuguang persuaded his father to keep the mountain forest and let Zhu Yuguang run it himself.

Zhu Yuguang: I thought this thing is, after all, a good thing. There must be a bigger market for it. It is just that at the beginning I did not have such great resources and channels.

Zhu Yuguang had run an online store in Beijing for 4 years. He was confident that by using his experience and e-commerce, he could definitely sell his family's forest-grown ginseng to consumers all over the country. But there were still 5 years until the forest-grown ginseng was harvested. What should he do during these 5 years? Just then, Zhu Yuguang discovered another new business opportunity, and this opportunity not only helped him find the resources and channels to sell ginseng, but also helped him achieve sales of 7 million yuan in his first year after returning home to start a business.

This business opportunity was the forest frog. Forest frogs are also a local specialty of Tonghua County, with very high economic value. Zhu Yuguang believed that as long as quality was ensured, he would have a strong advantage in selling forest frog products.

Zhu Yuguang: Because I am a first-hand source. Plus they are from my own mountain, so compared with other merchants, I have more advantages. My price is lower and my quality is better.

Zhu Yuguang was so confident because his forest frogs all grow naturally in the wild on Changbai Mountain, and the forest frogs' living environment is very good. He buys forest frog eggs in spring and puts them into hatching ponds. After hatching succeeds, the forest frogs jump into the mountains to forage and only come down the mountain again in autumn.

Zhu Yuguang: Why choose a place like this? This place is not hot, the temperature is low. From forest frog egg clusters, most of the forest frogs that hatch are female leopards (female forest frogs).

Reporter: So a bit more expensive

Zhu Yuguang: Higher value.

Zhu Yuguang had only 70 mu of mountain forest, and he figured the forest frogs would definitely not be enough to sell, so he took the lead in establishing a forest frog breeding professional cooperative. The cooperative now has more than 1,400 mu of mountain forest in total. The cooperative promised to purchase all members' forest frogs at a price higher than market price, and after sales were completed, it also gave a 15% profit rebate. That year there were already 30 member households

Catching forest frogs raised in a wild environment requires enclosing every mountain, and every autumn, while the forest frogs come down the mountain to overwinter, the frogs are caught. On the morning of the day the reporter interviewed him, Zhu Yuguang took the reporter to another stretch of forest to catch forest frogs.

Zhu Yuguang: Take a look here along the way. Every 50 m we dig a pit like this, and the forest frogs follow along this wall.

Reporter: Quite a few.

Zhu Yuguang: When you reach in, you must take a look. This is how you catch the forest frogs. Sometimes they still squeeze through gaps to escape. Look, look, it is squeezing through down here.

Reporter: The purpose of digging this hole is

Zhu Yuguang: It will hide here. Take a look, look, how many. See that, two. It found the gap by itself and hid inside.

Reporter: Is it because in the gap it feels

Zhu Yuguang: Probably safer.

Mountain streams are also places forest frogs like to inhabit.

Zhu Yuguang: In the small river, we turn over every stone.

Reporter: Why does it like staying among the stones

Zhu Yuguang: It is safer here, because snakes will not come. Look, here, here. Look, there is another one. See it, right here.

Reporter: Where?

Zhu Yuguang: Here, yes, yes, that is the one.

Reporter: Inside the stone.

Zhu Yuguang: Did you catch it?

Reporter: It likes this kind of relatively shallow water

Zhu Yuguang: The ones coming down the mountain like it.

Reporter: What kind of stone does it like most?

Zhu Yuguang: The flat kind, with a crack in the middle, and also under this kind of leaves, but there are none here. Look at this one, this one has none either.

Reporter: This one looks just like a toad, it looks just like a toad, there should be one here. Sure enough, there is.

Zhu Yuguang: We keep searching upward. Especially places like this, under stone cracks, in gaps like this, there will be frogs inside, and the frogs even huddle together. Wow, so deep. See that, one. Here. Under big stones like this, most of them have them, and sometimes there is more than one. So fast, it disappears in a moment, and then there is none.

Zhu Yuguang made most of the cooperative's female forest frogs into forest frog oil. His father had also sold forest frog oil before, by taking the forest frog oil directly to the main consumer market, Guangdong, and selling it to dealers in the market, but in recent years sales became fewer and fewer, and in the end he had to stop selling. This time Zhu Yuguang sold forest frog products online, and in only three months he got his store ranked in the top five in the same category.

Zhu Yuguang: (On the e-commerce platform) if you enter forest frog oil or forest frog, you can rank in the top five.

Reporter: So people can see your store?

Zhu Yuguang: Yes. Once a product ranks on the first few pages, your sales will increase substantially.

Zhu Yuguang had run an online store when he was in Beijing, and he knew very well that to improve an online store's ranking, it was necessary to complete more orders in a short time and ensure good reviews. Forest frogs are a relatively niche product, and he estimated that he only needed to complete about 500 orders in a short time to greatly improve his online store's ranking. Each forest frog originally cost 19.9 yuan, but he charged only 5 yuan for shipping.

Zhu Yuguang: In one month, I gave away about 400, and my store gradually began to receive orders.

Zhu Yuguang persisted in giving away forest frogs for 3 months, giving away about 40,000 yuan worth of goods, and his store was finally placed on the front page of online stores in the same category on the e-commerce platform. Coupled with almost no negative reviews, the online store's business got better and better, selling an average of 20 jin of forest frog oil per month, with annual sales exceeding 7 million yuan.

Zhu Yuguang: Because this money does not pass through my hands, it keeps changing as data, and you do not really feel it. But when you look at the end-of-month summary, wow, sold so much this month, more than 1.6 million, the online store.

After the forest frog oil online store was successfully launched, Zhu Yuguang also took the lead in establishing a ginseng planting professional cooperative. In 2016, the forest-grown ginseng in Zhu Yuguang's own mountain forest began to be harvested. He used the same method to sell the cooperative's ginseng in the online store. In addition, he also supplied more than 600 health product stores nationwide offline. By 2016 sales had increased to 14 million yuan.

Now, Zhu Yuguang, who was forced home by Beijing's high housing prices, has already bought a house, married, and had a child in his hometown, forming a complete and happy family.

Zhu Yuguang: The dream in Beijing, the dream that could not be completed, after returning to my hometown, somehow, I suddenly found I had two houses, and my mood immediately improved a lot.

Guide:

For love, he did everything he could to buy a house in Beijing.

Zhu Yuguang: I wanted to marry her, have a child, and form a complete family.

But the surging housing prices shattered his dream of buying a house.

Zhu Yuguang: Frustrated. I felt my pace could never outrun the growth rate of Beijing housing prices.

Deep in the mountains of his hometown lay endless treasure that helped his wealth explode.

Cui Lin: In monthly sales volume, he is equivalent to 10 times that of other people's online stores.

Father: Never content. In plain words, he is addicted to making money.

Zhu Yuguang: Wow, selling so much this month, over 1.6 million, on the online store.

Zhu Yuguang, who returned to his hometown to start a business, how did he protect the fruits of love and find his way out of life's difficulties!

Zhu Yuguang: I suddenly realized I owned two houses, and my mood improved a lot right away.