"Stone Frog Prince" Miao Heli Carves Out a Path to Wealth with Sheer Stubbornness

On the hillside next to the activity room of Shuangjing Village, Fa'er Township, Shuicheng County, Liupanshui City, Guizhou, there are three rows of low houses standing one person tall, from which a low, muffled "gu gu" sound drifts out, drawing people to stop and listen. The reporter could not resist going in to take a look.

Although the low houses are somewhat dark and damp, the "island in the middle of the lake" layout inside is still a pleasant surprise: a few water hyacinths float in the circular pool, and on the land in the center of the pool are tiles and stones covered in moss, with water onions and water irises planted in the crevices. The mischievous Miao Heli flips over a tile, and more than 10 black stonefrogsinstantly dart into the water.

These stonefrogsand the semi-wild frog enclosure all belong to Miao Heli, a 28-year-old villager from Tianbian Group. He told the reporter that this year's adult frogs can sell for 50,000 yuan, and with the sale of froglets, the annual income is expected to be around 100,000 yuan. Miao Heli, who became famous for frogs and grew rich through frogs, is known to the locals as the "Stone Frog Prince."

Those who know him well know that Miao Heli is a "stubborn one," and the title of "Stone Frog Prince" did not come easily.

In 2004, Miao Heli, whose family was poor, graduated from vocational school and went out to work alone. He had been to Guangdong and Zhejiang, worked in electronics factories and as a textile worker. "Although I could earn some money, drifting around everywhere was exhausting." In 2010, longing to have a career of his own, Miao Heli came up with the idea of farming stone frogs.

In the village, if any family's child is thin and weak, getting a stone frog to nourish them plumps them up right away, so its nutritional value is high; many city people also frequently seek out stone frogs to eat, so the market is tight; Shuangjing Village originally had quite a few wild stone frogs, which shows the environment here is suitable for stone frogs to grow... After some deliberation, Miao Heli felt that farming stone frogs "had potential."

He acted as soon as he decided. Full of confidence, Miao Heli looked up relevant information online, then went with his father Miao Zhongqiao to catch stone frogs in the field ditches to try farming them. Miao Heli, starting a business for the first time with no experience or technique at all, soon tasted the bitterness of failure. After all, stone frogs are a high-end farming species, very picky about humidity, temperature, food and so on, not as easy to raise as chickens, ducks, cattle or sheep.

"The frogs weren't raised well, and a lot of money was spent." Miao Heli told the reporter that in the first two years, the stone frogs he painstakingly caught either ran away or died. Every month he also had to buy more than 100 jin of yellow mealworms from outside to feed the frogs, at 25 yuan per jin, and apart from infrastructure, labor and transportation costs, he spent more than 2,500 yuan per month.

"He can't raise them himself, yet he keeps pouring money in, so foolish" "He might as well go out to work, at least he could save some money by year's end"... Facing the villagers' doubts and teasing, the stubborn Miao Heli did not give up. He recorded every attempt and worked hard to improve his farming techniques.

Miao Heli's actions drew outside attention, and his stone frog farming also gained recognition and support from the Liupanshui City CPPCC and the Agricultural Committee: they funded his trips to Jiangsu and Zhejiang, where aquaculture technology is relatively mature, for study and inspection, and also arranged dedicated agricultural technicians to work with him.

With the help of the local government, Miao Heli's stone frog farming began to show returns in 2012, and he joined with 7 other villager households to establish a planting and breeding professional cooperative. Today, the cooperative's stone frog farming scale exceeds 30,000 frogs, each jin sells for 150 yuan, and market demand exceeds supply. Driven by Miao Heli, some villagers also began trying to raise "rare creatures" such as tower rabbits and snakes.

"There are tricks to getting rich, but no shortcuts. Rural entrepreneurship sometimes really needs a 'stubborn one' like young Miao." said Yang Kai, a cadre assigned to the Liupanshui City Agricultural Committee and deputy mayor of Fa'er Town. He said that specialty farming like stone frogs, with good economic returns and no worries about selling on the market, is the first choice for many returning migrant workers starting businesses. But these industries have higher requirements for capital and technology, and it is hard to "succeed on the first try." They need government support, and even more so the persistence of the entrepreneurs.