Post-90s young man goes from debt-ridden to wealthy in 3 years
His name is Wang Xiaohui, and what he is trying hard to find is actually the very animals he raises! But right in the middle of his search, he ran into an unexpected event. Letting pigs loose on the mountain is Wang Xiaohui's unique secret to success. In 3 years, how did he go from a young man who couldn't even repay 8,000 yuan in credit card debt to the owner of a leading enterprise with annual sales of 5 million yuan!
Wang Xiaohui: "Things like this, they were all bitten off by them."
Wang Xiaohui: "The bark, it's obviously different from the upper part!"
Wang Xiaohui: "They walk around a lot, then gnaw, and it's all gnawed clean."
Wang Xiaohui: "There's mud, it's everywhere over here."
Wang Xiaohui: "This is a path they often use to go up the mountain."
Wang Xiaohui: "These rocks here have some scratch marks."
The young man before us is named Wang Xiaohui. As soon as he gets on the mountain, he searches everywhere for traces left by animals, all in order to find the black pigs he raises himself. His own black pigs are hard to find, all because of one thing Wang Xiaohui did: letting the pigs loose on the mountain. While looking for the pigs, Wang Xiaohui noticed that from an inconspicuous cave on the mountain, pig squeals were actually coming out.
Wang Xiaohui: Just now I heard a piglet squealing, oink oink oink.
Wang Xiaohui's father, Wang Yipin: Strange, there are still piglets in there. This water is here all year round.
Wang Xiaohui's father said that this karst cave was dug by an exploration team sent by the local government in earlier years to look for the entrance to the underground cavern below the mountain. The water at the bottom of the cave is there all year round, and no one knows whether the water leads to the cavern or to the big river in front of the mountain. Wang Xiaohui and his father had never gone down before. For safety's sake, Wang Xiaohui brought a bamboo pole to test it.
Reporter He Ningning: How many meters long is this pole?
Wang Xiaohui: This pole is about seven or eight meters.
Wang Xiaohui's father, Wang Yipin: It can still go in, it turns inside here.
Wang Xiaohui: There seems to be a piglet over here.
At that moment, a drowned piglet suddenly floated out of the cave. Wang Xiaohui noticed the piglet still had its umbilical cord, and he suddenly realized something was going on down below. As a result, as soon as he reached the bottom of the cave, he started shouting for the reporter to hurry down. It turned out that below he had found another cave opening, and inside there was actually a litter of live piglets. Because the bottom of the cave was narrow and hard to film in, the reporter hurried down with a phone.
Wang Xiaohui: There are four piglets inside, they're shivering from the cold right now.
Through the image on the phone, we saw that four or five meters above the ground, in an almost vertical cave, there were actually four piglets, and there were also fresh leaves in the cave.
Wang Xiaohui: There are leaves too, she carries them down before giving birth. Pigs that give birth outside, they build a nest for themselves.
It's too cold in here, the temperature is very low, much lower than outside, and everything is seeping with water.
Everyone wanted to rescue the piglets as quickly as possible, and at the same time everyone had a big question: this cave is very steep, and it's hard even for a person to go up and down, so how did the heavily pregnant sow, time after time, carry leaves in her mouth and go up and down through the narrow cave opening to give birth to piglets inside? These piglets are Jixi black pigs, a breed unique to Jixi County, Anhui Province, and a national livestock and poultry protection breed. Seeing the low temperature in the cave making the piglets shiver, Wang Xiaohui quickly moved them into the sunlight. Although the pigs are small, a single suckling piglet can sell for 500 yuan, so if this litter of piglets hadn't been rescued in time, the loss would not have been small. Just then, the reporter noticed that for this piglet, which looked like it was barely breathing, Wang Xiaohui had no intention at all of saving it.
Wang Xiaohui: Even if I save it now, its body and everything else will definitely be much weaker, and if it's really put out in the wild, it may not survive. What I want here is exactly this kind of survival of the fittest.
Through survival of the fittest, the ones Wang Xiaohui keeps on the mountain are all top-notch strong ones. These piglets, just one day old, soon showed their innate wildness, starting to run down the steep slope.
Wang Xiaohui: Now I can hear a sow calling down below, and now it's climbed over there again, it thinks she's its mother. This piglet is only in its second day after birth, and on such a steep slope, it keeps climbing, its wildness is especially strong.
As the piglets slid down, a big sow appeared. No one had expected that the mother of these piglets was such a big sow. Everyone was very curious. How could a sow of such a large size, time after time, carry leaves in her mouth and climb into the cave to give birth to piglets? It really was remarkable. Actually, Wang Xiaohui's pigs are not all as hard to find as the ones in the cave. In the shade of the trees on one side of the mountain and in the gullies at the foot of the mountain, the reporter could see traces of pigs. By letting pigs loose on the mountain, Wang Xiaohui, in 3 years, raised the local price of Jixi black pigs from less than 10 yuan per jin to fifty or sixty yuan per jin, achieving annual sales of 5 million yuan in 3 years. This post-90s young man Wang Xiaohui also became a fairly well-known local leading enterprise owner. But this little entrepreneurial star, when he wanted to start a business 3 years ago, was so tormented by 8,000 yuan of debt that he could hardly breathe.
Wang Xiaohui is 26 this year, from Jixi County, Anhui Province. Three years ago he graduated from university, with a monthly salary of only 2,000 yuan, but this income could not meet his daily expenses. At this point, he got the idea of using credit cards.
Wang Xiaohui: I'd go to the supermarket to buy things and so on, often swiping the card, and almost every month I'd max out the limit.
Shopping and rent were all sustained with credit cards, and in less than half a year he had overdrawn 8,000 yuan, but it took him a year and a half to pay off that 8,000 yuan. This experience made Wang Xiaohui feel that to live the life he wanted, relying on a wage-earning job alone was far from enough. At this time, he got an idea about his father. On Qingming Festival in 2012, Wang Xiaohui came home on holiday and, for the first time ever, followed his dad out to catch snails. A father knows his son best, and his father knew that behind Wang Xiaohui's attentiveness there must be a big purpose.
Wang Xiaohui: I roughly knew my family had about three or four hundred thousand yuan, and I aimed at that three or four hundred thousand yuan and made a plan for how to use this money.
Wang Xiaohui had his eye on the money in his father's pocket and wanted to start a business. After Wang Xiaohui's father learned of his son's idea, he did not refuse, but promised to take out all his savings and let Wang Xiaohui go ahead boldly. But after Wang Xiaohui got the money, what he wanted to do was raise this kind of Jixi black pig.
This kind of pig is called the Jixi black pig. Those that grow with a face full of wrinkles are called the lion-head type, and those without wrinkles are called the horse-face type. Jixi black pigs have big bellies and a lot of fat, and if raised in pens without exercise, they have especially much fat, but if raised free-range, they don't grow big and their meat yield is very low. In Jixi County, very few people raise them, and not many people eat them either, so many people did not think well of Wang Xiaohui's approach.
Friend Zhou Ruiqi: In the countryside you can hardly find them, you could say there are almost none, nobody raises them, everyone raises white pigs.
Wang Xiaohui's father, Wang Yipin: They grow too slowly. This pig generally has to be raised for more than a year and a half, and some can't even yield 100 jin of meat.
No one thought well of Jixi black pigs, so why did Wang Xiaohui insist on taking all the family's money to raise them? It turned out that Wang Xiaohui had discovered a business opportunity on the computer.
Wang Xiaohui: Sitting in front of the computer, I accidentally saw a news item, "sky-high-price black pig." I said, "sky-high-price black pig" instantly aroused my interest. At the time I thought, pigs can also have sky-high prices. So I was very curious. The price of meat in our hometown is about 12 yuan per jin, while the price on there was a full 10 times more, more than 100 yuan per jin. At the time I thought, how can this thing sell for so much? This really struck a chord with me.
It turned out that through searching on the computer and the internet, he discovered the huge business opportunity behind black pigs. Over the next few days, he kept gathering information on the computer, seeing how others had done it, and he found that selling black pigs at a high price didn't seem to be that difficult after all. After comparing information online, he noticed that the black pigs that could sell at high prices all had some things in common: they were all famous local native pigs raised free-range, with a long breeding cycle, eating coarse grains. Moreover, his father had always been in the business of buying and selling pigs, so even if the black pigs couldn't be sold after being raised, his father could help sell them as ordinary pigs.
Wang Xiaohui: Because my father is in this line of work, he can say, I'll sell the pigs, and there's a bit more middleman profit in that.
In June 2013, on the mountain across this river, Wang Xiaohui spent more than 200,000 yuan to build 3 simple pig sheds, and bought back more than 100 sows and 4 black boars. The farm was surrounded by mountains on three sides and faced the big river, and the only way in and out was by this small boat. Wang Xiaohui was extremely alert and spent every cent carefully, placing all his hopes on these pigs. But very soon, Wang Xiaohui discovered that these black pigs were not so easy to raise. After becoming pregnant, even with a big belly, they were not obedient, unwilling to stay in the pig sheds, and actually ran up the mountain by themselves. Before long, many traces of black pigs were left on the mountain.
Wang Xiaohui: Like this, this is a stretch of road they've walked on, and places like this, it looks like there are no leaves underneath anymore, they've all been eaten by them.
Wang Xiaohui didn't understand: Jixi black pigs already have big bellies, and when they are about to give birth after becoming pregnant, they walk even closer to the ground, and the mountain paths are so hard to walk, with steep slopes everywhere, so what exactly were they coming up the mountain for? When he found a sow halfway up the mountain, he suddenly understood: the black pigs had come up the mountain themselves to build nests.
Wang Xiaohui: The bamboo beside this nest, she gnawed it herself from here, then carried it over in her mouth. Because there's a rock here, and below this side is a slope, she blocked it off here, so the piglets are less likely to fall down after being born. Pretty smart, right?
The black pigs all like the mountain and don't like staying in the pig sheds. They dislike the concrete floor because it's too hot and not breathable in summer and too cold in winter, while the mountain has mud ground, which is comfortable to sleep on and free. And most importantly, if they give birth to piglets in the pig shed, the other pigs going in and out make a lot of noise and can also threaten the piglets, so the sows all like to go up the mountain and find a quiet and safe place like this to stay.
Reporter He Ningning: Do you always have to look at them like this?
Wang Xiaohui: Yes, you must be very gentle. They are highly alert, so we can only stand in the distance here and take a look. This pig is a bit of the lion-head type, a pig with a lion-like face, and it's extremely alert. Slowly approach it, let me go over and test it.
Jixi black pigs have very strong climbing ability. On mountain paths like this, people find it strenuous to walk, but black pigs can run away very quickly. Wang Xiaohui once tried to drive the black pigs back into the pens, but after a long time the effect was not obvious, so he simply stopped bothering, and he also told his father that he wanted to let the pigs loose on the mountain, letting them run back and forth between the mountain and the foot of the mountain. Seeing Wang Xiaohui raising pigs so freely, many friends who had raised pigs advised him.
Friend Zhou Ruiqi: Pigs are all quite wild, right? After being let out, they said, will they come home or what? Everyone was very worried.
By letting pigs loose on the mountain, 3 years later, Wang Xiaohui expanded the number of black pigs 10 times, and his small pig farm leapt to become a county-level leading enterprise. So where exactly was the secret to his success in letting pigs loose on the mountain?
This is footage Wang Xiaohui shot with his phone. That day the rain was not light, and the piglets that had been born were huddling together to keep warm, while the sow let Wang Xiaohui see a heartwarming scene: the sow was constantly searching everywhere for branches and weeds, gently placing them on the piglets to shelter them from wind and rain. Wang Xiaohui had originally been very worried that many piglets would die accidentally on the mountain, but he never expected that these black pig mothers could take such good care of the piglets. And what surprised him even more was that after letting the pigs loose on the mountain for a period of time, Wang Xiaohui discovered that every time, more than 20 days after the piglets were born, they would follow their mother down the mountain and come back. Wang Xiaohui was very curious. The distance from the mountain down to the foot of the mountain was not long either, so why did the piglets wait more than 20 days before coming down? It turned out that piglets are timid and afraid of unfamiliar environments. Following behind their mother, they advanced several dozen meters each day, and also had to back up a few meters themselves, taking three steps forward and two steps back. Finally, after more than 20 days, they could follow the sow down the mountain and merge into the pig herd. Only at this point, by vaccinating the piglets, could Wang Xiaohui know how many more black pigs he had on the mountain.
Wang Xiaohui: This litter was brought back not long ago, she moves forward step by step, and now she's moved over here and has already stayed for two or three days, and then her next step is to directly take the piglets down to the place below where there is grain.
Letting pigs loose on the mountain had originally seemed to Wang Xiaohui like a very risky thing, but unexpectedly it made pig raising very easy. Every day he only needed to go up the mountain and feed them twice. In order to get more black pigs to go up the mountain, Wang Xiaohui even deliberately let the pigs go not fully fed, and in this way, not only did the pigs go up the mountain, but what they ate also became more varied.
Wang Xiaohui: Besides hickory nuts and wild persimmons like these, in spring there are also bamboo shoots. In places like this, all the tree roots have been eaten by the pigs. Over there, over on that side, I don't know if you saw, there are peaches, lots of peach trees, and also plum trees and so on and so on.
At the end of 2014, Wang Xiaohui's black pigs were about to go on the market. Wang Xiaohui thought that big hotels in big cities would definitely be his target customers, so he headed straight for Beijing and Shanghai. But after running around several places, he came back with nothing. At this time, Wang Xiaohui really felt the pressure. Although his father had willingly taken out all his savings to support him in raising pigs, seeing that the pigs really could not be sold made Wang Xiaohui feel that he had let his father down terribly.
Wang Xiaohui: That way I'd feel especially sorry to them, their life savings earned through years of hard work, and then because of my willfulness or some other factors, the money just went down the drain. I felt very, very guilty, and couldn't get past it.
It turned out that Wang Xiaohui was too young and looked thin and small. After going out, many people thought he was still a student, and he was often underpriced and didn't know how to raise the price, so in the end nothing was agreed. At this time, more than 100 black pigs were ready for market, and there were also more than 300 new black pigs on the mountain that needed to eat. Funds were getting fewer and fewer, and it looked like there would soon be no money to buy grain. Wang Xiaohui's father also became anxious, but Wang Xiaohui seemed like a different person. Every day he went up the mountain and, besides taking photos, he just took photos. After eating at home, he would sit in front of the computer, staring motionless at images and changing them back and forth. Very soon, there were actually more than ten thousand images stored on the computer. What his father never expected was that, relying on this computer, without even leaving home, Wang Xiaohui sold the hard-to-sell black pigs.
Wang Xiaohui: When there were especially many orders, at that time I was busy from morning to night, doing customer service, packing, and also acting as a courier, going everywhere to ship goods. At that time, sometimes I was so busy I really didn't even have time to eat.
Why did black pork that used to be hard to sell become easy to sell once it was put online? When Wang Xiaohui opened an online store, he noticed a special phenomenon: although locally the price of black pork was less than 10 yuan per jin, free-range black pork from other provinces, sold online, could sell for sixty or seventy yuan per jin, with the highest reaching more than 100 yuan. Wang Xiaohui decided to set the price of his black pork at around fifty yuan, and also include free shipping, which gave him a very obvious comparative advantage in price. The relatively low price made many consumers tempted, attracting customers from many places such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang to place orders through the internet.
Wang Xiaohui: Ever since I got involved with computers and the internet, I've felt much more relaxed. The thing my dad says to me most now is that this thing is good, and that you collect the money first, and that this thing should be done well.
Selling free-range black pigs online, relying on a comparative price advantage, was Wang Xiaohui's first move to seize the online market. Half a year later, Wang Xiaohui made his second move: borrowing a boat to go to sea. These people are all friends Wang Xiaohui met at the Jixi County E-commerce Association. They all do e-commerce for agricultural products. Wang Xiaohui used to work alone, and after meeting these people, he developed many of them into his agents. With the mature channels they had accumulated over many years, Wang Xiaohui's black pork was once in short supply.
At the peak, he sold more than 10 pigs a day, and Wang Xiaohui had to go up the mountain every day to catch pigs. This black pig, caught by Wang Xiaohui's father, was unexpectedly a 3-year-old pig. In 3 years it had only grown to about 150-plus jin, and the meat yielded was only about 100 jin, but the meat quality was extremely good.
Wang Xiaohui: This fat is very obvious. First, what do you feel at first glance?
Reporter He Ningning: Translucent.
Wang Xiaohui: This is like those very high-end kinds of jade, very translucent. With this kind of meat, when you cook it, you even have to add water yourself, its water-retention is especially good, all the moisture is retained inside the meat.
Online sales solved the sales problem. Soon, Wang Xiaohui thought of a third move: scenario-based sales, which made his pork sell even faster and more steadily.
On July 29, 2016, Wang Xiaohui invited twenty or thirty people through WeChat Moments to come to his breeding base. Soon, a primitive stove built from stones was set up, and many children began experiencing grilling black pork themselves for the first time.
Visitor: Pork skewers grilled at the black pig farm in Jixi County, China.
Reporter He Ningning: Did you skewer this meat yourself?
Visitor: Yes.
Reporter He Ningning: How does it feel after coming here?
Visitor: It feels a bit wild.
What the parents never expected was that these children all turned into grill masters. Everyone was looking forward to how delicious the black pork would be once made into dishes. At this time, Wang Xiaohui offered to make everyone a famous Anhui dish, braised pork. He cut the meat into large chunks, added a little oil, added a little salt, and started cooking.
Wang Xiaohui: The fat doesn't need to be fried too dry, you don't need to extract all the oil from inside the meat. The simplest method brings out its most original flavor.
After 30 minutes, the meat was not yet fully cooked, but everyone was drawn over by the aroma and started grabbing it to eat.
Visitor: I find this pork skin especially delicious.
Reporter He Ningning: Its pork skin is very elastic.
Visitor Wang Yumin: The fat is rich but not greasy, and the lean meat has a chewy texture.
Visitor: The braised pork is ready, everyone come eat!
Soon a whole pot of meat was divided up, and everyone praised it endlessly.
Wang Xiaohui: Is this meat fragrant or not?
Visitor: Fragrant!
Wang Xiaohui: Good things should be said three times.
Visitor: Fragrant! Fragrant! Fragrant!
Actually, these people were not ordinary tourists. Among them, some did local e-commerce for agricultural products, and some had come specially from other provinces intending to act as product agents. In this way, Wang Xiaohui really let everyone see the quality of his pigs.
Visitor Hu Jingwen: After eating this meat, I felt the taste of childhood, the taste of the pork my grandmother raised at home back then, and we also personally experienced and personally tried this flavor. I just want to cooperate with him in the future, if we can cooperate, to work with him.
Now, relying on the combination of online and offline, the annual sales of black pigs exceed 3 million yuan. Adding sales of other products such as free-range chickens and free-range ducks, Wang Xiaohui's company's annual sales have reached 5 million yuan, and it has also been rated as a county-level leading enterprise. In 3 years, Wang Xiaohui went from graduation to returning to his hometown, from 8,000 yuan in debt to annual sales of five million yuan today. The ignorance at graduation has turned into a flourishing career today. For Wang Xiaohui, what he gained from this experience was not only wealth.