How did Tian'e plums in Guangxi, China, build an entire industry?
In the photo, workers are packing and shipping Zhenzhu plums
In the autumn 18 years ago, on that lazy, sunny afternoon, Cui Dejun, a farmer from Wufu Village, Bala Yao Ethnic Township, Tian'e County, took his cattle up the mountain to graze. Cui Dejun, who had no way to find work and had just returned home dejectedly from Guangdong, had nothing to do, so he looked up at the sky, lay down on the grass, and unknowingly fell asleep.
When Cui Dejun woke up, he was unbearably thirsty, so he looked around for wild fruit. Suddenly, the purple plums on several wild plum trees caught his eye. After eating two or three plums, Cui Dejun found them sweet and tart with a lingering fragrance on his lips. This thrilled Cui Dejun, who had once worked as a technician in an orchard, and he decided to graft these wild plum trees onto his own fruit trees.
Time flew by, and 18 years passed. The several wild plum trees Cui Dejun discovered back then had long since “reached the end of their natural lives,” but the “Zhenzhu plum” he successfully grafted and that was “enough to fill your belly” has, under the vigorous promotion of the Tian'e County Party Committee and County Government, reached a planting area of more than 100,000 mu, and the product has become famous far and wide, sold to more than 20 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) across the country.
A fate changed by plums
On August 9, the glaring sun hung in the sky. In his own orchard, 48-year-old Fang Wencai sold the last batch of Zhenzhu plums to a boss from Guilin. Having just finished weighing the plums, Fang Wencai was panting, drenched in sweat, and looking relaxed.
Fang Wencai is from Gaojian Tun, Bala Village, Bala Township. He has a family of six, and his wife is disabled and has difficulty moving around. Before 2008, Fang Wencai rushed around from place to place, relying on hard labor to support his family, and life was very difficult.
In 2009, under the guidance of the local government, Fang Wencai planted 15 mu of Zhenzhu plums on his sloping land. Cold comes and summer goes, autumn harvests and winter storage. Starting in 2012, the Zhenzhu plums began to bear fruit one after another. Over several years, he earned more than 1.6 million yuan from selling the fruit and built a beautiful Western-style house.
Fang Wencai's fate is a vivid reflection of the fate of Gaojian Tun. Gaojian Tun sits halfway up the mountain, and looking down from the tun, the world-famous Longtan Hydropower Station dam comes into view. For many years, the villagers here dug wells for drinking water and farmed the land for food, living hard yet peaceful lives.
Also in the autumn of 2012, more than 500 mu of Zhenzhu plums planted by the 22 households in Gaojian Tun at the time bloomed and bore fruit. The unique taste of Zhenzhu plums drew fruit merchants in droves to buy them at high prices. Zhenzhu plums began to become the villagers' “money tree.”
Xiao Xingqin, the head of Gaojian Tun, told this reporter that in 2014 alone, the total output value of Zhenzhu plums in Gaojian Tun was 3.8 million yuan, with an average household income of 170,000 yuan, the highest household income reaching 360,000 yuan, and the lowest income 80,000 yuan. “Now, every household in the whole tun has built a beautiful building, and some have even bought cars,” Xiao Xingqin said.
Today, Gaojian Tun has become a model of getting rich through industry in Tian'e County. A paved cement road leads straight to the village entrance, and the plum trees covering the hills have become a tourist attraction. In March and April when plum blossoms are in full bloom, and in July and August when plum fruit fragrance fills the air, this place becomes a great destination for people to enjoy flowers and taste fruit, and the once quiet small mountain village has become lively.
In Tian'e, Zhenzhu plums have become a major “sharp tool” for farmers to escape poverty and become rich, and stories of farmers making big money by growing plums can be found everywhere. Cui Dejun, who discovered Zhenzhu plums back then, now grows 50 mu of Zhenzhu plums. Under his leadership, large growers such as Tian Yanrong and Zheng Shaomi emerged in Wufu Village, helping more than 600 households escape poverty and become rich.
Wang Mingsong, now in his 50s, is the chairman of Yimin Fruit and Vegetable Cooperative, the first cooperative in Bala Township, and has 104 farming households “under his name.” Most of the cooperative's more than 1,200 mu of Zhenzhu plums are sold through him to Sichuan, Guizhou, and other places. “In our cooperative, the annual income of farmers growing Zhenzhu plums is more than 400,000 yuan for the high earners and 30,000 to 40,000 yuan for the low earners,” Wang Mingsong said.
After years of painstaking operation, Tian'e County's Zhenzhu plums have now grown to 100,000 mu, with 18,000 mu in production and an output value of 120 million yuan. The specialty industry covers 16,900 impoverished people registered under the poverty alleviation system, accounting for 67.2% of the county's poor population.
The “internet celebrity” of WeChat Moments
The “darling” of e-commerce
“The fruit tastes very good, and customers have responded well. Please send another 100 boxes.” On the evening of August 7, Huang Pengfei, who does WeChat business in Nanning, received a call from the owner of a fruit wholesale market in Dongying, Shandong, asking him to deliver goods urgently. The 60 boxes of Zhenzhu plums this owner had stocked up two days earlier sold out within a single day.
At the beginning of August, Zhenzhu plums began to hit the market. In WeChat Moments, the bumper harvest of Zhenzhu plums almost flooded the screen, and what everyone talked about most was its crisp flesh and unique taste, while online sales were booming like crazy.
At noon on August 4, in a fruit shop in Tian'e County town, 28-year-old Li Jialing did not even have time to eat lunch. Her phone rang nonstop as she packed Zhenzhu plums into gift boxes one moment and instructed people to transfer goods from the orchard the next, so busy that she was drenched in sweat.
Although she only started doing WeChat business in February this year, Li Jialing's business has been booming, and online sales of Tian'e's premium fruits have reached more than 100,000 jin. After Zhenzhu plums hit the market at the end of July, Li Jialing became even busier. “Every day I have to send about 150 packages of Zhenzhu plums to Liuzhou, Shanghai, Shandong, and other places. I can make 20 to 30 yuan per package. It really wears me out,” Li Jialing said happily as she waved a thick stack of shipping invoices.
“I have more than 1,000 friends in my WeChat Moments, and more than 200 of them do WeChat business selling Zhenzhu plums,” Li Jialing told this reporter.
The Tian'e E-Commerce Association has been established for less than a month, and currently has 12 member units. Wei Mingsheng, chairman of the association and chairman of Tian'e Jinguiyuan Food Co., Ltd., said: “Starting August 4, the e-commerce chamber of commerce began selling Zhenzhu plums online, and Jinguiyuan Company sends more than 1,500 packages of Zhenzhu plums to various places every day.”
The bills of logistics companies also corroborate the booming sales of Zhenzhu plums.
On the morning of August 4, this reporter saw at the business hall of the Tian'e County Postal Company that crowds were bustling both inside and outside the door, and the ground was covered with boxes of Zhenzhu plums waiting for express delivery. Front desk worker Luo Qijia told this reporter that since July 30, the business hall had been sending out about 3,500 packages of Zhenzhu plums every day, and at peak times it would reach 4,000 to 5,000 packages, a situation that would continue until the end of August.
Since Zhenzhu plums hit the market, although the daily business volume of SF Express's Tian'e outlet is not as much as that of the postal company, it has surged more than 10 times compared with ordinary days, and the outlet had to add staff and work overtime to cope.
Statistics provided by the Tian'e County Fruit Bureau show that from August 4 to 9, in just 6 days, the whole county sold 4,000 tons of Zhenzhu plums, with field wholesale prices ranging from 3 yuan to 12 yuan per kilogram, ensuring the fruit-growing income of the county's farmers.
The persistence of those years, the harvest of these years
Fifteen years ago, when the Longtan Hydropower Station was launched, large flows of people and goods poured into Tian'e, and among the crowded crowds drifted all kinds of dialects. Tian'e, this small, remote, and little-known city, also rose to fame because of Longtan.
In 2009, the Longtan Hydropower Station was fully completed, and two or three years earlier, large numbers of construction workers had already withdrawn from Tian'e. The noise gradually faded, and the prosperity receded. How to rely on Longtan to vigorously develop Tian'e's economy and bring benefits to ordinary people became a difficult problem facing successive Tian'e County Party Committees and County Governments.
From August 3 to 4, this newspaper's special interview and reporting team conducted interviews in Tian'e. Driving from Wu'ai Town in Nandan to Tian'e, mountains and rivers intertwined all the way, lush and verdant. The fresh air and greenery everywhere made people feel immensely comfortable. Persisting in green development for decades, as if it were a single day, is precisely the key to Tian'e County's breakthrough, and the “viral rise” of Zhenzhu plums exactly proves this point.
According to statistics, in Tian'e, where there are no factories and no chimneys in sight, in 2015 the county completed a regional GDP of 5.59 billion yuan, fiscal revenue of 379 million yuan, and a per capita net income of rural residents of 6,100 yuan, up 44.4%, 67.3%, and 41.4% respectively compared with 2011. These total figures still lag far behind some places nationwide and across the region, but in Tian'e, with its high mountains, long roads, and poor natural conditions, they are already no small achievement.
“Undoubtedly, the Longtan Hydropower Station has played a huge role in driving Tian'e's economy. But the green industry is a project that enriches the people and brings the greatest tangible benefits to ordinary people,” said Hua Shengfeng, who has worked at the Tian'e Statistics Bureau for 24 years and has always had a thorough understanding of Tian'e's economic development.
Hua Shengfeng believes that Tian'e's ability to develop its specialty agriculture so well benefits from the foresight of successive Tian'e County Party Committee and County Government teams, their embrace of the realm of “success need not be mine,” their adherence to the concepts of green development and governing for the people, and their practice of one term after another carrying on the work and achieving results through long, sustained effort. In particular, since 2011, the whole county has innovated business models and marketing models, and the leading industry, Longtan Zhenzhu plums, has won many honors, gained the affection and recognition of people across the country, and driven the rapid development and growth of specialty agriculture.
Wei Facai, director of the Tian'e County Fruit Bureau, believes that after many years of careful cultivation, Tian'e's ecological industry has basically achieved “upgrading.” At present, Tian'e County has a total of 473,000 mu of high-quality fruit, 175,000 mu of walnuts, 123,000 mu of golden camellia, 615,000 mu of tung oil trees, and 150,000 mu of moso bamboo, with 102 cooperatives and 128 family farms developed. The diversification of the ecological industry has brought farmers visible and tangible benefits, allowing them to hold a “golden rice bowl.”