Growing roses to extract essential oil, forging a path to prosperity amid green mountains and clear waters

In Qiantan Town, Jiande City, there is an "Ailisi Rose Garden." Ren Shengyuan is its owner.

Over the past 5 years, Ren Shengyuan has gone from producing crystal bottles for essential oil to producing the essential oil inside those bottles, forging a path to prosperity amid green mountains and clear waters: the scene of roaring machines and rivers of sewage is gone, replaced by hundreds of mu of fragrant flower fields. In Jiangsu, Henan and other places, the "Ailisi Rose Garden" model is being replicated, with a total area of nearly 6,000 mu nationwide and annual revenue exceeding 30 million yuan.

Ren Shengyuan is a well-known crystal tycoon in the local area. Since the 1980s, he has set up crystal processing factories in Jiande, Pujiang and other places, specializing in producing crystal bottles for perfume packaging. Starting in 2010, the factory took on a large number of overseas orders, with annual output value reaching more than 20 million yuan.

The impressive figures, however, brought harm to the environment, and a "milk river" appeared beside the factory. Soon afterward, the local government established a special task force for crystal industry rectification, and because Ren Shengyuan's crystal factory was large in scale, it had to shoulder the responsibility of leading the transformation. He consulted his crystal client in Dubai, and this old friend from across the ocean offered a suggestion: try making rose essential oil. The reason was simple: at international market prices, each kilogram of rose essential oil sells for 300,000 yuan, comparable to gold.

Having long handled crystal bottles, Ren Shengyuan was now setting his mind on the essential oil inside the bottles, and he took quite a few detours along the way.

To select suitable rose varieties, the couple drove far and wide across the country. After returning to Jiande, the couple rented a test plot and planted 200,000 rose plants. As soon as the petals were picked and the essential oil extracted, the two were stunned: the essential oil indicators showed a value of zero. It turned out that these 200,000 plants were cut flowers, the kind given on Valentine's Day, suitable only for ornamental purposes.

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, the two sought advice from rose experts everywhere and plunged into books. Damask rose, Xihu Mohong, Kushui rose... these two "laymen" finally found reliable rose varieties.

In a valley in Pailou Village, the couple planted nearly 300 varieties of roses on 420 mu of land. "The climate here is very similar to another place in the world where roses are grown, and that is the Rose Valley in Bulgaria," said his wife Wang Jianyu. Roses are like delicate little princesses, afraid of heat in summer and cold in winter, and need careful tending.

The mountain hollow once overgrown with weeds has become a romantic rose garden in full bloom, producing nearly 20 kilograms of rose essential oil each year. And the former crystal clients all came knocking, seeking a second round of cooperation. A client from Dubai bought the rose garden's first batch of rose essential oil, and this partnership has continued to this day.

In 5 years, Ren Shengyuan went from the pollution-generating crystal processing industry to the environment-enhancing rose-growing industry. The ecological change has also driven changes in the lives of the villagers: the rose garden mobilized surplus rural labor, involving 200 surrounding farming households and creating more than 500 temporary jobs. Every year, the rose garden rents land from the villagers at nearly 600 yuan per mu.

Last weekend, a large group of young men and women arrived at the rose garden, laughing and chatting. Although the sun was shining brightly outside, the water-cooled air conditioning was turned on full blast in the nearly 2,000-sq-m greenhouse, where young couples played matchmaking games. Ren Shengyuan told reporters that Ailisi Rose Garden is developing sightseeing, leisure and tourism, and will be built into an agricultural industrial park integrating technology industry with tourism and leisure.

Walking through the park, one can find rose-related creative features everywhere: a rose swimming pool, a rose matchmaking garden, a rose amusement park... The sunshine flower house in the park was converted from a 3,000-sq-m greenhouse. Here there are not only handicraft workshops such as rose soap-making, but also a distinctive rose restaurant that can receive more than 300 people at the same time.

Every weekend, the place is packed with diners. Sipping rose tea, they look forward to the soon-to-be-served "rose chicken," "rose mochi," "rose fish"...

Nowadays, visitors from out of town will drive thousands of miles to stop at the rose garden, drawn by its fragrance, and enjoy making friends, sightseeing, dining and lodging to their heart's content. A sea of roses has launched a modern agricultural journey of the "sixth industry."