A post-85s couple in Jinyun, Zhejiang gave up high salaries to return to their hometown and make bayberry wine, achieving eco-friendly prosperity
“Red fruits dot the green branches, blooming brightly before the front dock.” In midsummer, during the plum rain season, popping a ripe bayberry into your mouth brings a sweet-and-sour, juicy burst that delights the palate and refreshes the heart. Unfortunately, the bayberry season is short, so to preserve this mouth-watering sweet-and-sour taste, most people make it into bayberry wine.
Recently, at the Ren'an Bayberry Festival held in Shuhong Town, Jinyun County, Zhejiang Province, one bayberry wine stood out brilliantly, and even foreigners accustomed to drinking grape wine gave it a thumbs-up after tasting it. This pure-fermented bayberry wine was made by a post-85s couple from Jinyun——Ding Shuliang and Zheng Renfang. For this wine, the couple gave up annual salaries of 170,000 to 180,000 yuan in Hangzhou and Ningbo and returned to their hometown to start a business.
Returning to One's Roots, Seeking a Path to Eco-Friendly Prosperity
“My husband worked in futures and finance, and I worked in tourism planning. We often went to rural areas and found that the natural resource conditions in the countryside are not bad now, but the economy has not developed much.” Talking about the original intention of returning to their hometown to start a business, Zheng Renfang said that in the early stage they also did a lot of research. With the aim of “collecting real food ingredients scattered across the land,” the couple once established “Panxi Commune” and conducted a comprehensive investigation and evaluation of Jinyun's local specialties.
“Bayberry and Chinese chestnut are the two industries in Jinyun with relatively obvious local resource advantages. Making wine from Chinese chestnuts would be quite difficult creatively. As for bayberries, there are too many here, and no one picks them.” Shuhong Town is a famous bayberry-producing area in Jinyun County and once won first place twice in the “Zhejiang Province Agricultural Guinness Challenge.” However, bayberries here encountered an awkward situation: they cannot be sold in the countryside, and they cannot be bought in the city.
As a “foodie,” Zheng Renfang has her own unique views on bayberries. She believes that the highest praise for a bayberry is not sweetness, not juiciness, but freshness. In her impression, this freshness can only be truly experienced by climbing to the hilltops of her hometown.
“The local area focuses on developing agriculture, and deep processing of agricultural products is the only way out.” Therefore, the couple secretly made up their minds to combine the old brewing recipes of their elders to make a bayberry wine with original juice and authentic flavor. They also hoped to use this to open up a larger market for the village's bayberries.