Henan girl grows pomegranates in Sichuan, drives villagers to prosperity and aims to build a Chu Orange-style brand

“Pomegranates are tasty but the seeds are hard to spit out!” Most people who have eaten pomegranates have had this experience. If there were a pomegranate whose seeds did not need to be spat out, that would surely be the answer every pomegranate lover hopes for.

In fact, as early as 1986, when Tunisia established diplomatic relations with China, it presented 6 soft-seed pomegranate saplings from that country, which were later planted at the Heyin pomegranate base in Gaocun Township, Xingyang City, Henan Province. After decades of cultivation, these soft-seed pomegranates from Tunisia have become a well-known local pomegranate variety.

The pomegranate trees grown by the family of Liu Juan, a girl from Henan, were exactly this type. In 2009, because of a rare natural disaster in her hometown in Henan, Liu Juan had to move her whole family south and choose a more suitable planting site.

Contracting an orchard but being suspected of “running a pyramid scheme”

Huili County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, became their first choice. Huili County is located at the southernmost tip of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. The area has a long history of pomegranate cultivation, and as early as the Tang Dynasty the fruit was once listed as tribute.

When they first arrived in Huili County, Liu Juan could not understand the local dialect and had to rely entirely on guessing, so she could only ask friends everywhere for help in finding orchards whose owners were willing to let people contract them. “When local people heard that people from Henan had come to contract orchards, they suspected we were here to run a pyramid scheme.” Liu Juan was quite helpless, because she and her family wanted to bring the best soft-seed pomegranate variety from their hometown to Huili, which required grafting the local existing adult pomegranate trees. Local growers worried about what would happen if grafting failed and caused the trees to die. They not only distrusted the grafting technique, but were even more worried about whether Liu Juan, a person from Henan, would run away.

In the process of promoting soft-seed pomegranates, besides the locals' initial disapproval and suspicion that she was a swindler: “Why are people from Henan swindlers? There are good people and bad people everywhere, so why should all people from Henan bear this fact?” Liu Juan secretly made up her mind that she must, through her own efforts, change the image of people from Henan across the country. She heard that Li Meiyun, the village head of Hexin Village in Xinfa Township, had planted 5000 pomegranate trees and had been losing money due to poor management. As soon as Liu Juan learned the news, she immediately signed a 10-year contract with Li Meiyun.

Grafting soft-seed pomegranates, a villager earns a million yuan a year

After the grafting of soft-seed pomegranates succeeded in local trials, many local people could not understand it: people from Henan had come so far to graft, and were selling them so expensively, roughly more than 10 times the local pomegranate price.

Kang Derong, the nephew of Li Meiyun, the village head of Hexin, saw at the time that the returns from grafted soft-seed pomegranates were good, so he took the initiative to say he would help for a few days without pay. At the end, Liu Juan gave him some branches. Kang Derong expanded a little each year, and now has more than 3000 trees. In 2015, the lowest price for local seeded pomegranates was five mao per jin, while Kang Derong, even when his sales channels were not yet very smooth, sold them at 8 yuan per jin, and that year his income exceeded 500,000 yuan.

Kang Derong said he was very grateful to Liu Juan for bringing soft-seed pomegranates to Huili. In 2016, Kang Derong predicted his income would reach more than 1 million yuan. Among local growers like Kang Derong, dozens of households had grafted and reached a certain scale.

So far, the orchard contracted by Liu Juan has reached 1300 mu, and in 2016 it is expected to reach a output of 1.3 million jin. At the same time, Liu Juan also hopes to use the power of local government departments to organize villagers to graft in an orderly way, so that more local farmers can also benefit from it, and she hopes even more that Huili soft-seed pomegranates can go beyond China and have a place in the international market.

Named “Youth Red” soft-seed pomegranate, aiming to match Chu Orange

The pomegranates were there, and the quality was good too, but Liu Juan began to discover new problems.

As early as August 2013, Liu Juan's father transported more than 10,000 jin of soft-seed pomegranates back to his hometown in Henan to sell at more than 10 yuan per jin. However, he also ran into an awkward situation: Huili soft-seed pomegranates disrupted the local Henan soft-seed pomegranate market, and the local industry and commerce department began cracking down on counterfeits, saying they were passed off as Heyin soft-seed pomegranates.

But later, as Huili soft-seed pomegranates gained market recognition, the local Henan government again approached Liu Juan, wanting to build a Huili production area for Heyin soft-seed pomegranates and jointly promote the brand.

Liu Juan began to think about the importance of branding to this industry. “In the past I might have thought that after earning a few million I would stop. Now that won't do. More and more people are jumping on the trend, and quality is uneven. They have even sold at 3 yuan per jin, seriously disrupting the soft-seed pomegranate industry.” Liu Juan said she wanted to build a brand for her soft-seed pomegranates, one as deeply loved by users as Chu Orange.

For soft-seed pomegranates, Liu Juan gave her most beautiful youth. She wanted to give the pomegranate a nice name: “Let's call it Youth Red soft-seed pomegranate. It means I did not waste my youth. A different youth, uniquely red, just like when those pomegranate flowers bloom, the red across the mountains and plains is extremely beautiful.”