Raising Pigs Off the Beaten Path: The Pig Fanatic's Unique Method

In front of the camera, this is how he acts: "I can't get the words out again." But the moment he sees his pigs, he becomes like this: "Give me a hug, give me a hug, good, be good, are you misbehaving?" His friends call him a pig fanatic, and his wife is furious about it too. His obsession with pigs all stems from his nearly blind father. He spent three years and paid a hefty sum to buy special wild boars from out of town. Watch He Hairong of Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province, and see how he strikes gold with pigs!

Today, a customer wants to buy over 800 jin of fish, so He Hairong is going to cast a net and catch fish. The people taking part in the fishing are tourists introduced by a friend, all of whom have come from Yuyao City.

Reporter: How many fish do you expect to catch today?

He Hairong: There will definitely be several thousand jin.

Reporter: What varieties will there be?

He Hairong: Mainly the four major Chinese carps here.

Most of the tourists are experiencing this firsthand for the first time, and they seem very excited.

Reporter: How many times have you been here?

Tourist: First time.

Reporter: Is it fun?

Tourist: It's fun. The most fun part is going down there to catch them.

He Hairong never feeds these fish any commercial feed.

He Hairong: Our grass carp are fed grass, so they have no belly, they have very slim figures, just like me, very slim, and there's no fat inside the belly. That's why they sell faster, they're in short supply, they're hot items.

Tourist: This fish tastes great. Strike first to gain the upper hand, you can't buy this in the market.

Reporter: What can't you buy in the market?

Tourist: You definitely can't buy this at that price, and this fish is so fresh, with no fat inside.

Tourist: You catch it yourself, then steam it yourself. From the moment you walk in there's not a trace of feed, you see the surrounding environment, and then you catch it with your own hands, so it tastes even better when you eat it.

As soon as the fish are netted, these tourists each want two or three, and some even want to bring a few back for friends. He Hairong takes it all in, delighted inside, because this is exactly the effect he wants.

He Hairong: This also saves a lot of labor. This way I don't even need to hawk my goods, they just buy them and take them away, and they feel happy too. The main thing is they see more directly that this product is different from other places.

When these tourists heard that soft-shelled turtles were also raised in the pond, they asked He Hairong to cast a net and catch a few. These turtles are raised in a semi-wild way. After the turtle hatchlings are put in, no feed of any kind is given, and they are left to grow freely, so they are full of wildness.

He Hairong: Look, isn't it fast? It's this fast when it catches small fish too.

Reporter: Fast.

He Hairong: Yes, fast.

A tourist wanted to buy the turtle in the reporter's hand, but He Hairong said he wouldn't sell it even for money.

He Hairong: This is a turtle over three years old.

Reporter: You're holding one over three years old. How old is the one I'm holding?

He Hairong: About two years old.

Reporter: So mine doesn't meet your standard for selling.

He Hairong: Right. The color and glossiness of its shell are different at a glance.

Reporter: It's biting again.

He Hairong refuses to sell any turtle under three years old. So how do you tell a turtle's age? A turtle less than three years old has a whiter bottom shell, cleaner claws, and they aren't as sharp.

He Hairong: There's also the difference in the skirt edge. This skirt edge is firm and thick, while this one, see, is thin and folds downward, not firm. What I want to do is long-term business. For every customer who comes, I want to keep that customer, and use this approach to draw them in. So I'd rather earn a little less. I won't sell bad turtles to anyone. I must follow my standards and my requirements, and only when they meet those requirements can I sell them.

Because of He Hairong's insistence, his soft-shelled turtles have earned some local fame, selling for 250 yuan to 300 yuan per jin, currently nearly twice the price of soft-shelled turtles on the local market. But during the interview, He Hairong said something like this to the reporter.

He Hairong: Whatever I do, next I'll do this and that inside, there's plenty to do anyway, and it all revolves around these pigs. The ultimate goal always comes back to one point: raising pigs.

In the eyes of his family and friends, He Hairong is even more of an out-and-out "pig fanatic."

He Hairong's friend Cao Shijin: To what degree is he obsessed with pigs? When this pig farm was first built, the couple slept next to the pigs. Their bed was right here, and they slept that way for over a year. There was no enclosure at all, just a bed, with the pigs right beside it. To outsiders like us, it's unimaginable. He said, the closer the better, so he could observe them in real time.

He Hairong's wife Xu Leilei: He'd stay in the pig pen for months at a time. Basically the two of us had very little time to communicate. He lived in there all day long. The degree to which he paid attention to the pigs had far surpassed me. I felt very unbalanced, like a sense of loss.

During the interview, this kind of thing often happened with He Hairong.

He Hairong: I can't get the words out again.

He Hairong: That, that, that.

Reporter: What's wrong?

He Hairong: Just a moment.

But once he enters the pig pen, He Hairong seems like a different person, his spirits soaring, chattering endlessly at these pigs.

He Hairong: All right, I know it hurts. You've given us so many piglets again. Pigs have been with me from childhood to adulthood, especially in my childhood, they were my companions. There's an inexplicable feeling mixed in toward pigs, so pigs really are like bros to me.

He Hairong runs three veterinary drug stores. Together with the income from his fish pond and pig farm, he earns over 5 million yuan a year.

He has some local fame in Ningbo. However, as the interview went deeper, the reporter discovered that He Hairong's fate had gone through several twists and turns, and his obsession with pigs all stems from his father, who suffers from an eye disease.

He Deming, He Hairong's father, has a congenital eye disease. At first, his visibility was only one meter, and by 2006, his father had gone completely blind in both eyes. Even though he couldn't see, his father was a master at raising pigs.

Villager Shen Cairong: Just by feeling the belly, he could tell how many piglets were in a pregnant sow. That's the kind of person he is, with that level of skill and ability.