Honeysuckle Turns into a Flower of Wealth, Shen Changlong Blazes a Trail to Greater Income
The poor and backward Tuanjie Township is located in the mountainous area northwest of Yuechi County, 38 km from the Yuechi county seat, bordering Jinshui Township and Wanjia Township of Gaoping District, Nanchong City. The township has almost no flat land and features a typical deep-hill landscape. Chaomen Village is the most remote village in the township, 10 km from the township government; just over the mountain ridge lies Nanchong.
Right now, in this remote mountain village, the villagers are busy harvesting honeysuckle, and hearty laughter rings out from time to time across the 180-mu honeysuckle planting base. Shen Changlong, a 36-year-old local business owner, told reporters that this year he expects to harvest 5,000 kg of dried honeysuckle, which, at last year's purchase price offered by the medicinal materials company, would bring in about 400,000 yuan. Next year's output, he estimates, will double this year's.
Shen Changlong was originally the village doctor of Chaomen Village, but the poverty of his hometown forced him to leave. Now he has returned home, planting honeysuckle on a large scale, and has achieved initial success.
This road back took Shen Changlong a full 15 years, accompanied by youth and tears.
Graduated from Health School and Became a Village Doctor; Forced to Leave by His Hometown's Poverty
In 2001, after graduating from the Sichuan Provincial Health School, Shen Changlong returned to Chaomen Village and became a village doctor. That same year, he married his girlfriend, and the following year he also took a job as a substitute teacher at the village primary school. And so, Shen Changlong became the village's only village doctor and its only village primary school teacher, while his wife became a veritable village doctor's assistant.
Tuanjie Township has poor conditions, and few teachers formally recruited by the state ever come; in Chaomen Village, no formal teacher had been seen for many years. During his time as a substitute teacher, new students enrolled every year, but no new teachers arrived, so he had to carry out multi-grade teaching; at the busiest times, about 40 students from 4 grade levels had classes together in one classroom.
Because of poverty, villagers often came to the village clinic for treatment and could not even afford a few yuan for medicine, so Shen Changlong had to pay for them. Not only that, every year he also had to advance school fees for some students. Over several years, the medical fees and school fees Shen Changlong advanced amounted to several thousand yuan, and to this day more than 4,000 yuan has still not been repaid. "It's been more than 10 years; of those who owe money, some have passed away, some have left with their whole families, and I don't intend to ask for it back."
What Shen Changlong could least tolerate was that he often became a target for thieves. Back then, he raised more than 10 meat ducks, intended for his wife who had just given birth, but all of them were stolen. Property at the village clinic was also frequently stolen, and the thieves did not even spare his medical kit.
In 2006, utterly helpless, Shen Changlong had no choice but to take his family away from his hometown and open a private clinic in Laojun Township, Gaoping District, Nanchong City...
Returned Home After Making Money to Grow Medicinal Herbs; Poor Methods Brought Losses Year After Year
Shen Changlong is honest and simple by nature and devoted to his work. In Laojun Township he gradually built a wide network of contacts, and his business prospered day by day. Over several years, he bought a shop and a home in the township and shifted from outpatient treatment to medicine sales.
Through long-term engagement in medicine sales, Shen Changlong was very optimistic about the market prospects for honeysuckle cultivation: "Honeysuckle is known as the antibiotic of traditional Chinese medicine. Market demand is large, and the price trend has always looked good. It also has strong adaptability and is not too particular about the land; it produces results quickly, as planting in the first year allows flowers to be harvested in the second; and its yield is also extremely high."
In 2009, Shen Changlong decided to develop a honeysuckle planting project on top of running his pharmacy. He returned to the village and rented 180 mu of barren hillside land. The villagers did not believe that these hillside plots, which had been left barren for more than 10 years in a row and where the weeds grew taller than a person, could still produce "gold." For a time, there was a great deal of gossip.
Paying no attention to this, Shen Changlong rented an excavator and, over just a few days, actually carved a tractor road out of the steep slope. At the same time, he hired a large number of workers to hoe the weeds, spending more than 60,000 yuan on weed clearing alone. After that, he invested more than 100,000 yuan to buy over 10,000 honeysuckle seedlings from elsewhere and plant them.
The following year, the honeysuckle began to be harvested. "The flowering period lasts only half a month. If it meets continuous rainy days during that time, you can forget about harvesting. After bringing it back, if you pile the honeysuckle up, it will rot; if you dry it directly in the sun, it will turn black and be hard to sell. Only by steaming it first and then drying it will the honeysuckle not change color." In the earlier years, because of improper handling, Shen Changlong ran at a loss almost every year.
In 2012, more and more honeysuckle was harvested. Shen Changlong used a truck to transport it to Laojun Township, where it piled up in several large rooms. He hired several workers to steam it on one side and dry it on the other. But it rained for several days in the middle of the process, and he could only watch helplessly as piles of honeysuckle all rotted, with nothing he could do. In the second half of the year, Shen Changlong, who had used up almost all his savings, did not retreat. He borrowed some more money from relatives and friends, converted the base's original iron-sheet building into a multi-story building to make it easier to store honeysuckle, and at the same time built a simple drying room using crude methods. After the 2013 harvest, he discovered that the drying room built with crude methods did not work well; the honeysuckle dried in it had extremely poor color and could only be sold cheaply, and the money from the sale was not even enough to offset the picking wages.
In 2014, the honeysuckle output in the fields was even greater. That year, more than 20,000 jin of fresh honeysuckle was harvested, but during the harvest period there were about 10 days of rainy weather, and in addition, because a steel tower was built on the mountaintop, the power was cut for several days, so the drying room could not operate. In the end, all of that more than 20,000 jin of fresh honeysuckle rotted. At the time, the picking wages alone cost more than 10,000 yuan.
Gritting His Teeth and Persisting Until Dawn; Vowing to Lead His Hometown to Moderate Prosperity
To fully support his son's undertaking, Shen Changlong's father helped in the fields all year round without ever complaining. Seeing his son fail again and again, his father still could not help urging him: "Changlong, as for growing honeysuckle, you'd better forget it. Anyway, your pharmacy income is decent, so why work so hard for so little thanks?"
As long as Shen Changlong has set his mind on something, he will keep at it. In 2015, through loans and borrowing, he raised 130,000 yuan in funds and built a standardized drying room in the base that could regulate humidity and temperature. That year, because he lacked experience in controlling temperature and humidity, about half of the honeysuckle was sold cheaply due to poor color, but he still made more than 50,000 yuan.
"With the standardized drying room, plus experience in operation, this year will definitely be much better than last year." Shen Changlong revealed that this year he estimates he can harvest 25,000 kg of fresh honeysuckle, which after drying will be about 5,000 kg. Even calculated at last year's price of 80 yuan per kg, the income would still be good.
"Even so, this year has not achieved the ideal result." Shen Changlong said there are mainly two problems: first, about 10 mu of honeysuckle was entirely infected by mold because it grew too densely and had poor ventilation, among other reasons, leaving almost no harvest; second, the drying room is rather small, and the daily picking volume must be arranged according to the drying capacity, which causes some honeysuckle that has reached maturity to fall to the ground because it cannot be picked in time. This year, it is estimated that about 5,000 kg of fresh honeysuckle will fall to the ground. For this reason, he has already decided to expand the drying room next year and strengthen management in the prevention and control of pests, diseases and mold, so as to reduce losses.
When the reporter asked whether he still wanted to expand the planting scale, Shen Changlong said he would rather hope that other villagers in his village, after seeing his success, would spontaneously plant honeysuckle. He can provide free technical guidance and take responsibility for purchasing the villagers' fresh honeysuckle. "Making all the villagers wealthy is my original intention in growing honeysuckle in my hometown."