Migrant worker Hu Nengxiu returns home to start a business and gets rich raising pigs

Hu Nengxiu, who lives in Changqiao Village, Tianbao Township, Yifeng County, Jiangxi Province, is a true rural woman, plain in appearance and warm to others. Now 43 years old, she is a well-known pig-raising expert in the area and a representative of entrepreneurial women. The Changqiao Baiji Pig Farm she founded covers more than 1000 sq m, has more than 1000 pigs of various types on hand, and reaches annual sales of several million yuan. When people talk about Hu Nengxiu's entrepreneurial experience, the villagers all praise her without exception.

For the family, she resolutely returned home to start a business

In 2006, Hu Nengxiu, already a mother of two children, went south to Guangdong to work in order to ease the family's financial pressure. Relying on the rural spirit of enduring hardship and being down-to-earth and tenacious, she worked in an electronics factory, a food processing factory and other factories for six years in succession, only returning home during the Spring Festival each year to reunite with her family. But Hu Nengxiu knew very well that working away from home was not a long-term plan. As her two children grew up day by day, they increasingly needed their mother's care, and the elderly at home were also declining in health and often needed someone to look after them. After the Spring Festival in 2012, Hu Nengxiu finally made up her mind to stay at home and take care of the family. But having seen the wider world outside, Hu Nengxiu could not bear to support the family only on the meager income from her husband's farming. One day, she said to her husband, “Old Hu, how about we start a side business too? We have elders above and children below, and relying only on your little income is not a solution.” Hu Nengxiu's husband, Hu Lansheng, was also an honest and dutiful farmer. Although he was rather hesitant about his wife's idea, he had always trusted and supported her, and this time was no exception; he agreed to his wife's idea. “But I only graduated from junior high school, with no education and no skills. What can I do?” Hu Nengxiu thought that rural people had all raised pigs, “so let's raise some pigs.”

After many twists and turns, the bitterness finally gave way to sweetness as she got her wish

In this way, with savings from many years of working and more than 200,000 yuan borrowed from relatives and friends, Hu Nengxiu set up her own pig farm in the village in the spring of 2013. Because funds were limited, she initially bought only more than 50 half-grown sows. As her pigs grew day by day, Hu Nengxiu was full of drive. But the good times did not last long. Just as the sows were about to begin breeding, a swine epidemic caused several large sows on the farm to die of illness, resulting in direct economic losses of tens of thousands of yuan. That was the most agonizing and helpless period for Hu Nengxiu. The setback did not defeat her; instead, it made her work even harder to learn methods of preventing and treating pig diseases, and through her own efforts she enabled the remaining sows to grow up healthily.

The sows were all about to give birth, and Hu Nengxiu finally breathed a sigh of relief, but an unexpected situation made her worry endlessly again. Because she lacked systematic pig-raising experience, when the sows gave birth, the piglets were not isolated in time, and overnight many newborn piglets were crushed to death when the sows rolled over in their sleep. To prevent this from happening again, Hu Nengxiu had to take turns with her husband keeping watch in the pigpen day and night. After all the sows had finished giving birth, Hu Nengxiu had lost a good deal of weight.

Through constant observation and learning, Hu Nengxiu's pig-raising skills kept improving, and the pig farm became more and more prosperous. Having tasted success, Hu Nengxiu began to expand the scale of the pig farm, but the funding problem blocked her progress. With “no way out,” Hu Nengxiu learned that the labor and employment department had a subsidized small guaranteed loan policy for migrant workers returning home to start businesses, so she rushed to the local employment bureau's guarantee center to learn about the situation. When the staff asked about her circumstances in detail and told her she met the loan application requirements, the heavy stone in Hu Nengxiu's heart finally dropped. After receiving support from a 200,000 yuan subsidized loan from the local employment bureau, Hu Nengxiu finally expanded her four large pig houses as she had wished, and the number of sows on hand increased to more than 100.

Benefiting the village and leading the villagers to common prosperity

Hu Nengxiu's successful entrepreneurial experience greatly encouraged the villagers and strongly boosted their enthusiasm for starting businesses. Under Hu Nengxiu's leadership, three pig farms were set up in Changqiao Village one after another, driving employment for dozens of villagers. Hu Nengxiu said: “Villagers cannot get rich by raising pigs alone. We should use the village's advantageous resources to develop other planting, breeding, tourism and processing industries.” Hu Nengxiu's ideas did not remain merely words; she practiced them personally. In 2015, Hu Nengxiu and her husband used the Tianbao Luo wine brewing technique they had mastered to take the lead in setting up their own wine-making workshop in the village. Because the local climate is suitable and the water quality is excellent, the Tianbao Luo wine produced by their family is sweet and mellow, with a long lingering warmth, and its good name has spread far and wide, often attracting many out-of-town merchants who come because of its reputation. This year, Hu Nengxiu's husband, Hu Lansheng, was also elected secretary of Changqiao Village, and the couple will go further and further on the road of leading the whole village toward common prosperity.