The mountain sentiment of a female entrepreneur college graduate in Taoxi Town, Wuping County
Wang Xiuzhen is an ordinary college graduate who returned to her hometown in Taoxi Town, Wuping County. In recent years, she has used the e-commerce platform to bring the original ecological agricultural products of her hometown to the whole country, letting more people share the gifts of the mountains together. In the process of promoting agricultural products, she has also achieved entrepreneurial success herself.
On June 1, the author met Wang Xiuzhen at the Wuping County E-commerce Entrepreneurship Park. She looked gentle and refined, just like a schoolgirl who had just left campus (as shown in the photo), and it was hard to connect her with an entrepreneur who battles every day in the deep mountains and old forests. She said: “Choosing to return home to start a business, and choosing the direction of agriculture, is perhaps because I have been rooted in the mountains since childhood!”
Wang Xiuzhen's parents worked at the Taoxi Town forestry station in the early years. Growing up in this small mountain village town, she often followed her parents through the green mountains and clear waters from a young age. In the mountains there are natural treasures such as red mushrooms, Anoectochilus roxburghii, and green tea, as well as all kinds of mischievous and lively small animals, full of original ecological wild charm. Although when she was in her teens, Wang Xiuzhen left Taoxi and moved back to the county town with her family, and later went to Beijing for university, those green mountains and clear waters have always lingered in her thoughts.
After graduating from university in 2007, Wang Xiuzhen entered an e-commerce company in Beijing. The pay there was good, and by all logic Wang Xiuzhen could have stayed in Beijing to develop. But the longer she was away from her hometown, the stronger her childhood mountain sentiment became, and her e-commerce work also greatly inspired her: her hometown had so many high-quality original ecological agricultural products, yet they had always remained unknown deep in the mountains. Why not sell her hometown's high-quality original ecological agricultural products to all parts of the country through the internet?
With such a sentiment, Wang Xiuzhen gave up her job in Beijing. In the spring of 2013, she returned to her hometown and began her entrepreneurial journey. When she first returned to Wuping, she found that at that time there were many merchants selling Hakka original ecological specialty products, but very few truly devoted to building one into a brand. Old-fashioned packaging, uneven quality, and traditional sales channels made it hard for original ecological agricultural products to be recognized by more customers. For this reason, Wang Xiuzhen was determined to integrate fashionable elements with original ecology, and through the cutting-edge platform of e-commerce, bring Wuping's original ecological agricultural products to the whole country.
In order to discover more high-quality original ecological agricultural products, Wang Xiuzhen often drove alone into the deep mountains. The winding mountain roads sometimes allowed only one car to pass, and outside the car window were steep cliffs. After driving a stretch, the palms gripping the steering wheel were covered in cold sweat. When she was hungry at noon, she would gnaw on a piece of bread in the car, or knock on the door of a farmer's house in the mountains and buy something to eat.
“At first I was still a little scared, a girl alone in the wilderness, going to a stranger's farmhouse to eat.” Wang Xiuzhen said with a smile. But after a few days, this unfamiliarity and fear were quickly melted by the unique warmth and simplicity of the Hakka people. Lunch in the mountains was often very simple, but exceptionally delicious: a bowl of handmade rice noodles, garnished with a few fresh red mushrooms just picked from the mountains, with a fragrant aroma wafting over, greatly increasing the appetite. This also further strengthened Wang Xiuzhen's determination to devote herself to agricultural e-commerce: in the deep mountains of Wuping, there are still many such pure natural and delicious good things, and operating original ecological agricultural products should have great prospects.
However, some farmers, seeing that Wang Xiuzhen was young and quiet, had concerns and worried that she could not promote their products. At such times, Wang Xiuzhen would always chat with the farmers in her hometown dialect, use her mobile phone to demonstrate the operation of the e-commerce platform, and spread knowledge of new agriculture. Seeing their own collected original ecological agricultural products put into newly designed fashionable packaging and sold nationwide through the e-commerce platform, one farming household after another chose to establish long-term cooperative relationships with Wang Xiuzhen. Some farmers and agricultural production bases in neighboring counties even proactively came to her door after hearing of her reputation, seeking cooperation. It is understood that up to now, dozens of family farms or farmers have established long-term cooperative relationships with Wang Xiuzhen.
After several years of effort, Wang Xiuzhen's entrepreneurship has begun to take shape. She has not only opened stable sales channels on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Weidian, but also owns an original ecological agricultural product experience hall and a 120-mu agricultural production base. She herself has also won honorary titles such as one of Wuping County's Top Ten Youth E-commerce Entrepreneurs.
Wang Xiuzhen said that she plans to build a makerspace dedicated to young agricultural entrepreneurs, so that young people determined to devote themselves to agriculture can share ideas and spark entrepreneurial inspiration. At the same time, she will regularly train farmers in e-commerce knowledge, so that more farmers can come into contact with the outside world and help more farmers escape poverty and become prosperous.