City Woman Tang Baoping Grows Blueberries and Becomes the Blueberry Queen
On the morning of May 25, the Women's Federation of Yizheng City, Jiangsu Province, grandly held the "Most Beautiful Entrepreneurial Women" commendation ceremony. Tang Baoping, general manager of Yangzhou Lanyun Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd., who is known as the "Blueberry Queen of Yangzhou," received the title of "Most Beautiful Entrepreneurial Woman." Everyone who knows Tang Baoping knows that this honor is well deserved. It was precisely this seemingly delicate city woman who, after going through countless hardships, successfully made America's "King of Berries" - the blueberry - take root in Yizheng and become a locally grown fruit in the Yangzhou area.
On a hillside in Zaolin Bay, Yizheng City, patches of green shrubs are neatly planted in field ridges. When the early summer breeze blows, the small blue-purple berries borne on the shrubs make people unable to resist reaching out to pick them. The owner of this blueberry orchard of more than 70 mu is Tang Baoping.
Tourists picking fruit in the orchard
Blueberry Queen Tang Baoping
As a true "city person," before 2012 Tang Baoping was still a businessperson engaged in the communications equipment business and knew almost nothing about agriculture. That year, when Tang Baoping was taking her son to the United States to study, she came into contact with blueberries and learned for the first time that this famous American "King of Berries" was so nutritious and so charming.
"The reason blueberries are called the king of berries is not only because they are rich in protein, vitamins and other nutrients, but their content of minerals and trace elements is also quite considerable. The reason ripe blueberry fruits are blue-purple is mainly that they contain abundant anthocyanins. Anthocyanins have strong antioxidant effects and are beneficial to health. So blueberries have very high nutritional value and ornamental value. In the world, they are also hailed as the 'Queen of Fruits.'" Once she starts talking about blueberries, Tang Baoping's tongue cannot stop. After all, for four years she has spent every day with this blueberry orchard, and she likes this charming fruit far too much.
The road of entrepreneurship is full of hardships. In order to introduce blueberries to Yangzhou, Tang Baoping invested all her funds and energy into the process of growing blueberries, and for this she endured no small amount of hardship.
"There are many varieties of blueberries. I had never been exposed to them before, and no one in Yangzhou had ever grown them, so at that time I still did not know which varieties were suitable for growing in Yangzhou, nor whether it would ultimately succeed." Speaking of the initial exploration, Tang Baoping also has too many stories. In fact, because the soil was unsuitable, forestry experts once suggested that Tang Baoping give up developing blueberries. "I took the soil to Nanjing and asked experts from the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences to take a look for me. They said at the time that our soil here is paddy soil and is not suitable for growing blueberries."
However, Tang Baoping's characteristic is "persistence." Once she has decided on something, it is very hard for her to give it up. Starting in 2012, Tang Baoping investigated and inspected more than 10 famous and large-scale blueberry planting bases across the country, and in May 2013 established Yangzhou Lanyun Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd., planting more than 3,000 blueberry plants of more than 10 varieties introduced from the United States.
"Although blueberry trees are small, their price truly lives up to the name of 'queen.' For a larger blueberry tree, one alone costs 60 yuan. I bought more than 3,000 at once, and this one item alone cost nearly 200,000 yuan." Tang Baoping also gradually overcame the problem of blueberry trees being unsuited to the soil through technical consultation. Now her blueberry trees have fully set fruit and can be marketed in large quantities, with the most expensive selling for as much as 200 yuan per kilogram.
According to reports, fresh blueberries produced by the Lanyun Blueberry Orchard can now already be bought in many supermarkets in the Yangzhou area. In order to broaden sales channels and also so that more people can eat fresh blueberries, Tang Baoping expanded her blueberry sales to the internet, opened an online store on Taobao, and launched group buying on Baidu Nuomi, with booming sales. She also personally traveled to Yunnan, Guangdong and other places to look for suitable blueberry processing equipment and techniques. Tang Baoping said: "The blueberry industry chain is very long. In the future, in addition to supplying fresh blueberries and leisure picking, we will also process a series of blueberry beverages and foods, so that more people can understand this 'foreign' fruit and feel its charm."