Niu Ren Yang Fei returns home to start a business, striking gold in the deep mountains
This bull has a violent temper; several young men cannot hold it back. The more it fights, the more they love it, and buyers are even more fond of it for this reason. He left the mountains and became a boss with an annual income of over ten million yuan, yet now he insists on coming back to lead farming households in striking gold together. He also discovered that a million yuan in wealth is hidden in cow dung. See how Yang Fei of Qingchuan County, Sichuan Province, finds wealth in a remote mountain area.
His name is Yang Fei. Today he wants to sell this bull, but he had just put a rope on the bull, and before they had gone two steps, the bull flew into a rage.
Yang Fei: Look, look, it's lost its temper. Its feet are pawing the ground. It's about to attack people.
Reporter: Where?
Yang Fei: It wants to attack people now. If we go in, it will attack us one hundred percent. It might knock you to the ground, and then trample you with its feet. It definitely could. This is a 2000-jin bull, look.
This bull is always looking for a chance to attack people. Yang Fei cannot help but worry, so he has the employees put on another rope, but even so, as soon as this bull leaves the pen, its aggression shows.
On site: No good, no good.
A bull weighing nearly 2000 jin ran wildly, dragging several young men more than 200 m, and they could only follow behind the bull looking for a chance to subdue it. Using this tree, they finally steadied the running bull. In the end, Yang Fei still used the traditional method, passing the rope through the bull's nose to deal with this mischievous bull. Although this method had some effect, the bull was still full of bull temper. No one dared to force it, so they could only go along with the bull's temper and advance slowly. It took five people a full half hour before they finally got the bull onto the scale. Although everyone was exhausted by this bull, the buyer preferred this kind of bull even more. There was no problem selling this bull for more than 20,000 yuan.
Beef cattle dealer He Ansheng: This one has had exercise, so the more this kind of bull is like this, the more willing we are to buy it, and the price is a bit higher compared with others.
Yang Fei: The happiest thing when you raise cattle is the day you sell the cattle. After it is weighed today, they will pay, and the renminbi will be in my hands. I'm so happy.
Yang Fei's annual sales from cattle raising are more than 6 million yuan. The villagers look on with envy, but for Yang Fei, this 6 million yuan in sales is much smaller than his gas pipeline installation business in Guangdong. What is even harder to understand is that Yang Fei built his cattle farm on this remote mountain at the junction of three provinces, which is not a very good choice.
Yang Fei: Site selection for cattle raising is quite important: water access, road access, electricity access. Here we have not one of them. No water access, no road access, no electricity access.
As an experienced entrepreneur, Yang Fei clearly knew how difficult it would be to raise cattle and build a farm here, yet he gave up a business in Guangdong with an income of over ten million and returned to the mountains of Sichuan Province to become a cattle herder. What was the reason?
At the age of 22, Yang Fei left the mountains with borrowed travel money. He struggled in Guangdong for more than 20 years, starting as a laborer on a construction site, and later he founded his own gas pipeline installation company, with an annual income of over ten million. In 2009, Yang Fei handed over the Guangdong business to his younger brother to manage, and planned to return home himself, investing 6 million yuan to build a cattle farm on the mountain. His whole family opposed it.
Wife Ouyang Ruizhi: Here the costs multiply several times. I said you are investing so much money, when can you recover the cost?
Older sister Yang Cuiying: You already got out, and now you still want to come back to this place and work so hard. The place is so remote.
Yang Fei had long since brought his parents and siblings to Guangdong, and the family lived very happily. The family could not understand why he wanted to return to that remote little mountain village to raise cattle. The family knew better than anyone that the mountain road to the village used to be a dirt road, winding and steep, and in bad weather mudslides and landslides often occurred. Danger could come at any time.
Wife Ouyang Ruizhi: One time I thought that vehicle had gone off under the cliff. My heart suddenly felt as if a big rock were pressing on it, and at that moment my tears came out. I just felt the conditions here were bad, and I did not want him to come here.
Yang Fei and his wife had discussed everything together for many years, but this time even his wife's persuasion did not work. Yang Fei advanced steadily step by step. After deciding in 2009 to raise cattle, for the sake of safety he did not easily put it into action. Instead, he first returned to Mianyang City and opened a new gas pipeline installation company. Holding on to the idea of raising cattle, Yang Fei investigated for three years, because he knew that from an investment perspective, this was not a good business.
Yang Fei: I still had many friends come and say I had gone crazy. You raise cattle on this mountain, what kind of cattle are you raising, they said. They said you have nowhere to spend your money.
During the April 2016 interview, when Yang Fei took the reporter up the mountain, the reporter personally felt how rough and difficult the mountain roads here were. Even today it is like this, so one can imagine how bad the road conditions were before. So if Yang Fei's investment on the mountain at that time was so unreasonable, what exactly was he after? Why did he insist on choosing that place for the cattle farm?
In fact, this was related to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. After the earthquake, Yang Fei and his wife returned to their long-absent hometown to visit relatives. Yang Fei had nowhere to stay, so he stayed at a neighbor's home. One small thing after another warmed Yang Fei's heart.
Yang Fei: After I came back, the villagers killed chickens and ducks for you to eat. They could sell one for about 100 yuan. For their family, that might be enough to buy oil and salt for a month. That is to say, even when we ate one of their chickens, I felt uncomfortable. If we could get something going and drive them along, then if he brought me a bottle of good liquor, I would be willing to drink it too.
Yang Fei developed the idea of returning home to start a business because he saw that the lives the villagers lived had not improved much from when he had left more than ten years earlier. From chatting with friends his age, Yang Fei learned that at over forty years old they were in a very awkward position. Working outside was becoming harder and harder to endure, but if they wanted to return home, they were afraid they could not make money. Yang Fei really wanted to help them.
Yang Fei: I said, I'll come back and do something here, are you all welcoming? They welcomed me very much. Every one of them had a very welcoming gesture. That look in their eyes was like children seeing candy, all drooling. Wow, at that time when I saw that, it immediately touched my heart.
Yang Fei figured that what the village mountain lacked least was forage, so it was very suitable for raising cattle. But before raising cattle, Yang Fei did not dare to be careless either. Instead, he visited and studied everywhere.
Yang Fei: If someone raised ten cattle, I went to learn about it. If you raised one hundred cattle, I went to learn about it. If you raised one thousand, I went to learn about it. I also went to see the largest farm, the one raising ten thousand. In the end, I summed up some experience.
Widening the road surface, bringing in water, and running electricity, Yang Fei step by step turned what others saw as impossible into reality. In 2011, Yang Fei invested more than 6 million yuan and built a cattle farm on the mountain. Building a farm on the mountain cost two to three times as much as building on flat ground, but Yang Fei never flinched. After the cattle farm was completed in 2011, Yang Fei first bought more than ten cattle of different breeds from Jinan City, Shandong Province, for trial raising. When it came to raising cattle, Yang Fei was completely a layman. In order to figure out the cattle's habits, Yang Fei stayed with the cattle every day. When his wife woke up in the middle of the night, she often could not find Yang Fei.
Wife Ouyang Ruizhi: I got up to see where he had gone. I saw the light in the cattle farm was on, and then I ran to the cattle farm to look at the cattle.
A month later, Yang Fei saw that the cattle he was raising were growing well and gained confidence. He then bought 160 cattle of two breeds, Simmental and Charolais, from Shandong. But as soon as these cattle arrived at the farm, Yang Fei became anxious.
Yang Fei: The next day its mental state was like a person who had not woken up. When you called it up, its eyes could not even open. When eating, its mouth would sniff there or rest on top of the feed and it would not eat, just like that. I felt there was a problem.