Giant salamander prices fall from over a thousand yuan per jin to just over a hundred yuan: how to break out of the predicament?

Four years ago, a giant salamander sold for 1,500 yuan per jin. Now, it is only just over a hundred yuan per jin.

Recently, a tourist ate a giant salamander meal at an ordinary restaurant in Guilin, at 1,500 yuan per jin. One giant salamander weighing 3.3 jin came to nearly 5,000 yuan in total, which the media dubbed a "sky-high price giant salamander."

Four years ago, a giant salamander selling for 1,500 yuan per jin was nothing unusual; because of its "sky-high price," that was once one of its most attention-grabbing labels.

Tang Jie, head of the technology extension station at the Animal Husbandry and Aquaculture Industry Development Promotion Center of Guiding County, Qiannan Prefecture, told reporters that in 2012, when Guiding giant salamanders were at their hottest, the price reached 2,000 yuan per jin. Four years on, in Yanxia Township of Guiding County, known as "China's Home of the Giant Salamander," the retail price of one jin of giant salamander has fallen to around 200 yuan.

From the start of 2016 to April 18, counting the Spring Festival sales peak, Su Zhilong, a farmer in Matatun Village, Yanxia Township, Changming Town, Guiding County, had only closed his fifth giant salamander deal of the year - 3 giant salamanders, 20 jin in total, at only 100 yuan per jin.

Lan Hongming, the "leader" of Guizhou's giant salamander industry and general manager of Guizhou Jinjiang Giant Salamander Technology Co., Ltd., which has 20 years of farming history, works in an office in the Kempinski building in Guiyang. Outside the office all is bustling and prosperous, yet his situation is full of crisis.

He told reporters, "This is a difficult period for giant salamanders."

Qu Jiyong holding his giant salamander noodles.

The beginning

Building a domestication and breeding base

Yanxia Township in Guiding County has abundant giant salamander resources. The arrival of Guizhou Jinjiang Giant Salamander Technology Co., Ltd. was the starting point of the local giant salamander "glory story."

In 2004, Guiding County brought in Guizhou Jinjiang Giant Salamander Technology Co., Ltd. and built the largest wild giant salamander domestication and breeding base in the Southwest region in Yanxia Township. In 2006, the title "China's Home of the Giant Salamander" added confidence to Guiding County's giant salamander domestication and breeding.

Three years later, Jinjiang Company succeeded in artificially breeding giant salamanders, and Guiding County decided to support the giant salamander industry locally.

"One fry cost 980 yuan. For the villagers, that was a big investment, and not many dared to farm them," Tang Jie said. "Later, it was the township leaders and officials who took the lead, and that is what got this 'fire' burning."

Zou Yong, director of the Yanxia branch of the Guiding County Rural Credit Cooperative Union, told reporters, "In the years when 'giant salamander' loans were at their peak, every trip I made to Yanxia Township, I had to visit more than 20 farmers in one go."

Qu Jiyong, chairman of the Yanxia Giant Salamander Imitation-Ecological Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative and general manager of Guiding County Qianmeng Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., was one of the earlier people to join the "giant salamander" poverty-alleviation ranks.

In 2008, while still working in Shenzhen, he had already failed 8 ventures, including growing bamboo shoots, figs and cherries, and owed tens of thousands of yuan in debt. Determined to start a business, he heard the news, returned home from Shenzhen, borrowed money from family and took out a credit union loan, scraping together 40,000 yuan to buy 40 fry.

The fry he bought were kept in a plastic tank 3 m long and 1.5 m wide, placed behind the house.

Some were even less particular: some farmers simply put them in a basin and placed it under the bed.

Three years later, Qu Jiyong's small fry had grown to about 4 jin each. The fish price at the time was about 1,500 yuan per jin, and Qu Jiyong sold all 40 fish. With one resale, the original 40,000 yuan became 200,000 yuan.

An overview of Guiding giant salamander deep-processed products.

Glory

Every household in a small Western-style building

From 2008 to 2012 was the "peak period" of Guiding giant salamanders. Qu Jiyong said, "Raise two giant salamanders, and you can become a household with ten thousand yuan."

In 2007, Guiding County mobilized 49 farming households in Yanxia Township, who together raised 980 giant salamanders. In the following years, both figures increased year by year.

The growing scale attracted consumers from all over the country. Especially after the plaque "China's Home of the Giant Salamander" was settled in Guiding County and the spread of fame brought by "group promotion," customers from within and outside the province came in an endless stream.

Qu Jiyong's phone almost became a hotline, receiving consultation calls from all over the country every day. When he received orders from Beijing and Shanghai, Qu Jiyong packed the giant salamanders in foam boxes, added ice cubes and sent them out; for orders within the province, once the goods were ordered in the morning, Qu Jiyong would stay at home, and in the afternoon Mercedes-Benz and BMW cars would drive over from Guiding County town and Guiyang to collect the goods.

Qu Jiyong said that before everyone began farming giant salamanders, Yanxia Township was still a poor place where "girls from other villages were unwilling to marry in."

In the reference photos provided by the Guiding County Animal Husbandry and Aquaculture Industry Development Promotion Center, before 2008 in Yanxia Township, both sides of the road were tile-roofed houses, along with quite a few dilapidated huts and thatched sheds.

But after entering the "giant salamander era," in almost only 3 years, every household lived in modern small Western-style buildings, and all kinds of cars were parked on the open ground in front of the doors.

When he first started his business, Qu Jiyong only drove a minivan. Now what sits at home is a brand-new sedan.

To better breed giant salamanders, many large farming households in Guiding County built imitation-ecological giant salamander breeding farms.

The turning point

Market prices fall several times in a row

In 2010, Qu Jiyong set his mind on expanding his scale.

Qu Jiyong borrowed 150,000 yuan from the rural credit cooperative and rented a piece of land with a relatively good ecological environment in Yanxia, where he built an imitation-ecological breeding farm. This imitation-ecological breeding farm drew on the experience Qu Jiyong had gained from inspections in Shaanxi and Sichuan and fully simulated the living environment of wild giant salamanders. After two years of exploration, the survival rate of the giant salamanders Qu Jiyong bred had reached over 90%.

Because the breeding technology matured, the price of giant salamander fry also fell from the initial 980 yuan each to 300 yuan each.

In 2012, still the "peak period" for giant salamanders, Qu Jiyong had already written in his QQ space: "Maybe in a few more years, everyone will be able to eat giant salamanders."

His premonition was not wrong.

In 2013, the market price of giant salamanders fell to 500 yuan to 800 yuan per jin; in 2014, the price fell again, to around 300 yuan.

In 2015, buying a 5-jin giant salamander on the market cost only about 1,000 yuan, at 200 yuan per jin.

In 4 years, the unit price of giant salamanders fell from 2,000 yuan per jin to 200 yuan per jin, catching the farmers who had rushed in at the start off guard. Everyone went from jubilant to "deeply worried" in an instant.