College graduate Li Jinheng returns home to start a business, scaling the heights of prosperity
Hekuai Village in Longchang Town, located in the southeast of Weining Autonomous County, is an extremely remote and isolated mountain village, with high mountains and steep roads, and an average altitude of 2,200 m. In the Longjiaqing group of this small mountain village, college graduate Li Jinheng, with his parents' support, returned home to start a business, raising emus at home.
A newborn calf fears no tiger
For this remote little mountain village of Hekuai Village in Longchang Town, Weining Autonomous County, Li Jinheng could be considered a "golden phoenix" that flew out of a mountain gully. Yet this "top student" in the eyes of his elders and neighbors did not, after graduating from university, take the path most graduates take of sitting exams to seek employment; he felt that in all the 360 trades, every trade can produce a champion.
When Li Jinheng had just graduated from university in 2010, he could truly be described as "a newborn calf that fears no tiger," born with a drive beyond that of ordinary people. His life dream was to earn enough money to move his parents, who had toiled for most of their lives, out of Hekuai Village and let them live happy and wonderful days.
Carrying his dream, in 2010, having just stepped out of school, Li Jinheng resolutely chose to go to a construction site and do hard labor alongside the craftsmen.
Because Li Jinheng had a good educational level and, moreover, was a man of his word who dared to think and act, he quickly won the boss's appreciation. Before long he stood out from the ordinary masons and became a project manager. In less than two years, Li Jinheng, relying on his own ability, won the boss's trust and took on the role of site supervisor.
Over several years, Li Jinheng earned some money from the construction site, and with the money he earned he bought a house and a car. At the same time, having made money, Li Jinheng also drove the excavator from his construction site back to his hometown and cut a dirt road more than two meters wide across a mountain ridge where no road had yet been built.
However, the once prosperous Li Jinheng lost everything in a careless investment. The painful lesson made this sunny young man, originally "a newborn calf that fears no tiger," taste a great deal of hardship, and for the first time he conceived the idea of changing the direction of his business venture.
After several visits and careful weighing, Li Jinheng felt that what was most lacking at present was green food. In the end he decided to return to his hometown and go into farming or livestock raising.
Li Jinheng's parents are feeding the emus
Raising emus wins parents' support
Just as Li Jinheng was pondering how to return to his hometown to start a business and get rich, on a trip to Shanghai he met a large-scale emu farmer surnamed Chen. In the course of earnest conversation, Li Jinheng learned that emu farming was a fresh and yet-to-be-developed industry with great market potential, very suitable for starting a business.
Li Jinheng is a man who acts as soon as he decides. After learning that the emu farming industry was very suitable for him, he immediately made up his mind and, together with that friend surnamed Chen, traveled far to Guangzhou, Australia and other places to conduct on-the-spot inspections of emu farming. During the inspections he found that emus are not only rare but that every part of them is a treasure: the meat is even better than beef, the oil can be used as a raw material for medicine and cosmetics, and the eggs are ornamental and can also be made into artworks. After finishing the inspections, Li Jinheng was as happy as if he had obtained a precious treasure. He immediately went to learn farming techniques, then, with the farming techniques in hand, hurried back to his hometown to build a breeding base, preparing to invest in emu farming.
After several months of careful preparation, a base of more than 200 sq m enclosed with cement bricks was built. With his friend's help, in January 2014, Li Jinheng spent more than 100,000 yuan to transport 120 young emus from Australia back to his hometown of Hekuai Village by "sea freight + air freight + passenger transport," enduring untold hardships all the way.
According to incomplete statistics, the cost of raising one emu is about 10 yuan a day, and its growth period is relatively slow, taking almost 3 years to mature and be able to lay eggs for sale and profit; only then is the whole emu at its best for selling.
Because emu farming costs are high, for Li Jinheng it is extremely difficult to raise them, with funds tight and difficulties piling up.
Faced with the shortage of funds and the difficulties he was in, Li Jinheng had no choice but to return once more to the construction site and take up the hard site labor that had once cost him everything, earning money to help with the emu farming. The heavy burden of emu farming and care fell on his parents' shoulders.
Li Jinheng said that emu farming is extremely hard work: feeding three times a day must be done on time. Every day at 6 a.m. the emus are let out of the rearing house to roam, and the first feeding of the morning is carried out; at just past 1 p.m. the second feeding is carried out; and at just past 5 p.m. the last feeding of the day must be carried out again, after which they are driven back into the rearing house to rest, and the next day the previous day's feeding work is repeated. Moreover, as the emus keep growing, their food intake becomes astonishingly large; the water supply for the emus alone requires 150 to 200 kg every day.
But in order to give their son full support and let him realize his dream of prosperity as soon as possible, Li Jinheng's parents endured hardship and fatigue, working from dawn to dusk every day to help their son feed and look after the emus.
The eggs laid by emus can weigh up to 0.5 kg
Persisting to the end for the dream
In order to meet the food needs of emu rearing, Li Jinheng's parents not only planted wheatgrass, sorghum grass, purple alfalfa and so on in front of and behind the house all year round, but also negotiated to use a patch of vacant land belonging to Li Jinheng's maternal grandmother's family in the same village and planted grass seed there as well. When this writer arrived at Li Jinheng's home for the interview, Li Jinheng's father, Li Renyi, was just riding a motorcycle to the grandmother's field and hauling back two large bundles of green wheatgrass.
Li Jinheng's parents told this writer that the main foods for feeding emus are feed, grass, cornmeal, bran and so on. The emus, which are about as tall as a person's shoulder, have no small appetite. At present, the roughly 80 emus raised by Li Jinheng's family are fed two bags of special feed a day, amounting to more than 500 yuan, plus about 150 kg of other forage, with the total daily investment amounting to no less than 700 yuan, so the expenses are obviously very large.
In order to reduce the burden on his parents and the feeding expenses, in December 2014 Li Jinheng sold more than 30 emus and earned more than 100,000 yuan, all of which he put into raising the remaining 80 or so emus.
As the emus grow bigger and bigger, the expenses also grow bigger and bigger. The first pot of "gold" Li Jinheng obtained from selling more than 30 emus was truly far too little for raising the remaining 80 or so emus.
Now, Li Jinheng earns 4,000 to 5,000 yuan a month in hard-earned money from construction sites elsewhere to help add to the emus' feeding. At present, regarding the emu farming, Li Jinheng's parents feel somewhat powerless. During the interview, Li Jinheng's father, Li Renyi, told this writer that the expenses of emu farming are so great and the emus must be raised for 3 years; can emu farming really make money, and what if they lose money and end up deep in debt?
In response to Li Jinheng's father's thinking, this writer immediately dialed Li Jinheng's phone number to learn his personal views and ideas.
When the call went through, Li Jinheng, full of confidence, told this writer that although emu farming is currently very difficult in terms of funds, he firmly believes that emu farming will not lose money. Not long ago, after a merchant learned that he was raising emus, the merchant took the initiative to come and sign a contract with him, offering a price of 160 yuan per kg. However, he did not want to sell the emus just like that. He wants the emus to lay eggs and then hatch the young emus himself for raising, and then gradually sell the older emus. Only by forming such a farming cycle can emu farming truly be made bigger and stronger, and while realizing his own dream of getting rich through farming, truly lead the elders and neighbors around him to get rich together.