Why was Liao Hongjun's fortune almost ruined by pigs?
He is a demobilized soldier. As soon as he had gained a foothold in the city, he sold his house, borrowed money, scraped together 10 million yuan, and went back to his hometown in Sichuan to contract a stretch of barren mountain land. To seize a business opportunity, he braved wind and rain and turned day and night upside down. Yet this business opportunity was almost ruined by pigs. Watch how Liao Hongjun brought the industry of Anji, Zhejiang to Dazhu, Sichuan, and realized his dream of wealth.
This is a breeding farm in Dazhu County, Sichuan Province. Every year at the beginning of the year, Liao Hongjun orders enough piglets from this farm and raises them free-range on his own mountain. This time, Liao Hongjun brought his customers directly here and let them choose and adopt the pigs themselves. When the consumers saw the lively little pigs, they got playful and wanted to catch the piglets they liked in person, to be transported together to Liao Hongjun's base.
Liao Hongjun: Do you want to adopt pigs?
Consumer: Yes.
Liao Hongjun: If you want to adopt, I'll now explain the rules of the game.
Consumer: Okay.
Liao Hongjun: Whoever among you drives a pig to this spot, with this as the center, then you can take the pig home. All right. Then let's start.
Consumer: Okay.
To drive pigs, you can't do without tools. These sticks are the tools Liao Hongjun prepared for everyone. Although the pigs are plump, with short legs and big bellies, this is their territory. Once the piglets start running, people can't even keep up, let alone drive them to a designated spot.
Consumer: It's so tiring. That pig runs faster than a person. I feel like I haven't exercised in so long, my heart is about to jump into my throat.
Consumer: Driving them has us drenched in sweat. It's not that easy to drive them. They're too wild.
It seemed that working alone had no effect at all, so everyone had to drive them together with united effort. After much difficulty, they drove the pigs near the designated spot, but they just wouldn't go into the dirt pit. At this point, Liao Hongjun, who was standing to the side, could no longer hold back and tried every way to give everyone advice.
Liao Hongjun: Here, don't use the bamboo pole to hit them. If you hit them with the bamboo pole, they'll run away. In a place like this, you have to slowly, slowly drive them with your voice.
Everyone first drove the pigs near the destination, then called out the slogan in unison to make the piglets walk into the dirt pit.
Consumer: laolaolao.
After a contest, the result for more than a dozen people was only driving one piglet into this dirt pit. Most people could only stare helplessly.
To keep everyone from going home empty-handed, Liao Hongjun went into action himself. He brought out a secret weapon: corn. Pigs are hard to drive, so they could only be gathered with good food at mealtime. This made it much more convenient for those who wanted to adopt piglets.
Consumer: The black one, a black pig.
Consumer: Choose the white one.
Child: I only want the black one.
Consumer: You didn't make it in time.
That day, consumers subscribed to more than 20 piglets. Liao Hongjun will keep holding this kind of subscription activity until May. These pigs are now Liao Hongjun's money-making magic weapon. However, his sales of more than 30 million yuan in 2015 were not all earned from raising pigs; he also had an even more profitable magic weapon. Yet these pigs almost rooted away his even more profitable magic weapon. What exactly is Liao Hongjun's money-making magic weapon?
“Hot water is coming”
This is Qinghe Ancient Town in Dazhu County, Sichuan Province. In this ancient town, there is a teahouse every ten meters or so. This street was also the place Liao Hongjun most longed for as a child. Living in the mountains, he had only one or two chances a year to come here for the market fair. What he liked most was the teahouses here. Although he had no money to drink tea, he could listen to the old people chat in the teahouse.
Liao Hongjun: The old people saw that you were listening very attentively, very cute and very clever. Sometimes, the tea we brewed was served cup by cup, and they would give you a sip. They would give you a sip too. With that one sip, a third of it was gone.
The tea he could not drink before his eyes and the world in the old people's mouths made Liao Hongjun determined to leave the mountains and change his fate. Joining the army let Liao Hongjun leave the mountains. In 2010, he was transferred to Hangzhou. With his specialty in physiotherapy, he opened a rehabilitation center and could earn 200,000 to 300,000 yuan a year. When everyone thought Liao Hongjun would stay in the big city to develop from then on, he made a decision: go back to his hometown to start a business. Because he had discovered a business opportunity. For this business opportunity, he sold his house in Hangzhou, added his own savings and borrowed money, scraped together more than 10 million, and contracted more than 2,000 mu of barren mountain land. Needless to say, the villagers gossiped, and even his father and wife had different opinions about what he was doing.
Father Liao Guozhi: I was very opposed at the time. Because once you invest, the investment is very large. If it doesn't work out, you lose terribly.
Wife Xu Guomei: When Liao Hongjun does things, he is still relatively steady. He felt it was worth a try, and anyway I relatively believed in him.
What did Liao Hongjun want to do? It turned out that while running the rehabilitation center in Hangzhou, he came into contact with Anji white tea. The price of white tea attracted him. In 2010, one jin could sell for more than 1,000 yuan. So before Qingming Festival, Liao Hongjun went to many large white tea enterprises to investigate, and he found that white tea was not hard to sell at all.
Liao Hongjun: Everyone is coming for pre-Qingming tea. Because if you come late, you can't get in line, and you can't buy it. So everyone is lining up. If you don't stand guard here and don't line up, it will be bought by someone else.
This made Liao Hongjun entertain the idea of planting white tea in his hometown. But in Dazhu County, Sichuan, no one had ever planted white tea on a large scale. Anji, Zhejiang and Dazhu, Sichuan are both near 30 degrees north latitude, but is Dazhu, Sichuan suitable for planting white tea?
In 2010, Liao Hongjun brought back 1,000 white tea seedlings from Anji and tried planting them in his hometown in Sichuan. The next year, when the tea trees sprouted, they gave him a surprise.
Liao Hongjun: About ten days earlier. After all, it's earlier than Anji, earlier, because in other places no white tea has come out yet, so being earlier means price.
White leaves, green veins, fresh taste. These are the main characteristics of white tea. White leaves and green veins mean that the leaves of white tea are white, and only the main leaf veins are green. Fresh taste is a sign of the high amino acid content of white tea. After testing, the white tea grown by Liao Hongjun fully met the standard.
Fu Shangwen, Director of the Tea Quality Certification and Development Research Center of the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences: It is located in a place transitioning from a basin to a mountainous area. Its altitude is between 600 m and 800 m. You see, now, as we can see from the background behind us, this is also a place with a lot of mist and clouds, so it is relatively suitable.
Dazhu, Sichuan can not only grow white tea, but the picking date can also be about ten days earlier than Anji. So Liao Hongjun made up his mind to plant white tea.
Clearing just one mu of land costs 4,000 yuan, and for 2,000 mu it is a considerable expense. The 10 million he had scraped together was not enough at all. Since his own financial strength was insufficient, he looked for a partner to do it together. The person Liao Hongjun had his eye on was Wei Ping. Wei Ping is a major tea merchant in Anji, selling more than 40,000 jin of tea every year. However, Wei Ping had always wanted to expand the scale, but had never found a suitable base in Anji. Liao Hongjun specially invited him to Dazhu, Sichuan for an inspection, and the local environment attracted Wei Ping.
Wei Ping, business partner: There are many advantages here. One is that the climate is very good. It is foggy weather all year round, and there is not much sunlight. Then, another is that the air quality here is definitely better than ours. We are in the mountains, and the tea grown will definitely be good.
Liao Hongjun and Wei Ping pooled money to clear the land. The roads were opened by them, the large stones were picked out of the soil one by one by them, and the terraced fields were leveled bit by bit by them. In November 2011, Liao Hongjun finally planted white tea in the base.