A fortune crisis that was almost destroyed by pigs
He, a demobilized soldier, had just gained a foothold in the city when he sold his house, borrowed money, scraped together 10 million, and went back to his hometown in Sichuan to contract a piece of barren mountain land. To seize the 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 here directly so they could choose and adopt the pigs themselves. Seeing the lively little pigs, the consumers got playful and wanted to catch the pigs they liked with their own hands, 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, now I'll 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 the right tools. These sticks one by one are the tools Liao Hongjun prepared for everyone. Although the pigs are chubby, with short legs and big bellies, this is their territory. Once the little pigs start running, people can't even keep up, let alone drive them to a designated spot.
Consumer: Too tiring, that pig runs faster than a person. I feel like I haven't exercised in too long, my heart is about to jump into my throat.
Consumer: Driving them has us sweating all over our heads, it's not that easy to drive them, they're too wild.
It seems that going it alone has no effect at all, so everyone can only work together to drive them. After much effort, they drove the pigs near the designated spot, but they just wouldn't go into the dirt pit. At this point, Liao Hongjun, standing to the side, couldn't hold back anymore and tried every way to give everyone tips.
Liao Hongjun: This, don't use the bamboo pole to tap them. If you tap 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 group of pigs near the destination, and with one voice called out the chant to make the little pigs go into the dirt pit.
Consumer: laolaolao.
After a contest, the result for more than a dozen people was just driving one little pig into this dirt pit. Most people could only stare helplessly.
So that everyone wouldn't go home empty-handed, Liao Hongjun took the field himself. He brought out his secret weapon, corn. Pigs are hard to drive, so you can only gather them with good food at mealtime. Now, it became much more convenient for those who wanted to adopt little pigs.
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 little pigs. 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 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 yearned for most 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 chatting in the teahouse.
Liao Hongjun: The old people saw that you were listening very attentively, very cute and clever. Sometimes, the tea we brewed was in one cup per person, and they would also let you take a sip. They would also let you take a sip. With that one sip, a third of it was gone.
The tea he couldn't drink before his eyes and the world in the old people's words made Liao Hongjun determined to leave the mountains and change his fate. Joining the military let Liao Hongjun leave the mountains. In 2010, he was demobilized to Hangzhou, and relying on his skill in physiotherapy, he opened a rehabilitation center and could earn two to three hundred thousand a year. When everyone thought Liao Hongjun would stay in the big city to develop in the future, he instead made a decision: go back to his hometown to start a business. Because he had discovered a business opportunity, and for this business opportunity, he sold his house in Hangzhou, and together with his savings and borrowed money, scraped together more than 10 million, and contracted a piece of barren mountain land of more than 2,000 mu. 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 strongly opposed at the time. Because once you put money in, that investment is huge, and if you can't make it work, you'll lose terribly.
Wife Xu Guomei: In the things Liao Hongjun does, 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 the pre-Qingming tea, because if he comes late, he can't get in line, and he 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 gave Liao Hongjun 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 Sichuan hometown. 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 no white tea comes out in other places, so this earliness is price.
White leaves, green veins, fresh taste. These are the main characteristics of white tea. White leaves and green veins means 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 basin to 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 cloud and mist, 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.
Just clearing wasteland costs 4,000 yuan per mu, and for 2,000 mu that is a considerable expense. The 10 million he had scraped together was not enough at all. Since his own financial strength was insufficient, then he would find someone to partner with. The person Liao Hongjun had his eye on was Wei Ping. Wei Ping was a major tea merchant in Anji, selling more than 40,000 jin of tea every year. However, Wei Ping had always wanted to expand his scale, but had never found a suitable base in Anji. Liao Hongjun specially invited him to Dazhu, Sichuan for an inspection trip, and the local environment attracted Wei Ping.