Small mushrooms support a Jiang'an young man's dream of returning home to start a business and get rich

"This is a wine-cap stropharia mushroom; it tastes very crisp and sells well at the market." The young man in his early twenties before us said with a smile as he picked fresh wine-cap stropharia mushrooms. The young man's name is Ye Minghua, a native of Baihe Village, Tieqing Town, Jiang'an County, Yibin City, a provincial-level poverty-stricken village in Sichuan. He may look plain and modest, but he has a tenacious heart for entrepreneurship.

Returning home to start a business: after many twists and turns, finally success

In May 2015, by a chance opportunity, Ye Minghua learned that his hometown was vigorously implementing the targeted poverty alleviation policy, and that Baihe Village, where he lived, had been designated a provincial-level poverty-stricken village. Ye Minghua's heart could not settle for a long time. After years of struggling away from home, he resolutely decided to return home to start a business and do something truly practical for his hometown's poverty alleviation and prosperity.

Ye Minghua had once worked for five years at a mushroom base. After returning home, he planned to develop mushroom cultivation. Just as he was making intense preparations, something unexpected happened. Ye Minghua's father, after leaving home more than 20 years earlier, suddenly came back, and was already in the late stage of emphysema.

Although Ye Minghua felt resentment toward his father, he still cared for him attentively and helped him get treatment. Two months later, his father passed away. Because of treating his father's illness and burying him, Ye Minghua used up all of his meager savings of several tens of thousands of yuan.

Seeing his hope of starting a business about to evaporate, Ye Minghua thought of asking the village for help. In August 2015, he contacted Chen Liqun, first secretary of Baihe Village. Through coordination on many sides, Chen Liqun had the town government act as guarantor so Ye Minghua successfully obtained a loan of 20,000 yuan as start-up capital for his mushroom cultivation.

With no land, Ye Minghua tried growing mushrooms in his own courtyard. He spent most of his time on the several hundred mushroom bags he was trial-growing, watering the bags every day, measuring temperature and humidity, and checking the growth of the mycelium. A month later, little mushroom caps emerged from the bags. The first batch of 600 cultivated bags had a survival rate as high as 96%. Ye Minghua's trial mushroom cultivation had succeeded! Over several months, he not only recovered his costs but also earned several thousand yuan.

An accidental injury: a dream of entrepreneurship tempered by countless hardships

In early 2016, through land transfer, Ye Minghua built his own mushroom base. To save money, he did everything himself: leveling the land, digging drainage ditches, and building sheds and frames. Now the greenhouse has begun to take shape, with nearly 10,000 mushroom bags neatly arranged inside. Every day Ye Minghua moves among the rows of bags, busy and happy.

Perhaps fate always gives people with dreams a few more tests. One day in March this year, Ye Minghua rode out early in the morning carrying over a hundred jin of mushrooms to sell in Changxing Town, Nanxi County. Halfway there, because the brakes failed, Ye Minghua and the vehicle fell by the roadside, causing a fracture in his left lower leg. The doctor required him to be hospitalized for treatment. Ye Minghua, whose heart was fixed on the mushroom base, firmly refused hospitalization and hurried home dragging his leg, which had just been put in a cast. In his heart, he was concerned about those nearly 10,000 mushroom bags, for they held his dream and hope.

Because the family had few hands, Ye Minghua had no choice but to persist every day, leaning on a crutch and painstakingly shifting his body to inspect the bags one by one. If a bag went bad, he immediately replaced it; if mushrooms needed picking, he picked them at once; he also had to water the bags to increase humidity... Ye Minghua often busied himself from morning to night, not even finding time to eat.

Integrity and innovation: helping his hometown escape poverty early

Now, under Ye Minghua's careful cultivation, the gray mushrooms and oyster mushrooms at the mushroom base can yield over a hundred jin picked every day. Ye Minghua, who loves continuous exploration, has also successfully trial-grown wine-cap stropharia mushrooms and Phoenix-tail mushrooms, and will plant them on a large scale in the second half of the year.

"A few days ago on CCTV's 'Daily Agricultural Economics' channel I saw an introduction to morel mushrooms and thought this variety was quite good, so I plan to try growing it. Although the cultivation technique is a bit difficult, it should be possible to cultivate successfully." Ye Minghua is full of confidence in himself. He believes that only by constantly innovating and growing new varieties that others do not have can there be broader market prospects.

Ye Minghua's mushrooms contain no additives or growth promoters, and combined with honest business practices and never giving short weight, they have won the favor of operators in surrounding markets. At the end of last year, a vegetable dealer came to inspect Ye Minghua's base. He highly recognized the quality of the base's mushrooms and immediately established a long-term cooperative relationship with Ye Minghua. Ye Minghua became the dealer's only mushroom supplier, and the other party purchased directly from the base.

Many poor households in Baihe Village saw that Ye Minghua's mushroom cultivation was very successful and also wanted to develop mushroom cultivation. The villagers approached Ye Minghua and said they wanted to learn his mushroom cultivation techniques. Ye Minghua did not hesitate at all and taught everyone his experience without reservation.

Ye Minghua said that when he was a child, his family was poor and he received a lot of help from his neighbors. Now he also hopes that through his own efforts, he can lead the villagers to increase their income and escape poverty and become prosperous by growing mushrooms.