A young man who knows how to make money came to a small border village. What is his secret to wealth?

He grew up in the city, yet he went to live in a small village on the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan. The villagers here have their own language, and the flowers, fruits, and wild vegetables on the mountain are their delicacies. Here, he went from not even being able to afford a meal to helping the villagers make money alongside him. See how this post-85s young man created a new industry with annual sales of over ten million yuan.

On March 14, 2016, the reporter came to Huwa Village in Ruili City, Yunnan Province, a typical small border village.

Duan Biqing: "This is a ferry crossing in our village. This side is Myanmar, this side is China. Our side uses the river as the boundary."

Duan Biqing's chicken farm is built in Huwa Village. Here there is a special food that chickens love to eat.

Duan Biqing: "Banana plants, very sweet. Below is the banana flower, very sweet, with lots of honey-like stuff. This is the honey. Bees all collect honey here."

What surprised the reporter was that what the chickens love to eat is not the banana flower, but the trunk of this wild banana plant.

Duan Biqing: "Watch out, it's going to fall, it's about to fall."

The reporter had heard of chickens eating grass and eating tree bark, but eating an entire tree trunk was a first.

Reporter: "It looks dry on the outside, but there's so much moisture inside."

Duan Biqing: "The chickens especially love to eat it. The villagers plant many banana trees where they raise chickens. A couple of days later when I go to look, another banana tree will have fallen. A couple more days, another one falls. The chickens peck at its base, peck a ring around it, it becomes thin, and then it falls."

Duan Biqing is one of the top ecological chicken farmers in Ruili. Those who know him well know that he raises chickens differently. The price of one of his chickens is thirty to forty yuan higher than surrounding chickens, and annual sales exceed ten million yuan. But just over three years ago, Duan Biqing had fallen so low he could not even afford a meal. When talking about his entrepreneurial experience, he gets very emotional.

Duan Biqing: "These past two days it seems like all at once, all the emotions from these past few years, everything has been released.

One day in early September 2012, Duan Biqing, who had been too proud to contact his father for over a year after a quarrel, finally mustered up the courage and dialed his father's number.

Duan Biqing: "I haven't eaten for five or six days, just eating pickles. Can you bring me some meat to eat?"

Hearing the plea, his father Duan Shengming immediately brought over hand-held rice noodles, his son's favorite, and he will never forget the sorry state his son was in.

Duan Biqing's father Duan Shengming: "Hand-held rice noodles, a big bag. Normally you can't finish it all, but in over ten minutes, he ate and swallowed it all."

Duan Biqing's home is in Ruili City. He is the only son in the family. His father was 33 when he had this son and doted on him greatly, never letting him suffer or go through hardship. In 2009, Duan Biqing applied to be a village official after graduating from university. Full of hopes for the job, he came to Huwa Village.

Huwa Village is located on the border, with limited access to information. Duan Biqing wanted to use his knowledge to achieve something in his position. But what he did not expect was that once he arrived, he found there were many things he could not adapt to.

Over 80% of the villagers in Huwa Village are Jingpo people. Knives are inseparable from their lives, the mountains are their vegetable garden, and years of living in the mountainous area taught them to identify edible flowers, fruits, and wild vegetables, turning them into delicacies on the table.

In Huwa Village, making a fire with firewood to cook is the most basic life skill, but for Duan Biqing, who grew up in the city, it was a big problem.

Duan Biqing: "I had never lit a fire before. I did not know how to prop up the firewood piece by piece and light it. I just dumped a pile there and lit it randomly. I could try for half an hour and still not get it lit."

Villager Shi Yankang: "He could not boil water, and there was no electricity. He bought instant noodles. What could he do? He ate them dry."

The Jingpo people have their own language. The vast majority of villagers cannot speak Mandarin well. Duan Biqing wanted to blend into the villagers' lives, but he could not even make small talk with everyone, and the villagers were unwilling to ask him for help with matters. When he first came as a village official, Duan Biqing thought, village official, village official, big or small, it is still an official. But he never expected reality to be so far from his imagination.

Duan Biqing: "At the time I had to sweep the floor, wipe the tables, flush the toilets. The sense of frustration was especially, especially strong."

Gradually, Duan Biqing felt out of place in Huwa Village. His youthful ambitions had nowhere to be fulfilled. Emptiness and confusion crept into his heart, and Duan Biqing began to think about giving up.

Duan Biqing began suffering from insomnia night after night. He felt it was time to change and do something. After two months, he visited more than three hundred households in Huwa Village and made a wealth discovery.

Duan Biqing: "At the time, I felt that being a village official was more about discovering the problems here and finding the opportunities here."

Duan Biqing decided to start a business while working. Ignoring his father's opposition, he had his mother help borrow 60,000 yuan to contract 10 mu of barren mountain land. In order not to delay village work, he also brought in a classmate as a partner. Duan Biqing planned to build a money-saving bamboo house, but what he did not expect was that cutting bamboo was not easy.

Reporter: "What are you looking for?"

Duan Biqing: "I'm looking for bamboo."

Reporter: "There's so much bamboo, just find any one."

Duan Biqing: "Cutting it is very easy, but getting it out is especially hard. They are interwoven one by one, especially hard to bring down. That is where the difficulty in cutting lies. It is not like cutting a tree. Cut a tree and it falls with a crash. Bamboo won't do that. It is like dismantling building blocks. If you cut randomly, you won't be able to dismantle it."

Duan Biqing is now an expert at cutting bamboo, but at first, looking at one bamboo stalk after another, he had no idea how to even begin. And carrying the cut bamboo out of the mountain was even harder.

In the face of reality, Duan Biqing fully experienced the hardships of starting a business. After gritting his teeth and persisting for more than a month, he finally built this bamboo house in the mountain.

Duan Biqing: "At the time we lived here. It was all ventilated. Look, these bamboo stalks are all ventilated. You can see outside. When there was fog, it was foggy outside and foggy inside too. At night you had to sleep with your head covered, otherwise your eyebrows and hair would all get wet. At the time it provided no warmth at all."

At the time, although Duan Biqing lived in this house that let wind in from all sides, his blood was boiling. What exactly did Duan Biqing want to do on the barren mountain? The villagers all waited and watched.

In early 2012, Duan Biqing purchased 1,000 local chicken chicks. They had thought Duan Biqing was spending all that effort brewing some big plan, but in the end it was just raising chickens. People were instantly shocked.

Villager: "Raising chickens here, many chickens die every year. We don't even want to raise chickens ourselves. He came here to develop chicken farming. Nobody believes in him."

Villager: "I'm afraid he won't be able to handle it, won't be able to keep it going, will just waste all his effort and waste his parents' money."