The Entrepreneurial Story of the Villagers of Hantang Village, Wuli Town, an E-commerce Village

Hantang Village, located in Wuli Town, Lingshan County, is a remote mountain village more than 10 km from the town center. In this ordinary village of 1,050 households, there are as many as 230 online stores. With the help of the internet, the fruit tree saplings grown by the villagers travel across mountains and rivers to reach countries such as Lebanon, Japan and Malaysia. Today, Hantang Village has become a nationally famous "e-commerce village," and the villagers' entrepreneurial story has even attracted the attention of the famous Hollywood director Christy Ribi, who made a special trip with a crew to shoot a documentary.

Struggling Through, the Post-80s Generation Bravely "Eats the Crab"

"A loquat sapling sells for 6 yuan, and sometimes tens of thousands can be sold at once. If you can make 1 yuan per tree, after deducting labor and other costs, you still earn at least more than 10,000 yuan." Entering Hantang Village, major fruit sapling grower Qin Wanfeng did the math for the reporter. Right beside the road into the village, Qin Wanfeng was negotiating business with buyer Liu Qionglu from Zhanghuang Town, Pubei County. Four villagers were moving 2,000 loquat saplings to the roadside, waiting for a large truck to load them.

"The increasingly developed internet has brought a broader market to Hantang Village's fruit saplings," said Liang Chuancong, director of the Hantang Village Committee. With the help of the internet, some sapling buyers place orders directly online; others search online for information about Hantang Village's fruit sapling cultivation and come here attracted by its reputation. Also because of the internet, the villagers of Hantang Village said goodbye to the hard days of carrying saplings on their shoulders and backs to the town center to sell them.

That "golden saplings" could be grown in the fields was something the villagers of Hantang Village had never imagined. Recalling the journey of selling fruit saplings on Taobao, Huang Zhongwen, born in the 1980s, answered succinctly with the four words "struggling through." As early as 2008, Huang Zhongwen had already set foot on the path of Taobao online sales. "A 5-square-meter tile-roofed house, one computer, one printer." That is how Huang Dingzhong, Party secretary of Hantang Village, described the situation when Huang Zhongwen first started doing online sales. Although Hantang Village had more than 200 kinds of flower and fruit tree saplings, including lychee, longan, mango and loquat, as product support, at the beginning the flower and fruit tree saplings Huang Zhongwen sold online were not recognized by buyers. Buyers worried that the flower and fruit tree saplings they liked would wither and die on the way during express delivery because of packaging, transportation and other problems. Therefore, Huang Zhongwen's online store could sell only a few saplings a day.

After continual experimentation, Huang Zhongwen decided to improve the packaging method and install cameras in the nursery, packaging room and office, so that buyers could watch live online through the store the entire process of the saplings being selected, packaged and transported. Because of the live online effect and services such as allowing customers to return goods if they were dissatisfied after receiving the saplings, Huang Zhongwen's online sapling business quickly exploded from selling a few trees a day to selling several hundred a day.

Driven by Example, Villagers One After Another "Get Online"

Seeing Huang Zhongwen's success, villager Liang Yuanfu of Hantang Village, who had previously grown fruit saplings but, unable to find a market, used them as firewood, made the decision to "stop going out to work and grow flower and fruit saplings at home." Driven by Huang Zhongwen and under the technical guidance of relevant county and town departments, in just a few years Liang Yuanfu's family built a new house.

Following in Huang Zhongwen's footsteps, young people in Hantang Village used local agricultural product resources to run Taobao and Alibaba online stores, sell fruit saplings through online platforms, do Baidu promotion, join TrustPass, and use Taobao Through Train, and so on. Now Hantang Village has 230 Taobao stores, more than 50 Alibaba stores, more than 60 Jinquan.com stores and more than 25 Baidu promotion operations. The farmers' fruit saplings are in short supply, prices are higher than before, and the young people have also created considerable wealth.

With a few finger taps and mouse clicks, in two hours in the morning, Huang Hongping, born in the 1990s, completed 4 newly received online orders. The farthest buyer was from Shaoxing City, Zhejiang. "In a year, January to May is the peak season, and in peak season I can generally receive 15 orders a day." This young man, skillfully operating the computer while introducing his family's fruit sapling cultivation situation to the reporter. At present, Huang Hongping's family has one Taobao store and one Alibaba shop. The fruit sapling cultivation bases of 100,000 sq m each in Qinzhou and Lingshan serve as the "goods supply factories." Editing and publishing the online store content, photographing sapling pictures, managing the online store, getting goods, packaging, shipping... Huang Hongping does all of this by himself. Speaking of the hardships involved, Huang Hongping smiled and said: "As long as you are hardworking, that's enough."

Drawing on the Internet, a Small Village Begins a New Life

"Cultivating fruit saplings and running an online store actually requires a lot of technology and also relevant licenses, such as the Forest Tree Seed Business License and the Forest Tree Seed Production License," said Liang Chuancong. "Last year, in response to villagers' needs, the village committee invited teachers from Nanning Vocational and Technical School to give concentrated classes to more than 100 farming households in the village, and in the end 50 people passed the exam smoothly and obtained qualification certificates."

Concrete roads replaced dirt roads, Western-style houses replaced tile-roofed houses, cars replaced motorcycles, trucks replaced tractors... "People here used to be relatively poor, but now e-commerce has brought gradual change to the village," said Liang Chuancong. "At present, there are only 9 poor households in the village, and for our village that is already an extraordinary thing." Drawing on the internet, Hantang Village's fruit sapling cultivation area has grown larger and larger, and now exceeds 800,000 sq m, with more than 200 varieties of fruit saplings. Last year, the village's online sales reached 160 million yuan.

Leaving Hantang Village, it was exactly noon, the time when the children of Hantang Village Primary School were finishing class. Looking at the children's sunny smiling faces and the patches of green fruit sapling fields, Huang Dingzhong said with emotion, "The villagers of Hantang Village will continue to write legends with their sweat."