Giant salamander farmer Xie Ciyong helps villagers in Guanghan, Sichuan increase income and become wealthy

The giant salamander, whose scientific name is Andrias davidianus, is a national second-class protected amphibious wild animal. It lives year-round in wild mountain streams, and few people have ever seen its "true form." But Xie Ciyong of Gaoping Town, Guanghan City, Sichuan, spotted a business opportunity in the giant salamander. After obtaining a farming permit, he began raising giant salamanders and even brought them to the dining table, turning them into a delicacy that locals enjoy. At the same time, he also founded a cooperative that has attracted over a hundred member households to join, getting more villagers to start farming giant salamanders and making it another "magic weapon" for increasing income and becoming wealthy.

Raising giant salamanders well makes "technique" especially important

"What is legally sold on the market now is all artificially bred 'second-generation' giant salamanders -- in plain terms, the grandchildren produced by crossbreeding using wild giant salamanders as parent stock," Xie Ciyong told a reporter from Southwest Business Daily. Wild giant salamanders and first-generation offspring are protected by the state, and it is not permitted to slaughter them for food.

Recently, the reporter visited Xie Ciyong's giant salamander breeding base. Walking into a pitch-black room, one could only hear the sound of dripping water and feel waves of coolness. When illuminated with a flashlight, it turned out that the room was filled with small brick-built pools, and all the pools were stocked with giant salamanders.

"There are now more than 10,000 giant salamanders, and the heaviest reaches more than 10 jin." Under Xie Ciyong's introduction, the reporter noticed that some giant salamanders in the pools were nearly one meter long, while others were very small. When these giant salamanders sensed the light, they began to back away.

"Raising giant salamanders requires great care and frequent observation. We raise them in different pools according to their body size," Xie Ciyong said. Giant salamanders like low-temperature, dark and humid environments. Most importantly, giant salamanders cannot live in stagnant water, and tap water contains chlorine and other substances, which also makes it unsuitable for giant salamanders to grow. For this reason, he specially dug relatively deep wells to raise giant salamanders.

Obsessed with farming, he set his sights on a new farming business opportunity

When talking about the techniques for farming "giant salamanders," Xie Ciyong always speaks endlessly. Xie Ciyong said he is a man obsessed with farming: "When I see what others are raising, I want to try raising it myself too."

At the end of 2008, he went to Hanzhong, Shaanxi. This trip made him realize that farming giant salamanders was actually a project with very good prospects. "In the past, giant salamanders were also an unfamiliar species to me," Xie Ciyong said. But after learning about giant salamanders from a friend in Shaanxi, he tried cooperating with the friend to farm giant salamanders.

"Over there, I also learned quite a lot of giant salamander farming techniques," Xie Ciyong told a reporter from Southwest Business Daily. Once he had mastered the techniques, he gradually began to expand the farming scale, and later cooperated with others in Shuangliu to raise over a thousand giant salamanders.

"I am from Guanghan. If I could return home to start a business, how great it would be to do farming in my hometown!" With the desire to return home and start a business, in 2014, after testing that his hometown's water quality and climate met the standards, Xie Ciyong invested more than 6 million yuan to build a wild giant salamander domestication and breeding base in Gaoping Town, Guanghan City. At the same time, he also opened a farmhouse restaurant, combining farming with dining and bringing giant salamanders to the table. Now, every weekend and holiday, locals come in an endless stream to Xie Ciyong's farmhouse restaurant to taste giant salamanders, and everyone is very curious about just how these farmed giant salamanders taste.

Today, the giant salamanders raised by Xie Ciyong are not only sold at his own farmhouse restaurant and base, but most importantly also sold in the Chengdu area. "Last year, more than 10,000 were successfully sold," Xie Ciyong said. A giant salamander weighs about six or seven jin, and each jin can sell for 120 yuan to 150 yuan. "The giant salamander farming period is three years. Under conventional farming, after three years each giant salamander weighs about 2-3 kg, and the economic benefits are very considerable."

Founding a cooperative to help villagers get rich together

When getting rich, do not forget your fellow villagers. In order to help local villagers increase their income, Xie Ciyong founded a giant salamander farming cooperative. The cooperative adopts forms such as capital or land investment as shares, and has grown from just a few people at the beginning to over a hundred now. The base drives people around Deyang to participate in wild giant salamander farming through fully funded trusteeship raising or teaching techniques for self-raising.

"I adopted 2,000 giant salamanders at the base." Zhang Yingsong, a villager from Shuimozi Village, Gaoping Town, usually works as a manager at the breeding base, responsible for "taking care" of the giant salamanders. After seeing that the giant salamander farming project had considerable benefits and good prospects, he immediately decided to join the cooperative and invest in adopting giant salamanders. "Watching the giant salamanders grow every day, the benefits really are good. I have already invested 80,000 yuan," Zhang Yingsong said. Now his greatest wish is to see the giant salamanders grow day by day, for the cooperative's benefits to be even better, and to receive a relatively high dividend in the future.

At present, driven by Xie Ciyong, more than 100 member households have adopted and started raising giant salamanders. When talking about future development prospects, Xie Ciyong said with full confidence: "The giant salamanders (fry) I farm now are all ordered from friends. In the future, I also want to breed parent fish for hatching. In short, I hope to drive more farming households to raise giant salamanders and for everyone to get rich together."