This crop is pitch black, yet it is a rare treasure

Because of poverty, he voluntarily gave up the only chance to study in the family to his younger brother. With only three yuan left on him, he was still determined to try his luck in Shenzhen. He said that one's way of thinking determines one's way out. He returned to his hometown in the mountains to start a business, deliberately looking for business opportunities in things the locals had never done. He set his sights on the local specialty Donglan black-boned chicken, which has unique traits, hoping to seize the upper hand through the black-boned chicken. How did he find a way out of poverty and change his fate through entrepreneurship?

This person is Chen Yong, and the people who came to the chicken farm today are all his friends. Because Chen Yong's Donglan black-boned chickens are hard to buy in the county, these friends made a special trip to Chen Yong's farm to buy chickens.

Chen Yong: They can't buy them, so they all come to the farm to get them.

Reporter: Can't you buy them in the county market?

Chen Yong: Right, because basically all the chickens we raise aren't enough to sell. These are my walk-in customers, I guess you could call them walk-in customers. When they really want to eat some, a few of them team up and come buy them.

And today, to let the visitors see just how wild the chickens he raises are, Chen Yong proposed that whoever could catch a chicken could have it for free.

Chen Yong: Go catch chickens! Whoever catches one gets to keep it. There are eggs and chickens in there. If you can find eggs, take the eggs.

As soon as he said this, the friends who had come began catching chickens in all sorts of ways.

First they surrounded them as a group, then chased them wildly one by one, and then concentrated on flanking them.

Chen Yong: Dinner is right there. If you want dinner, say so. Hurry up, hurry up, oh!

Many people put in a huge effort but came away with nothing, while this lady here luckily succeeded.

Friend Qin Wuying: Five jin!

Chen Yong: Impossible. It's yours. This one is about to lay eggs.

Reporter: So it's a bit heavier and clumsier.

Chen Yong: Right, a bit heavier and clumsier. If it weren't clumsy, she wouldn't have been able to catch it. It moves relatively slowly.

Friend Qin Wuying: I'm a doctor, so my hands are more sensitive.

Chen Yong: This chicken moves too fast, it runs very quickly.

But these two men who still hadn't caught a chicken were very unwilling to give up. They tried all kinds of methods and went all out. They even squatted next to the chickens that were eating and launched sneak attacks. Still, they came away with nothing.

Friend Chang Weijie: Women are still better at catching chickens.

Reporter: I can see you two are exhausted. You're both panting.

Friend Han Jian: Exhausted. This one is a fighting chicken among chickens. Very hard to catch.

Friend Chang Weijie: If we can't catch chickens, we'll just pick eggs. One egg each and we'll go home.

Friend Han Jian: Tonight we'll just get by with one egg each.

The people who caught chickens were naturally very happy.

Friend Huang Huilin: Happy, I caught one, happy today.

Reporter: You're all wearing high heels and you're still pretty impressive.

Friend Qin Wuying: We often come to his place to buy and eat. This meat is very sweet.

In Donglan County, Chen Yong is the largest raiser of Donglan black-boned chickens. In just over three years, annual sales reached more than 6 million yuan, and he also drove the development of this industry. But during the interview, Chen Yong told the reporter that taking the path of entrepreneurship was actually a helpless choice, one he was forced into.

Chen Yong: I could only start a business. You could say I was forced into it. You could put it that way, it was a helpless choice. There was no other road to take. The best option I could imagine in my fate was that I could only take this road.

In 1993, Chen Yong was admitted to this high school in Donglan County with the top score in the whole school. When he enrolled, he took this photo with several classmates, and on the back of the photo Chen Yong wrote: "Don't waste your youth." But less than a month after the school term began, Chen Yong proposed dropping out.

Chen Yong's hometown is right in these layer upon layer of towering mountains. The whole family's livelihood depended on his father alone, scraping a little at a time out of this land. The year Chen Yong was admitted to high school, his mother fell ill, and Chen Yong and his younger brother, who was then in middle school, had to study at the same time, but the family simply could not afford it. After thinking it over and over, Chen Yong told his family he did not want to study anymore.

Chen Yong: I said I didn't want to study anymore, I wanted to go out to work. If both of us studied, the burden on the family would be even heavier. There was no other way, only one person could study. Because I was a bit older, I had to give way to him. I also really wanted to study, but that's just how our fate was. There's no point in feeling wronged. We were born in this place, and it's just this poor.

Chen Yong went behind his family's back and asked the school to let him drop out, voluntarily giving up this chance to study to his younger brother. Then, with reluctance and regret, he ended his student life. On the day he left school, Chen Yong wrote: "Don't be sad, Chen Yong. You will have that day, when you are a brilliant version of yourself."

Chen Yong set out on the road to work. He came to Nanning and became an auto mechanic. In 1997, Chen Yong had put his younger brother through secondary school, and he himself had married and had children. At this time, Chen Yong made a bold decision: go south to Shenzhen to learn excavator repair skills.

Chen Yong: At the time I thought this way: work while also learning technical knowledge. As the local saying goes, isn't there a saying: "With a skill you won't be poor; without a skill you'll be poor for a long, long time." Without skills you'll be poor forever. Because if you have skills, you can turn skills into productivity, into money. Skills can make you money.

Chen Yong carried all his savings, 131 yuan, to the bus station to buy a ticket, but a bus ticket to Shenzhen cost 128 yuan each. After buying the ticket, Chen Yong had only 3 yuan left. But he still wanted to go to Shenzhen.

Chen Yong: I had a hard time finally getting a ticket, and I didn't want to lose this opportunity. I was like being forced onto Mount Liang, with no road back.

Reporter: What if you get there and can't find a job?

Chen Yong: It's fine. Anyway, this is how I thought: put a bit more pressure on myself, otherwise we wouldn't have that drive. Because we suffered hardship since childhood, we're not afraid of hardship. At worst I'll go scavenge.

Chen Yong made up his mind that at worst he would go collect garbage. On the way to Shenzhen, he used his last three yuan to buy 6 pieces of bread. With no money to buy water, he drank tap water. And so, penniless, Chen Yong arrived in Shenzhen. He found a repair shop to learn excavator repair. A year later, Chen Yong became an excavator repairman. And very quickly, Chen Yong used an excavator to dig up the first pot of gold in his life.

In 2003, Chen Yong's hometown, Donglan County, Hechi City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, began a major battle for infrastructure construction in the old revolutionary base area. Hearing this news, Chen Yong immediately returned to his hometown, pooled 200,000 yuan through borrowing money and loans, and bought a small second-hand excavator, and Chen Yong's excavator was the first one in the local area.