After marrying a wife, he gained wealth

He had a father who was famous far and wide in the area. He also married a general manager wife who was willing to quit her job and follow him into the mountains to sleep in a pigsty. He thought he would be the next winner in life, but unexpectedly it turned out to be a beginning that could not have been worse. But afterward, he kept coming up with unorthodox moves, not only changing the local history of virtually no one raising sheep on a large scale, but also turning his own farm into a unique sight in the mountains. See how Zhong Hua of Longyan City, Fujian Province, transformed from the son of a "pig-farming celebrity" into the area's most famous "Sheep Daddy"!

On weekends, at Zhong Hua's farm, these ten-year-old boys, as soon as they come in, have to face a very embarrassing thing.

Zhong Hua: How do you milk a sheep?

Little boy: You do it, you do it!

Little boy: I won't do it, you do it.

Milking sheep is an experience activity Zhong Hua specially organizes for customers, and the highlight of the activity is this contest.

Zhong Hua: Explains the contest rules. Start!

Children: Go! Go!

Zhong Hua: Time's up. The winner is so-and-so. The prize is such-and-such.

The fresh sheep milk just milked can be drunk directly after being heated.

Child: So sweet.

On the surface, Zhong Hua holds this sheep-milking contest to make the children happy, but in reality he is aiming at the parents' wallets. Before the activity even ended, some parents had already ordered a whole year's supply of sheep milk for their children.

Employee: The total comes to 2880.

Customer: Card.

Parent: The child likes drinking it.

What supports the experience park behind the scenes is a farm covering more than 50 mu. Here, Zhong Hua raises improved breeds of Saanen goats and Hu sheep. By selling mutton and sheep milk, in 2015 the sales of his company and cooperative reached more than ten million yuan.

Over the thirteen years since starting his business, Zhong Hua started with 5,000 yuan he borrowed and pioneered an industry that almost no one locally dared to take on, and the cooperative grew to include more than a hundred farming households. And all of this was because of the special birthday gifts he received from childhood.

Zhong Hua: As soon as the weekend or a holiday came, other kids went out to play and could receive lots of birthday gifts, but back then what I received was a broom and a dustpan, to clean up pig droppings. At the time I felt I was quite different from the other kids, and I felt pretty miserable inside.

The reason Zhong Hua lived a life different from others since childhood was that he had a famous father. His name is Zhong Huaimin. Because he went abroad to study farming technology back in the 1980s, the pig-farming industry in the Longyan area was built up by him single-handedly.

Reporter: Have you heard the name Zhong Huaimin?

Xie Chenghua: We knew of Zhong Huaimin by the time we were around twenty.

Chen Yongjian: Almost everyone who raises pigs knows him, everyone has heard this name.

After Zhong Hua grew up, his father earned more and more money and became more and more famous, and at most the family had more than ten properties. But all of this made Zhong Hua feel more and more oppressed inside.

Zhong Hua: I didn't want to shine by someone else's light. Every time others mentioned my father, I always felt that whatever you did, you got it because of this father, so at the time I basically never mentioned my father when I was outside.

After graduating from a sports school, Zhong Hua, determined to stay far away from the farming industry, became a PE teacher at a school, thinking he would start a brand-new life here. Unexpectedly, a family upheaval completely reversed the course of Zhong Hua's later life, and even forced him to sell the house he had prepared for marriage.

Zhong Huaimin: There was no way. The house I had fixed up, and the pig farm was there too. If you wanted capital, this was the only way. You had to choose one of the two.

In 2000, Zhong Hua's mother suddenly fell gravely ill. To treat his mother, his father spent all his savings and sold most of the houses, and the family's circumstances plummeted. And Zhong Hua's salary as a PE teacher simply could not support the family's expenses, so he had no choice but to go home and start a business. After returning home, his father gave Zhong Hua two choices: one was to sell a pig farm deep in the mountains, and the other was to sell the five-story building prepared for Zhong Hua's marriage. The two assets were worth the same, so which one did Zhong Hua choose?

Zhong Hua: At the time I didn't hesitate at all. I told my father directly, sell the building.

But it was precisely when the family was at its most difficult that Zhong Hua said he did not want to raise pigs in a pigsty; he wanted to raise sheep.

Zhong Huaimin: He said, Dad, I don't want to raise pigs with you anymore, I have my own ideas. At the time I didn't expect it at all. I said, you want to raise sheep, no one has ever walked this road before.

In Longyan City in 2000, only some small household raisers grazed a small number of goats in the mountains. No one dared to raise them on a large concentrated scale. Even the taste of mutton was something the locals were not used to, let alone know how to cook.

Xie Chenghua: At that time, we southerners probably were not used to eating this mutton.

Chen Yongjian: We originally didn't raise sheep, and we didn't have sheep either. Our knowledge of sheep-raising techniques and the requirements for sheep was very weak, so they didn't understand.

Yet Zhong Hua insisted on choosing to raise sheep, not only because he saw a huge market gap, but also for a reason deep in his heart that he did not easily speak aloud.

Zhong Hua: I just wanted to break through and surpass my father in some field, to surpass him in work and in achievements in more areas.

After spotting this business opportunity in sheep raising, Zhong Hua thought of a woman he had met only once. Her name was Lin Yi. He decided to give Lin Yi a call.

Lin Yi: He called me that day and said just this one thing, I want to start a business now. That was very good. I'm starting a business now and want to find a wife. That was very good too. I asked, what kind do you want to find? He told me, just find one like you.

At that time, Lin Yi was a general manager at an enterprise in Fuzhou and had met Zhong Hua once at a friend's dinner gathering. That time, although they were across the whole table from each other, Zhong Hua was inexplicably drawn to this generous and capable girl.

Zhong Hua: At that time, while eating, I had already set my mind on her. She was a girl with a lot of ideas, and in the future I definitely had to find someone like this.

Zhong Hua's phone call left Lin Yi dazed and confused, but instead it stirred up her strong curiosity. She was determined to see for herself what this so-direct young man actually wanted to do. So they arranged to meet at a shopping mall, but as soon as they met, Zhong Hua rode a motorcycle and took Lin Yi toward the remote deep mountains nearby, which began to make Lin Yi somewhat afraid.

Lin Yi: He just said I'll take you to a place, and carried me up the mountain. I looked and thought, what is going on, it felt more and more wrong, because the mountain road got harder to walk, and the farther we went, the more remote it became.

Taking a girl into the deep mountains right after meeting, what exactly did Zhong Hua want to do? After the rain, the mountain road became muddier and muddier, more and more remote, and Lin Yi grew more and more afraid inside.