How the Snake Farming King Made His Fortune
On the morning of March 10, under a steady drizzle, a special entrepreneur came to the microcredit office in Zhangshu City, Jiangxi Province. The staff handed him a cup of warm water and listened as he slowly told the story of his entrepreneurial journey.
Gui Guolin is a snake farmer. Mention a cobra, and many people shudder, yet in the eyes of Master Gui, a villager from Dianxia Town, Zhangshu City, the cobra is a good partner on his road to wealth. In just over a year, he built a breeding cooperative with a scale of more than 2,000 cobras and explored a path to wealth through specialty farming.
Master Gui used to work away from home all along. From the age of 25, he went out to do odd jobs. As he grew older, and as the economic downturn left every industry in the doldrums, Master Gui began to think about other business opportunities. Among the many entrepreneurial projects, Master Gui chose the cobra project. In 2014 he returned to his hometown of Zhangshu City. To better care for his elderly father at home, Master Gui made inquiries and learned that there was a snake farming expert in Xingan County, Ji'an. So he became an apprentice and began learning snake farming from the expert. However, farming cobras was not all smooth sailing. To farm cobras, one must know the living habits and breeding techniques of this snake.
To learn the techniques well, overcoming his fear of snakes was the first hurdle in snake farming. To achieve this, Master Gui ate and slept in the mountains, and long-term contact gradually helped him overcome his fear of snakes. Under the careful guidance of the snake farming expert, Master Gui quickly mastered snake farming techniques. In 2015, having completed his training, Master Gui returned home to start his business. He named his base Menghu Breeding Cooperative, with an annual output of more than 3,000 cobras, mainly sold to southern cities such as Shanghai, Guangdong and Fujian.
In July 2015, leaders from the Jiangxi Provincial Forestry Bureau and the Zhangshu City Forestry Bureau personally visited Master Gui's snake farming base and offered some guidance and suggestions for the breeding base. They also recommended a farmer breeding loan to Master Gui, saying: "We hope that through his own efforts and with government support, the snakes he farms can be sold all over the country and he can become a famous breeder."
Master Gui's specialty farming attracted the attention of nearby villagers, and several of them even joined the cooperative. At present, Master Gui's goal for himself is to raise this batch of snakes well, and later add two more species, the water snake and the beauty rat snake. Next, he also plans to use his excellent geographical location to open a farmhouse restaurant, with the snakes he raises as the signature dishes.