Qu Yongqiang of Guang'an, Sichuan Makes His Fortune Raising Pigs in Peacock Towers

Three stories tall, 8 m high, with lightning rods on the roofs and music drifting out every day. This ordinary village has drawn many visitors because of these ten oddly shaped buildings. People call them Peacock Towers, and it is hard to imagine that they are actually used for raising pigs. Raising pigs and yet afraid of pigs - Qu Yongqiang of Guang'an, Sichuan was called a showman and a mystifier by some. See how raising pigs in the Peacock Towers earned him tens of millions in wealth!

In Shuyan Village, Guang'an City, Sichuan, there are ten circular buildings that look very unusual, and the locals all call them Peacock Towers.

Each building is three stories tall, 8 m high, covers four to five hundred sq m, has a lightning rod on the roof, and music comes out of it every day. The place is heavily guarded and outsiders cannot get in at all, but even so, many people from out of town do not hesitate to ride three or four hours just to see the novelty, and on the very day the reporter came to interview, such a group showed up. Seeing buildings like this for the first time, everyone found them even more incredible.

Visitor: Like the Tibetan tents of the Tibetan people, very beautiful and very unique.

Visitor: Like a peacock, a peacock spreading its tail.

Visitor: I'd say it looks like an indoor stadium.

Visitor: This is my first time here, I came from Chengdu, it's very special and very novel.

Villager: Especially fresh and new, lots of people come to see it, we've never seen anything like it.

What exactly are such buildings used for? This ordinary little village is not some tourist attraction, and the reason it can draw so many people to look, besides the strange shape, is even more because of its use. This stretch of buildings cost more than 30 million yuan, all for one special purpose - raising pigs.

Visitor: A hotel for pigs, a star-rated hotel.

Visitor: I never thought it would be a place where pigs live, never thought it.

Villager: Around here we build pig pens to raise pigs, one story, but his is built three stories.

Villager Liu Kunqiong: With so many pigs upstairs, how do they come down? You tell me, they'll have to come down.

Wang Xianli: What is this man doing, making such a foolish fuss, building a multistory building, and building a bird's nest like this to raise pigs.

Hiring experts to design it, the strange shape, spending tens of millions of yuan, and it turns out to be for raising pigs - no one could figure out why, yet what was even more puzzling was the owner of the Peacock Towers.

Friend Wang Yuzhu: The Peacock Hall, he imagined it beautifully, we felt it was all idealized and impossible to achieve, building something so pretty to raise pigs, with the pigs going upstairs, it made people feel it was inconceivable, but in the end he truly made it happen.

Friend Wang Junming: Now people do this toward Old Qu - thumbs up, and truly so. From the time he had this idea to making it happen, up to today, his products are in specialty stores, supermarkets, and all the major marketplaces. He really turned a mirage into reality.

He is Qu Yongqiang, the owner of the Peacock Towers. He said he built these special buildings just to raise his even more special pigs, and as he spoke, he wanted to catch a piglet to show the reporter, but what surprised the reporter was that this man, legendary for his unique ideas and for spending more than 30 million yuan to build houses for raising pigs, could not bring himself to make the move when he wanted to catch a pig.

Qu Yongqiang: Let's try again, just a moment.

Reporter: Is catching a pig very hard?

Qu Yongqiang: For other people it's not hard, for me it's a very big difficulty.

Qu Yongqiang hesitated for a long while, got ready to catch one, but then stopped again.

Qu Yongqiang: How about this, let's (catch) another one.

Reporter: All right, you can't catch this one.

Qu Yongqiang: Can't catch it, let's look at another one.

Walking and stopping, in front of the sow, Qu Yongqiang did not dare to make a move to catch a pig, and after we had made almost a full round starting from the first pig pen, he finally worked up the courage and carried one out. But less than three seconds after taking it out, the sow squealed terribly, and Qu Yongqiang obediently put it back.

Qu Yongqiang: This pig is very fierce, it usually bites people.

Catching a piglet is a hard thing for Qu Yongqiang, but over the several days of filming afterward the reporter noticed that whenever he was with pigs, Qu Yongqiang kept his distance.

Friend Wang Yuzhu: He just doesn't dare catch the pig. Whenever there's a pig he has others catch it, he doesn't dare catch it, doesn't dare touch it, but he got this thing done, and it really wasn't easy.

Qu Yongqiang: I'm afraid to touch pigs, I can't catch pigs well. To sum it up, I'm afraid to hold pigs, afraid to touch pigs, afraid to slaughter pigs, and I love pigs.

A man who always had to keep his distance from pigs because he was afraid of them, yet spent a huge sum to build multistory buildings to raise pigs - at first, many villagers said Qu Yongqiang raising pigs was a joke. Some said he was seeking attention, others said he was just burning money, and only Qu Yongqiang himself knew that beneath the beautiful exterior of this pig farm were many little-known secrets.

Qu Yongqiang: The whole breeding hall is only a bit over a thousand sq m, but you can't underestimate it. A year it can bring our total output value four to five million yuan.

One breeding hall produces four to five million yuan in output value a year, and ten of them make forty to fifty million yuan. So what exactly is the relationship between this huge wealth and Qu Yongqiang's building of the Peacock Towers? And what is so unique about raising pigs here?

These are rusted steel pipes left over after bridge engineering projects, and they are also the main material Qu Yongqiang used to build the pig farm. After polishing off the rust and brushing on anti-rust paint, the steel pipes can be put to use. Before raising pigs in 2012, Qu Yongqiang was an expert in the bridge reinforcement industry.

Friend Wang Junming: Shanxi at the time built a Fenglingdu Yellow River Bridge, and its craftsmanship was also very complex. In bridge reinforcement, within the field in (Sichuan), he ranks among the notable names.

Relying on solid skills and integrity, Qu Yongqiang struggled in the bridge reinforcement industry for more than 10 years and got onto the fast track of wealth, with assets in the tens of millions, and the whole family lived happily in Chengdu. But no one expected that starting in March 2012, just when his career was thriving, Qu Yongqiang would suddenly want to go back to the countryside to raise a very special kind of pig.

This is Shuyan Village, Wusheng County, Guang'an City, Sichuan Province, the hometown of Qu Yongqiang's mother. He grew up in Shanxi. In August 2011, his mother passed away from stomach cancer, and Qu Yongqiang and his older sister buried their mother in the hometown. This was also the first time he came here, but after busying himself for a few days and finishing the funeral arrangements, Qu Yongqiang would not leave.

Older sister Qu Yonghong: He wouldn't leave, he wandered all over that hilltop, wandered all over the fields looking around. I was very puzzled, so I asked him what he was doing, and he said he wanted to set up a breeding farm.

At the time, all the young and strong people in the village had gone out to work, and no one thought much of staying in the countryside to raise pigs and ducks. Qu Yongqiang was doing well in the big city, so why would he go back to the countryside to raise pigs? Everyone found it very unexpected.