In agricultural entrepreneurship, the first thing to do is give up the idea of getting rich overnight
Lai Zhuqing: A person has to climb up.
Reporter: Can you climb up?
Lai Zhuqing: I can.
Without another word, Lai Zhuqing climbed up the tree. Every move he made was careful, trying not to alarm the Silkie chickens, but an accident still happened.
Lai Zhuqing: One flew away, one flew off, and I only caught one. If there is any movement, it flies away. It is very wary. It thinks something is coming to eat it.
Climbing up a tree is easy, but getting down is hard. Every time Lai Zhuqing catches Silkie chickens, he has to go through this kind of test. So what exactly is the background of the Silkie chicken that he has to go to so much trouble to catch?
Lai Zhuqing: It is very big.
Reporter: Is this the Silkie chicken?
Protagonist: This is the Silkie chicken.
Reporter: Why is it called by this name? Such a fancy name?
Protagonist: When it was in England, it was already called Silkie chicken.
Reporter: Is this an English breed?
Lai Zhuqing: Yes. Its characteristic is that its feet have five toes, and it has a crown, which is made of feathers. Its trait is that it can fly very well. Its wings are very strong. For it, more than ten meters is easy.
Lai Zhuqing is now already an expert in raising Silkie chickens. Catching Silkie chickens at night is relatively easier than during the day. Now Lai Zhuqing has even set up his home on the mountain. Every night he still goes up the mountain to look around, afraid that something might go wrong with the Silkie chickens. Looking at this down-to-earth Lai Zhuqing before him, no one could imagine that he once dreamed of getting rich. His only method for getting rich was one thing: buying lottery tickets. Buying lottery tickets was no longer something he could call entertainment; it was placing a bet on getting rich overnight. After buying for several years, he discovered that not only had he not gotten rich, he had also lost hundreds of thousands into it. Yet five years later, with his own two hands, he created sales of more than 8 million. What caused such a huge change in Lai Zhuqing?
Growing pomelos allowed Lai Zhuqing to earn more than 300,000 in net income back in 1997. At that time, the monthly wage of an ordinary worker was only a few hundred yuan. With money in hand, Lai Zhuqing's wife planned to build a new house. But when she found the passbook and looked at it, she got a huge fright. The 180,000 yuan in the passbook had vanished.
Wife Chen Yihui: Ah, how could the money be missing so much? I hurried to call him. I said, where did all the money go? How could so much be missing?
Lai Zhuqing: I just said a friend had taken it to use first. That was what I told her at the beginning. I said they would pay us back at the end of the year.
On the other end of the phone, Lai Zhuqing hemmed and hawed. This time, he barely got through it. However, a year later, the friend still had not paid back the money. His wife kept pressing him, asking where that 180,000 had actually gone. Lai Zhuqing knew he could not hide it this time, so he took the initiative to confess to his wife.
Lai Zhuqing: Because so much time had passed, if she asked which friend borrowed it, I could not name which friend. If I gave the friend's name, she would go and ask that friend. Once confronted, I would be finished. So I wanted to confess to her, to confess that I had bought lottery tickets.
Wife Chen Yihui: I was startled. I said, how could so much money all be taken to buy lottery tickets? How could it be like that? We needed to keep that money for the children's education, to buy a house, and we were planning to buy a car and so on.
His wife had never dreamed that Lai Zhuqing, whom she had always seen as honest and responsible, would take that 180,000 to buy lottery tickets! And lose every bit of it. This made his wife realize that Lai Zhuqing's lottery buying was no longer as simple as just having a bit of fun.
Actually, Lai Zhuqing had not become obsessed with buying lottery tickets all at once. At first, he only bought a few bets at a time. During that period, he won several times, which gave Lai Zhuqing a taste of sweetness. He felt this was a good way to get rich. If he kept buying, maybe one day he could win a big prize. At that time, only one thing was left in his life: buying lottery tickets!
Lai Zhuqing: If I won, I would double it and keep buying. I did not keep any in my own pocket. Anyway, I did not know what to do with the money if I kept it.
Lai Qingsong's friend: Before, he was listless. That is, he slept during the day and got up at night to study lottery tickets. Around here we say gambling addict, the more you gamble, the more you look like a ghost.
Just like that, Lai Zhuqing spent several hundred thousand one after another buying lottery tickets. That 180,000 in the passbook was also spent away in this way. Yet in the end, when he did the math, not only had he not gotten rich overnight, he had also lost more than 300,000.
A sudden turn of events made Lai Zhuqing, who thought about getting rich overnight all day long, change his attitude toward life. Five years later, with his own two hands, he created sales of more than 8 million.
Lai Qingsong's friend: It is like a somersault. He turned into a completely different person. A prodigal who returns is more precious than gold. That is how it is. Everyone thinks so. They can see that he has great confidence in this.
What exactly did Lai Zhuqing go through that made him stop treating life like a game and settle down to start a business steadily and practically?
On Chinese New Year's Eve in 2009, Lai Zhuqing went into town to buy New Year goods. The road home was all mountain road. After one more turn, he would be home. But just then, a large truck came toward him head-on. To avoid the truck, Lai Zhuqing's car rolled down the cliff.
Lai Zhuqing: I directly stepped on the accelerator and went down. At the time it was still in third gear. It went straight out for more than ten meters without touching the ground. It only landed after more than ten meters.
The powerful impact severely deformed the car, leaving only enough space for one person to curl up. Fortunately, Lai Zhuqing only scraped a bit of skin on his ear and was otherwise fine. It was this car accident that changed Lai Zhuqing's attitude toward life. He was still so young, yet all day long he counted on buying lottery tickets to get rich. It would be better to be down-to-earth and create wealth with his own two hands.
Lai Zhuqing: It seems I have seen through life. If there is something you like to do, then go do it. Let yourself go and do it. Do not think too much.
It turned out that the local area was developing the pomelo industry, and Lai Zhuqing had long wanted to find a different path and do breeding. Because he worried that investing too much money all at once would be too risky, he had not dared to try. After this car accident, he decided to start a breeding business.
Lai Zhuqing found that in Longyan City, Fujian Province, there was a breeding farm whose Silkie chickens sold very well. Lai Zhuqing made a special trip to Longyan to investigate. He found that the Silkie chicken is a master flyer. A wall more than four meters high was nothing; it could fly up just like that, and flying down was even easier.
Reporter: The wall is so high, and that chicken can still fly up?
Lai Zhuqing: Too easy. That one is only a bit more than four meters high. To it, that is nothing. It can just jump up.
Silkie chickens are good at flying, so their meat quality is certainly not bad either. Moreover, Lai Zhuqing found that in Pinghe County no one had ever raised Silkie chickens. This could be a one-of-a-kind business.
So in 2010, Lai Zhuqing contracted a mountain area of more than 2,000 mu as a breeding farm. This mountain area has an altitude between 700 meters and 1,000 meters. Because the altitude is high, the scenery is different throughout the four times of day, and the changes from cloudy to clear are all beautiful. Moreover, the mountain slopes are steep. He wanted to raise purely ecological Silkie chickens here.
Lai Zhuqing: This is suitable for the chickens' exercise. Going up the mountain they walk, and coming down the mountain they fly. In the morning they train their legs, and when they come back at night they train their wings. Their wings get exercise, and their legs get exercise too, so the muscles all over their bodies are better.
On Chinese New Year's Eve in 2009, Lai Zhuqing went into town to buy New Year goods. The road home was all mountain road. After one more turn, he would be home. But just then, a large truck came toward him head-on. To avoid the truck, Lai Zhuqing's car rolled down the cliff.