"Herbal Medicine Queen" Wang Haihua Leads More Than 5,000 Farming Households onto the Road to Prosperity

Within a hundred li around Dengzhou City, Henan Province, when people mention "Herbal Medicine King" Wang Haihua, they cannot help but give her a thumbs-up. This is not only because she is the chairwoman of Dengzhou City Honghai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. and a member of the Dengzhou City CPPCC, but even more because she is a successful entrepreneur and a "bellwether" who has led her fellow villagers to prosperity together. Using the business model of "company + base + specialized cooperative + farming households," Wang Haihua has developed the cultivation of Chinese medicinal herbs. She has not only achieved remarkable results, but also driven farming households to plant scientifically and helped more than 5,000 farming households in the local area increase their incomes and become well-off. Together with caring entrepreneurs, she supports public welfare causes, often helping impoverished families, elderly people living alone, and children and teenagers, adding bricks and tiles to social harmony and spreading love across the land of Dengzhou.

In 1988, Wang Haihua, a university graduate, did not, like other university students, wallow in self-pity after setbacks in job hunting; nor did she, like others of her age, find a good husband's family and "wait in her boudoir." She gave up the comfortable job her parents arranged for her and chose the highly challenging business of Chinese medicinal herbs as her path to entrepreneurship. With 1,800 yuan in borrowed start-up capital, she rode in a hired small eight-horsepower walking tractor, bouncing along rural dirt roads every day, leaving early and returning late as she went from village to village and door to door, purchasing scattered goods from farming households. She took on both the roles of boss and loading worker. At night when she returned home, she was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she hit the bed, and she was often so worried about not being able to purchase a few hundred jin of Chinese medicinal herbs that she could not eat or drink. In about a month, the first batch of Chinese medicinal herbs she sold earned her the first pot of gold. Although it was only more than 2,000 yuan, the joy of success made her forget the exhaustion of rushing about.

Wang Haihua is a thoughtful person and also a cautious one. She often goes deep into the homes of growers to learn about the situation. Years of business experience have honed her keen insight into business opportunities and enabled her to accumulate a great deal of experience, laying a solid foundation for her to open up a new world in the future.

After years of painstaking operation, Wang Haihua worked out the business model of "company + base + specialized cooperative + farming households" and achieved good development results. In 2006, just as she was full of ambition, the cargo throughput of each batch of Chinese medicinal herbs she handled had increased from the original few hundred jin and several thousand jin to several tons and dozens of tons. She had to spread large sheets of Chinese medicinal herbs out to dry on the street in front of the purchasing and sales department on every sunny day, but this move seriously affected the beautification and lighting construction of the market town. "At that time, I really had to thank the Party committee and government of Zhangcun. If not for their support and encouragement, I really would not be where I am today..." Thus, with the support and help of the Party committee and government of Zhangcun Town, Wang Haihua had the idea of building a processing plant and cultivating planting bases.

Wang Haihua said: "At that time, many people did not understand and thought my dealing in Chinese medicinal herbs was just a three-minute passion and would ultimately end in failure." But she did not give up easily and acted as soon as she said she would. In 2009, she established Dengzhou City Honghai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The company's production base covers an area of more than 8,000 sq m and integrates the cultivation, processing, and operation of Chinese medicinal herbs. With the purpose of "prospering the industry and enriching the people," the mission of "dedicating itself to society," and the goal of creating "high-quality decoction pieces," it purchased and installed advanced deep-processing production equipment and inspection equipment in accordance with unified production process regulations, and buys and sells thousands of tons of Chinese medicinal herbs each year. The high-quality decoction pieces produced by the company from authentic Chinese medicinal herbs have become health-preserving and wellness products of concern to Chinese medicine buyers and sellers at home and abroad. Wang Haihua told reporters that she will actively build a new type of specialized Chinese medicinal herb market and strive during the "13th Five-Year Plan" to develop into a leading enterprise in Chinese medicinal herb production and processing in southwestern Henan and even the Central Plains region, as well as a key distribution center for Chinese medicinal herbs.

"Haihua is really good. She often explains the cultivation techniques of Chinese medicinal herbs to us and leads everyone on free visits and study trips, hoping that we large growers can also get on the road to prosperity..." Large grower Ren Baoping excitedly told reporters. "With Haihua's support, this year I planted nearly 60 mu of Arisaema heterophyllum and earned nearly 400,000 yuan. I have to thank Haihua for all of this!"

After years of painstaking operation, Honghai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. has made great progress, but being rich herself did not count as being rich. How to lead the masses onto the road to prosperity together had always been a dream lingering in Wang Haihua's heart. "Planting wheat and corn on the land really does not bring high income. If ordinary people want to dig gold out of the soil, they still have to plant Chinese medicinal herbs with better returns." Wang Haihua told reporters that in order to fulfill the masses' desire to become rich, she led them out many times for on-site visits to inspect others' practices of growing medicinal herbs to become rich, and proactively proposed to purchase all Chinese medicinal herbs at the lowest protective price. At the same time, she served growers wholeheartedly, settled down to give free lessons to farming households, and taught Chinese medicinal herb cultivation techniques. She also spent her own money to purchase large quantities of Chinese medicinal herb seeds and gave them free to villagers willing to plant them. In the process of purchasing Chinese medicinal herbs, she also compensated fertilizer according to the amount sold by the herb growers, improving the growers' planting returns.

Now, under her leadership, not only has the planting area of Chinese medicinal herbs expanded in more than 20 townships and towns in Dengzhou City, but farmers in the surrounding Neixiang County, Xichuan County, Xixia County, as well as Hubei, Shaanxi, and other provinces have also actively planted Chinese medicinal herbs. The income of herb growers ranges from several hundred thousand yuan per year for the highest earners to several thousand or tens of thousands of yuan for the lowest. When others ask her why she does this, Wang Haihua says: "Being rich by myself does not count as being rich; only when my fellow villagers are rich together does it count as being rich. Only when the masses are rich do I have broader space for development."

Now, under Wang Haihua's leadership, more than 5,000 farming households in Dengzhou City cultivate Chinese medicinal herbs, some a few mu and some several hundred mu. At the same time, this has also helped raise the employment rate of farmers throughout the city and contributed to the economic and social development of Dengzhou City.

Speaking of her future plans, Wang Haihua said, "In the future, I want to continue expanding the planting scale, develop the cultivation of various edible medicinal herbs on the basis of the original medicinal herb varieties, build my own brand, sell high-quality medicinal herbs across the country, and lead my fellow villagers together onto the road to prosperity."