The porcupine is no longer fierce from now on, and its temperament has become gentle

A fierce porcupine. Yet he can treat it as a pet and handle it casually. Not only that, but the people who started businesses with him all learned to handle porcupines. One skill mastered, and you can make a living anywhere. Relying on his special skill of taming porcupines, Gao Xuerong boldly switched industries, and surprisingly within five years reached a breeding scale of more than 3,000, placing him among the top in the industry. Let's see how Gao Xuerong of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, uses what kind of special skill to make porcupines no longer fierce from now on!

White porcupines are very rare and are treasures in Old Gao's heart.

On this day, for a special marketing event, Gao Xuerong released all the white porcupines on the farm.

Gao Xuerong: This one is called "Ruby," its eyes are red.

But as soon as they were released, one white porcupine was injured.

Gao Xuerong: They got poked and hurt by rubbing against each other.

However, seeing this treasured porcupine wounded by its companions, Old Gao would not let anyone go near it. He firmly believed the porcupine could pull out the quills by itself.

Gao Xuerong: Some aren't stuck in very deep, and they fall out with just a shake.

Sure enough, this porcupine burrowed into the distant grass, and when it came out again the quills really were gone.

At nine in the morning, Old Gao's friends arrived. When they heard what they were about to do, their faces all showed expressions of difficulty.

Customer: I don't dare, they're the professionals, let them do it.

It turned out that Old Gao wanted these people, who had never touched a porcupine, to catch porcupines with no protective measures at all!

The porcupine has a very strong defense, especially the quills on its body, which are incomparably hard. Many large and fierce animals have come off worse against porcupines, let alone humans. But for something everyone considers so dangerous, Old Gao said that as long as you follow his method, there is no danger at all.

Gao Xuerong: It's fine, this can be learned after a bit of teaching, it's especially simple. With this animal, just don't frighten it too much. Release them slowly, and drive them in slowly.

However, at the start, things were not nearly as simple as Old Gao said.

According to Old Gao, porcupines only attack from their own side, so when catching a porcupine, standing at the position of its head and tail is safe. Sure enough, following this method, everyone quickly drove most of the porcupines into the cage.

But in the end, one disobedient porcupine still broke out of the encirclement, ran into the warehouse to find food, and refused to go into the cage no matter what.

It seemed that the approach of surrounding, chasing and blocking was not going to work. Old Gao proposed a special method.

Gao Xuerong: Let it walk in slowly, don't scare it.

The people who came to the event today were all interested in breeding porcupines, but because they feared the porcupine's ferocity, they could not make up their minds. That was why Old Gao held this kind of event, wanting people who had never raised porcupines to understand the porcupine's habits, so they could tame porcupines and make money from them. And it was through this idea that Old Gao achieved a breeding scale of more than 3,000, placing him among the foremost in Yunnan Province.

After the last porcupine was "invited" into the cage, Old Gao hurriedly picked something up from the ground.

Gao Xuerong: Look, its quills are quite sharp, so many people don't dare come play with them, just because the quills are quite formidable. Actually, as long as you know how to handle them, it's no problem at all.

The sharp quills on the porcupine were also part of today's marketing event for Old Gao. He wanted to use one porcupine to make a whole table of a "porcupine feast," and the porcupine quills were the most special dish of all. So just how are porcupine quills eaten?

Gao Xuerong: Generally porcupine quills are just stir-fried, they can reduce inflammation, you see, just stir-fry them like this. After frying they turn yellow, and once yellow they're ready to eat.

The porcupine's quills are themselves a kind of Chinese medicine. Local people generally grind them into powder and drink it mixed with water, and someone like Old Gao, stir-frying the quills into a dish, was still the first in the area.

Besides the porcupine quills, Old Gao's porcupine feast also had more than ten other dishes. He made dishes from porcupine meat, porcupine skin and other parts of the porcupine, to entertain customers and friends.

When the reporter went to interview, a female porcupine had just given birth to a litter of pups. This baby porcupine, only six hours old, immediately showed us just how formidable it was.

Reporter: It bit down, didn't it?

Farm manager: I got two tooth marks from the bite, and it wouldn't let go.

Gao Xuerong: Look, the moment it's born it has two big front teeth, and it hurts terribly when it bites. Bitten again.

And this animal, so fierce from birth, won Old Gao's heart deeply, and was surprisingly tamed by Old Gao into complete obedience.

Gao Xuerong: Look, it just plays with you.

Not only porcupines, but even wild boars, which make the locals tremble with fear, were tamed by Old Gao until they were like pets.

Gao Xuerong: Put your hand into the wild boar's mouth.

But by 2010, Old Gao had contracted a 27-mu piece of wasteland in Manda Village, Gasa Town, to build a large-scale porcupine farm, and to raise at least 1,000 of them. This met with strong opposition from his family.

The reason Old Gao did this was that he had sensed in advance the recession that the construction industry would face in the coming years, while the porcupine has high economic value, the local porcupine consumer market is large, and he had already thoroughly figured out the porcupine's temperament. Only then did he dare to put all of the more than 10 million yuan he had earned over years in the building materials business into this farm, and obtain breeding and sales licenses, planning to rely solely on porcupines to make money from then on. But unexpectedly, right at the start, he lost more than a million yuan in one go.

It turned out that winter, Old Gao brought in a batch of fresh vegetables from local farmers, but because they were not washed clean, many porcupines ate them and died of diarrhea, losing more than a million yuan within a month.

This loss of more than a million yuan taught Old Gao a painful lesson. He discovered that in large-scale breeding, the slightest negligence in any detail can trigger tragedy. From then on, Old Gao, who came from a military background, imposed strict military-style management on the farm. He grew vegetables himself on the farm's open ground, the employees all wore camouflage uniforms, and he even had strict rules for how many cuts to make when chopping a head of cabbage during work.

And Old Gao was not only strict with his own people; when he got serious with customers he showed no mercy either. During our filming, one such small incident occurred. On November 10, Old Gao led us to the home of one of his customers for filming. A few porcupines saw people coming and all crowded over. But seeing such a delightful scene, Old Gao suddenly flew into a rage at this customer.