Yang Haiyun of Shaodong returns home to establish a Chaotian chili base and leads his fellow villagers to prosperity together

At the Chaotian red chili base, employees are busy picking.

Freshly picked Chaotian red chilies.

The Chaotian red chili base.

The winter sun is as warm as spring, and the overlapping mountain ridges wind like dragons; Chaotian chilies cover the hillsides, and people pick in small groups, busy at work. Although it is deep winter, the joy of the autumn harvest has not yet faded. On November 24, walking onto the hillside of Zhenxin Village, Shashi Town, Shaodong County, Hunan Province, laughter carried from afar; climbing to the top of the hill and looking out, the eye meets Chaotian chilies in mixed red and green, a scene full of vitality. This is the Chaotian red chili base founded by Yang Haiyun, who returned home to start a business, with an investment of more than 8 million yuan and an area of more than 1,000 mu.

Going out to make a living and honing his skills

In 1971, after 13-year-old Yang Haiyun finished primary school, his family was so poor that he had to stop his schooling and learn blacksmithing from his father from dawn to dusk. After five years of tempering, Yang Haiyun felt troubled and helpless about poverty. Poverty spurs the desire for change; in March 1976, 18-year-old Yang Haiyun followed his father to Guilin, Guangxi, to run a business collecting daily necessities, set up a factory and engage in sales, and after six hard years of operation, he earned his first pot of gold, then returned home to build a house and start a business.

The good times did not last long. In 1986, he went alone to Hainan Island, and in less than two years he suffered huge losses. In 1987, he returned to his hometown in Shaodong and borrowed money from friends to continue doing business. Because market competition was fierce at the time, he suffered losses again in less than a year. After repeated losses, he was trapped in difficulty but vowed not to yield. In 1989, he went to Guangxi to cooperate with the labor service company of the Guilin Steel Plant to process steel billets and make screw caps. Hard work pays off; through arduous striving, he achieved abundant results and made a hefty profit.

In 1991, Yang Haiyun led his family of 6 south to Shenzhen and started a trade business in machinery and other goods. In 1992 it got on track, and in 1993 it showed a good development trend. His company was upgraded to Hailong Group Company, engaged in machinery, food, coal mines and other industries. From then on, the trade group company he founded grew stronger and more prosperous.

From 2002 to 2004, due to the political and international financial environment, Yang Haiyun's company suffered large losses. In 2005, he raised money everywhere and brought the original company back from the brink. In 2007, when investing in real estate in Daya Bay, Shenzhen, he took the initiative to bring in shareholders, and after 8 months, successfully negotiated an energy-saving and emission-reduction project, obtaining rich returns. Up to now, he has established three major companies: Shenzhen Haishitong Investment, Wuhan Taitong Trade, and Wuhan Shengxing, becoming a nationally known entrepreneur.

Not forgetting his fellow villagers, returning home to start a business. "No matter how high or far a kite flies, the string is always tied to the hometown. The outside world may be good, but it is not a place to stay forever. My roots are here, and here is the soil for my development. I went out so that one day I could come back and start a business." After more than 40 years of striving outside, Yang Haiyun, who lives in Zhenxin Village, Shashi Town, said this when talking about why he returned home to start a business.

In March 2014, under the guidance of the Party committee and government of Shashi Town, Yang Haiyun returned home and began his own entrepreneurial path. That year coincided with the village-level leadership election, and he was elected village committee director with a high vote count, becoming the leader driving the whole village to start businesses and become rich. "If you want to get rich, first build roads." Yang Haiyun, the newly appointed village director, understood this principle well. In October of the same year, he led village leadership team members and villagers into the construction of the road into the village, without asking villagers to contribute a single cent, and took out more than 2 million yuan himself to build the village's group-connecting road.

In order to take the path of using a leading enterprise to drive villagers' economic development, Yang Haiyun aimed his entrepreneurial goal at high-efficiency agriculture and targeted the huge rural market. In December 2014, he led village cadres and some villagers in a total investment of 8 million yuan, and Shaodong Jintong Technology Co., Ltd., mainly engaged in planting Chaotian chilies, was promptly registered and established.

At the beginning of the company's establishment, it encountered difficulties beyond imagination. Based on planting Chaotian chilies, adopting the model of "company + base + farmers + market," and building a thousand-mu agricultural demonstration base, implementing contiguous development and centralized management, it needed to lease barren hill land from several surrounding villages, involving land transfer disputes with more than 100 local households. For this reason, Yang Haiyun rushed between county departments of land, forestry, and agriculture, and banks during the day, coordinating relationships and handling relevant procedures, and at night went deep into village groups and farming households to do ideological work.

With the great attention and strong support of the local county Party committee and county government, the company has now established long-term cooperative relations with more than 100 businesses and companies inside and outside the county. The company achieved project approval in the same year, production in the same year, and results in the same year. This year it produced 70 tons of chilies, with quite considerable sales revenue.

Leading the masses onto the road of creating wealth

How can the enterprise remain at the forefront of agricultural industrialization and drive more farmers to adjust the industrial structure and increase income? Yang Haiyun has only one answer: never slacken and always innovate. Next, he will continue to rely on the technical support of agricultural departments and policy support from higher-level governments, so that more large-scale growers can see the advantages of the company's products, and gradually form larger-area agricultural industrialization and large-scale operation.

At present, the Chaotian red chilies produced here, through deep processing, are exported to Southeast Asia and sold as far as European and American markets. Domestically, they are mainly sold to catering industries such as Hubei and Sichuan Chongqing spicy chicken, spicy crab, and spicy hot pot, driving more than 10,000 people in surrounding villages to become rich. One person becoming rich does not count as being rich; he wants to expand the planting scale, lead his hometown people onto the road to prosperity, and build his Chaotian red chilies into provincial-level high-efficiency distinctive agriculture.