Mianyang's Tough Woman Dares to Venture and Blaze a Path to Prosperity
In Bailong Village, Tashan Town, Santai County, Mianyang City, 44-year-old Huo Haiqiong can truly be called a "tough woman" known far and wide. She is not tall, and always ties her hair up in a high ponytail, looking shrewd and capable. Everyone who knows her says she is especially decisive and quick when it comes to getting things done. Huo Haiqiong earned the nickname "tough woman" for her vigorous and resolute personality, and even more because she chose a path to wealth that in most people's eyes seems "bold as the sky" - snake farming.
A "Taxi Sister's" Unconventional Vision
In the early 1990s, Huo Haiqiong contracted a supply and marketing cooperative, stocking goods, putting them on shelves, selling, and making deliveries every day... In 2007, seeing the huge prospects of the taxi market, Huo Haiqiong left her hometown and operated taxis in many places including Xi'an and Hanzhong. The diligent Huo Haiqiong was both boss and "taxi sister," accumulating considerable wealth.
In 2009, the ambitious Huo Haiqiong planned a career change. By chance, she learned from television about the enormous value of snakes: "Snake meat, snake skin, snake oil, snake venom, and snake gall all have value. Market demand is huge, and supply falls short of demand." Having found her direction, Huo Haiqiong was full of drive. She spent more than a year alone in Chongqing, Guangxi and other places learning from masters, studying snake farming techniques.
Snakes have always been synonymous with cold-bloodedness, cunning, and ferocity. As soon as they heard Huo Haiqiong wanted to farm snakes, friends around her all advised her kindly: "You won't even sleep soundly at night raising them. Don't try to earn money from just anything!" Facing her friends' discouragement and sarcasm, Huo Haiqiong began to have doubts herself. Her husband Qiu Famao comforted her: "Once you've chosen, go do it. I believe in you. Whatever difficulties come, we'll shoulder them together."
In 2010, with her husband's encouragement, Huo Haiqiong invested more than 300,000 yuan to build a snake farm and buy cobra eggs. Qiu Famao is a middle school teacher. To support his wife's business, he would rush back from school to the snake farm every day after evening self-study, cleaning and feeding the cobras together with his wife, and then return to school early the next morning for morning self-study. Hard work pays off: the survival rate of the first batch of cobras was above 80%, and more than 2,000 cobras brought Huo Haiqiong's family economic returns of more than 400,000 yuan.
A "Taxi Sister's" Unconventional Sentiment
On September 29 this year, the "Yilongkang" snake wine brand created by Huo Haiqiong herself was officially launched for sale after passing inspection by the Santai County Administration for Industry and Commerce, the Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau, the Food and Drug Administration and other relevant departments.
According to reports, in order to broaden development, Huo Haiqiong began brewing snake wine in 2013, and in March this year she received help from Professor Li of the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This also marked a new journey for Huo Haiqiong as she returned home to start a business.
After nearly 5 years of painstaking operation, Huo Haiqiong's snake farm has now become a professional snake breeding farm covering more than 2,000 sq m, with 15 snake houses, 2 incubation rooms, and 2 juvenile snake rooms. It currently has 5 types including cobras, water snakes, king snakes, and black-tailed rat snakes, with more than 20,000 in stock.
Rich and mindful of the source, rich and striving forward, Huo Haiqiong, who has tasted success, has not forgotten to lead her fellow villagers to prosperity together. "At present, our breeding farm, snake wine factory, and sales department have more than 40 workers in total," Huo Haiqiong said. In May this year, she and 13 other individual snake farmers in the town established a cooperative to develop together as a group. Now the cooperative is applying to introduce highly venomous snake species such as pit vipers, banded kraits, many-banded kraits, and king cobras. With the help of the internet and its e-commerce cooperative, through a combination of online and offline channels, it will launch carefully developed snake gall wine, snake penis wine, three-snake wine and others, so that more consumers can taste high-quality health-preserving snake wine.
"We hope to transform from single snake farming into a cooperative of snake farming - processing - sales, creating greater economic benefits and leading our members to prosperity," Huo Haiqiong expressed her hopes for the future.