Porcupine Farming to Take on the World; I'm Not Afraid of Being Poor

Program Highlights: In Wulong, Chongqing, these porcupines with stiff quills often stage escape attempts, which brings no small amount of trouble to their owner, Zhou Xiaoying. Zhou Xiaoying's family was poor. By working while running a street stall doing small business, she earned more than 500,000 yuan in Shanghai. In 2010, she took all her savings back to her hometown to raise porcupines, never imagining that in less than a year, she would face losing everything. Starting from hardship, five years later Zhou Xiaoying became the largest porcupine farmer in Wulong County. Watch how she found the wealth code that made her business take off.

Several porcupines from the farm escaped, and the other porcupines were all eager to give it a try.

Zhou Xiaoying: It's coming out! It's out!

After repeated attempts, this porcupine jumped into another pen to visit, while the ones left strolling leisurely outside the farm set the other porcupines wailing.

Catching these porcupines to take them back is no easy task, because they are quite formidable.

As soon as you get close, the porcupine gets angry, raising all its quills in a show of force. Stomping its feet, rattling its tail like a bell, and grunting - all of this is meant to scare you off.

A newborn porcupine already has quills, and within a few days the quills become hard. You need to wear gloves to hold them. And the quills of adult porcupines are even more formidable.

The quills stuck in the pumpkin look like they were shot in, but in fact the porcupine approaches the target and forcefully inserts them.

Reporter: When I insert it, I can't push it in as deep as it shoots.

Zhou Xiaoying: Exactly, it has great strength.

Reporter: This is the hole I made. I pushed with all my strength to get it this far. Its hole is much deeper than mine.

The porcupine has great strength; the quills it drives into the pumpkin go deeper than the reporter's hand-pushed ones. The quills are also very hard. Although they are hollow in the middle, they can lift very heavy objects.

Zhou Xiaoying: Lifting it with one hand, it's quite heavy.

Even more formidable than the quills are the porcupine's teeth. Their teeth can both gnaw the skin off potatoes and bite through very thick cement basins.

Zhou Xiaoying: The porcupine has great strength. When it gnaws on this for you, its mouth can bite it and drag it along. Look, the thinner ones - look at what has happened to them, they've been bitten into this state.

Reporter: They gnawed these?

Zhou Xiaoying: Yes. It needs to grind its teeth.

Even such formidable porcupines are no match for Zhou Xiaoying. Now on her farm there are a total of 538 porcupines. In five years, she has become the largest porcupine farmer in Wulong County, with 43 member households developed and annual profits of more than 2 million yuan.

And when Zhou Xiaoying first came home to raise porcupines, the whole village was astonished.

Zhou Xiaoying's home is in Chayuan Village, Wulong County, Chongqing. While other families' houses had long been beautifully built, Zhou Xiaoying's home still looked like this. Her parents were still working with the most primitive hand-cranked machines. Everyone in the village knew that Zhou Xiaoying's family was very poor.

Feng Xiaohua, villager of Chayuan Village, Changba Township, Wulong County, Chongqing: To be honest, raising these porcupines still requires a certain economic cost. Without a certain economic cost, you can't afford to raise them either.

But being so poor, how could she raise porcupines? When Zhou Xiaoying graduated, no one expected that she would come back with more than 500,000 yuan. The villagers were all shocked. A college student - where did she get so much money?

In 2004, after graduating from secondary vocational school, Zhou Xiaoying went to Shanghai to work. She sold cold noodles, handed out flyers, and did many kinds of odd jobs. In her hardest times, she even slept under a bridge arch.

Zhou Xiaoying: At that time I never thought about blaming anyone, blaming my parents, wondering why my family was so poor from the moment I was born. I never blamed them. I just felt that since I was born into this family and the family was like this, I had to change this life.

Finally an opportunity came. Zhou Xiaoying found a stable job. Then one day, while chatting with a coworker, something unexpected came out of the conversation.

Zhou Xiaoying: At night, the two of us girls would chat after working together for a long time. Then she said how much her salary was. I found that her salary was more than 1,000 yuan more than mine. We worked the same hours, the same job - I said how could that be? Then I asked her what education level she had. She said she had a junior college degree. That's how it started. I thought I also had to study. After at least three years of study, I would also earn a bit more than her.

Zhou Xiaoying signed up for remedial classes, studying while working to support her younger sister's schooling and save up for her own college expenses. In 2006, she was admitted to the adult education program at East China University of Science and Technology. But she did not dare quit her job to study. Often she worked during the day, then attended classes or ran a street stall after work. For more than two years, Zhou Xiaoying slept less than four hours a day.

Zhou Xiaoqin: Actually, my real understanding of her should be from when I lived with her after graduating from college. Only during that period did I truly understand her. We would go to Chenghuang Temple at around three or four in the morning to get goods. Every morning at three or four, four or five, each item had to be updated. After coming back, we started setting up the stall. It was truly hard.

Zhou Xiaoying: Basically I only rested maybe two or three hours at night each day. Anyway, at that time I got thinner and thinner. Now I've gotten fat.

She had no entertainment activities and never bought herself new clothes. For four years, aside from studying, she just made money. Relying on this drive, the company raised her annual salary to 100,000. By the time she graduated from college, Zhou Xiaoying had already saved more than 500,000 yuan.

Both daughters had settled in the city, and her parents no longer had to worry. But Zhou Xiaoying insisted on coming back, and even wanted to do farming. This move crushed her parents, who were so angry they scolded her every day.

Zhou Daming, Zhou Xiaoying's father: She herself earned more than 8,000 yuan a month in Shanghai. That technical work was easy. The whole purpose of sending her to school was this. I worked hard for several years to support her through school. The whole point of sending her to school was to mean she wouldn't come back to the countryside. That's what I was thinking.

Zhang Zhongju, Zhou Xiaoying's mother: Every day at meals, every day I scolded her, but she didn't talk back. The adults would shed tears too, we all shed tears.

Zhou Xiaoying felt that running a street stall was never a long-term plan. After expenses, her salary in Shanghai left her with almost nothing, and no one was at home to care for her parents, so she wanted to come back. During college, she investigated many projects and found that raising one porcupine cost only just over 200 yuan, yet it could sell for 2,000 to 3,000, leaving a very large profit margin. Plus, very few people were farming them at the time, so she ultimately chose this project. But her parents still could not understand.

Zhou Xiaoying: My parents said directly at the time that they didn't want me to come back. In the countryside, when a child can go out to college, they don't want them to come back. In our village we say coming back means digging in the mud again. The older generation all came back to dig in the mud. Now you younger generation are still coming back to dig in the mud - who would be willing to come back, they said.

At that time, Zhou Xiaoying had to finish all three meals a day with tears, and then hurry off to work. No matter how much her parents blamed her, they could not stop her from building the pig pens. She contracted a 3-mu dry pond near her home and began construction. The brick-delivery cart could not get up there, so Zhou Xiaoying carried the bricks up herself. Her parents watched all of this with their own eyes.