The Wealth-Building Story of Snakehead Farming: Growing Fortune in Black Mud Ponds

Highlights: He was once the poorest young man in the village, looked down upon by everyone. The fortune hauled out of this black mud pond helped him find his purpose in life. Just when he thought his life would change forever, he suffered an unexpected blow. Persist or give up? See how Zhou Gengxian of Lianyungang City pulled off a poor young man's turnaround.

On August 21, 2015, as soon as the reporter arrived at Beichenyi Village in Donghai County, they happened to catch members of the local snakehead farming cooperative harvesting snakehead. After the pond water had been drained to a certain level, one group of people entered the pond and slowly moved a net forward along the bottom to catch the fish, while another group waited on the shore to receive them. Before long, the villagers catching fish were covered head to toe in mud.

Zhou Gengxian: Once they start catching fish, they look just like mud figures.

Reporter: You can't even recognize them?

Zhou Gengxian: Can't recognize them at all. All you can see is two rows of white teeth. Nothing else.

August is the peak season for snakehead to hit the market every year. This snakehead farming cooperative in Donghai County can sell more than 500,000 jin of snakehead annually. The snakehead here sells especially well in Yangzhou, Nanjing and other places. And all of this is inseparable from one person.

Reporter: Your face is covered in mud splatters?

Villager: Mm.

Reporter: Who raises the biggest ones now?

Villager: The biggest, the biggest is Gengxian, Zhou Gengxian. He raises more snakehead.

Reporter: If one drops, is it still easy to catch?

Villager: We catch them often, so it's easy for us.

Reporter: If I tried to catch them, it wouldn't be so easy, right? No experience.

Villager: Right.

Reporter: You really are good at catching them.

Villager: You think so?

Reporter: Does your family raise snakehead?

Villager: Yes.

Reporter: How many do you raise?

Villager: I raise a lot.

Reporter: You raise a lot?

Villager: Mm.

Villager: In our village, when it comes to raising snakehead, he's the one, sorry.

Reporter: Sorry?

Villager: Mm.

Reporter: He's the one who got you into it?

Villager: Yes, yes.

Villager: Leading the way to prosperity.

Reporter: Who?

Villager: Gengxian, Zhou Gengxian.

Reporter: Zhou Gengxian led you to prosperity?

Villager: Yes.

Reporter: You just pointed at him, right? Who got your family into fish farming?

Villager: You mean Zhou Gengxian, that guy.

Villager: We've even been on TV. He's really something now, the number one wealth-building expert. A third of this is his.

This is Zhou Gengxian. He is not only a wealth-building expert in the eyes of the villagers, but also a renowned entrepreneurial star in Donghai County. But when the reporter chatted with the villagers about his past, the comments they heard left the reporter astonished.

Villager: He couldn't even get a wife.

Reporter: Him?

Villager: Yes.

Reporter: Could you have imagined back then that he would achieve all this?

Villager: No way. Before, he couldn't even get a wife.

What exactly happened to Zhou Gengxian? And how did he transform from a poor young man looked down upon by others into the village's prosperity leader, guiding the villagers to farm snakehead together?

During the interview, Zhou Gengxian told the reporter that before he started his business, his family had always been the poorest in the village. When some families in the village had already built two-story houses, his family was still living in a brick house like this.

Zhou Gengxian: Those who could afford it used sand and cement. What we used here is mud. Just add a little water and, see, you can pull it off easily.

Reporter: This is very loose.

Zhou Gengxian: The key is having no money. If I had money, who wouldn't want to live in a building like that? Right?

In 1998, Zhou Gengxian was demobilized from the army and returned home. The villagers all thought that after so many years of training in the military, Zhou Gengxian could finally rely on his own abilities to change his family's situation. But to everyone's surprise, Zhou Gengxian did not go out to work. Instead, he took up something that made the villagers look down on him.

Reporter: You row the boat quite well.

Zhou Gengxian: Once you learn this, you never forget it.

Reporter: You haven't rowed in a long time, have you? This is a skill too.

Zhou Gengxian: In the past, catching fish from a boat on the river was the most looked-down-upon trade. Only those with truly no way out, no future, would fish from a boat. You'd make three to five yuan a day. It was the most despised trade.

Actually, Zhou Gengxian was also a person with ambitions and ideals. He didn't want to spend all his days catching fish and shrimp in the river either. But at that time, Zhou Gengxian was very lost. Given his personality, he was unwilling to work for others. He wanted to do something on his own. But he didn't know what to do. Until one day, chatting with friends opened his eyes.

Zhou Gengxian: Sometimes when we caught more fish, we couldn't sell them because the timing was off. Later we wondered if there was any way to turn the fish we caught into money. We were just chatting idly, shooting the breeze, and then they said that in other places there's a kind of fish that eats the fish we catch.

This is the fish Zhou Gengxian was talking about: snakehead!

Snakehead is a common food fish. It has a large body, grows fast, has a big appetite, and is fierce by nature. It is a carnivorous fish. Small fish and shrimp in lakes or ponds are its delicacies.

Zhou Gengxian figured that if he raised snakehead, the small fish he caught each time that he couldn't sell could be used as feed for the snakehead. This would not only save on the cost of farming snakehead, but selling the grown snakehead would bring in another source of income. So he began borrowing money from everyone he could and built a fish pond on his own land. But when the villagers heard that Zhou Gengxian was going to raise snakehead, none of them believed he could pull it off. He borrowed 4,000 yuan to build the pond, but where would the money for buying fry come from? During those days, all Zhou Gengxian heard was gossip and ridicule.

Zhou Gengxian: I have this habit. The more they say you can't do it, the more I have to do it to show them. I must do it, and I must do it well. That's just how I am.

Having made up his mind, Zhou Gengxian began figuring out how to make it happen. He fished even more diligently, using all the money from selling fish to buy snakehead fry. When he heard there were wild snakehead in the Shilianghe Reservoir near his home, he would go there to catch them too, and with good luck he could actually catch a few. Accumulating little by little this way, he finally managed to raise snakehead in his own small pond. Zhou Gengxian poured all his energy into farming snakehead, secretly vowing that he must win himself some respect.