Pang Xinchun Returns Home to Persist in Entrepreneurship and Lead Villagers to Prosper Together

Pang Xinchun, now 53 years old, is a villager from Group 4 of Linye Village, Shadao Town, Xuan'en County. In his thirties, he served as village director and village Party secretary for several years. Afterwards, he and his wife went to Guangzhou to work. During that time, he studied techniques assiduously and resolved to return home to start a business. Although some people did not understand him at the beginning and some even mocked him, Pang Xinchun, through his perseverance, weathered the most difficult period and established the Xuan'en Shadao Lvyuan Nursery Professional Cooperative, leading villagers to start businesses and prosper together.

Resolutely Returning Home to Persist in the Entrepreneurial Dream

"Going out to work is not just about earning money; more importantly, it's about learning a skill," Pang Xinchun said when talking about his entrepreneurial experience.

At that time, Pang Xinchun worked at the Lvhai Landscape Base in Huadu District, Guangzhou. Because he was clever, eager to learn, and hardworking, after one year he was promoted from an ordinary worker to a small supervisor. Out of recognition and trust in Pang Xinchun's dedication and steadfastness, the boss entrusted him with the entire chain of operations, including accompanying and escorting vehicles, counting quantities, handling income and expenditures, purchasing seeds, selecting and soaking seeds, spreading soil and sowing, growing seedlings, cultivating them into trees, and sales.

Pang Xinchun did not let his boss down. During his work, in order to master all the knowledge of running a landscape business, he developed the habit of taking notes every day, making important and detailed records of the technical difficulties in landscape and nursery cultivation as well as every aspect of sales and public relations.

By 2002, having mastered all the operational essentials and cultivation techniques, Pang Xinchun returned to his hometown of Shadao Town, Xuan'en County, wanting to start his own business. However, many people around him could not understand why someone with such a high salary would resign and return home to start a business, and some even thought his return to Shadao to start a business was a pipe dream. None of this shook Pang Xinchun's decision to start his own business.

Careful Management: Hard Work Finally Pays Off

After more than 10 years of working in Guangzhou, Pang Xinchun and his wife brought back savings of 700,000 to 800,000 yuan, which became their startup fund.

"Action speaks louder than words. To save capital, I often wandered through the local mountain forests during that period, looking for strange and unusual trees and bonsai flowers and plants worth planting," Pang Xinchun recalled with a smile. He also dug up some strange pines and cypresses from his own and his relatives' forest land, such as Huangyang wood, Yula tree, Jigutou, Yancha tree, Qiannian'ai, and common pine, especially the Yancha tree, Yaoteng tree, Qiannian'ai, and Jianye tree, whose shapes were bizarre, resembling walking sticks, umbrellas, pineapples, or jars.

Afterwards, Pang Xinchun went to nursery markets and bases elsewhere to purchase seedlings that grow fast, are easy to cultivate, and easy to keep alive, such as Bijian pine, Xuewu pine, willow trees, Chinese yew, red-leaf trees, dawn redwood, and willow cedar. In order to categorize the flowers, plants, and trees in the entire garden, Pang Xinchun also specially built terraced earthen platforms in the garden and laid straight brick walls along the outer edges of the platforms, on the one hand to protect the overall soil and water, and on the other hand to make it convenient for customers to select and view.

Thus, after three years of careful cultivation and nurturing, Pang Xinchun's garden began to generate returns. After deducting workers' wages and other expenses, he earned a net income of about 50,000 to 60,000 yuan per year.

However, Pang Xinchun was not satisfied with this. In order to generate higher economic returns, he once again expanded the cultivation scale of the garden nursery and leased relatively flat land from several neighbors, further increasing the number of precious tree species such as osmanthus trees, Houbao trees, ginkgo trees, and Xiangye trees, as well as peonies and orchids. The number of hired garden caretakers increased from 1 to 4.

After two to three years of development, Pang Xinchun's net income jumped from 50,000 to 60,000 yuan to 130,000 yuan, more than doubling, and this also changed the way people around him viewed him.

"My years of hard work were not in vain. I finally won the recognition of the people around me!" Pang Xinchun thought to himself. So he decided to establish the Xuan'en Shadao Lvyuan Nursery Professional Cooperative to lead villagers in starting businesses and prospering together.

Starting Businesses Together: Villagers Prosper as One

"Since the cooperative was established in 2007, as of now, 19 households of villagers have joined the Lvyuan Nursery Professional Cooperative. Our nursery has also gone from purchasing from elsewhere to buying our own seeds, selecting and soaking seeds, spreading soil and sowing, sprouting and growing leaves, growing into seedlings and mature plants," Pang Xinchun introduced.

He said that the cultivated garden area now reaches more than 140 mu, with annual external sales revenue of more than 6 million yuan, providing business and employment opportunities for more than 120 people. The seedlings, trees, nursery stock, flowers, and plants in his garden are in short supply locally and in the surrounding areas of Xuan'en, Hefeng, and Laifeng, and are even sold as far as Hunan. In addition, several types of bonsai flowers such as osmanthus trees three to four meters tall, Houbao trees, ginkgo trees, peonies, and Qiannian'ai have long been fully booked by Longshan, Yongshun, Shimen, and other counties and cities in Hunan.

"When I first started the landscape nursery business, I knew some people would laugh at me, so I didn't even mention establishing a cooperative at the beginning," Pang Xinchun said. He believed that once he succeeded, the villagers would surely take the initiative to join his professional cooperative. If he didn't even have this confidence, then all his years of work at the Huadu landscape base in Guangzhou would have been in vain.

Now, Pang Xinchun's sole focus is on leading the villagers to prosper together and live happy lives. Since his cooperative was established, many fellow villagers working elsewhere have made appointments with him, hoping to return home and join the cooperative to start businesses together. Therefore, he believes the cooperative's scale will continue to grow and improve. In this way, not only can local people achieve self-employment and work near their homes, but their income will also be higher than when working elsewhere.

Currently, Pang Xinchun is seizing the time to learn about computers. Once he has learned, he plans to establish e-commerce and his own website, using these "foreign gadgets" to make his nursery professional cooperative bigger and more prosperous.