Wu Zhenqiong: a Miao girl who "counterattacks" by raising black-haired pigs

Although she has just entered her twenties, Wu Zhenqiong has a "seniority" of 17 years. At the age of 13, she took up the burden of her family's life and went out to work. At the age of 21, she returned to her hometown of Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou to start a business, raised more than 500 black-haired pigs and founded Liping County Laoyandao Ecological breeding Co., Ltd.

Wu Zhenqiong is thin and weighs only 83 jin, but she acts like a "strong girl". When she was two years old, her father suffered from muscular dystrophy, the family life was difficult, and she often relied on relatives for support. Her father died at the age of 11, and her mother, who suffered from advanced skin cancer at the age of 13, also died. Facing her two young brothers, the burden of the family fell on her shoulders.

She had to drop out of school to work and began to travel north and south, working as a babysitter in the county, carrying plates in the provincial capital, and then working as an assembly worker in an electronics factory in Guangdong. During this period, she came up with the idea of raising black-haired pigs to start a business.

"the bigger the city you go to, the less you can eat the meat smell of your hometown." Wu Zhenqiong found that almost all the people she came into contact with felt this way. She remembered that when she was a child, her family once bought green peppers and meat, fried a dish, and ate three bowls of rice mixed with fried soup.

Such delicious meat was seldom eaten later. "Young people are going to work in other places, and fewer and fewer people raise pigs in the traditional way." Wu Zhenqiong sees a business opportunity. She believes that pigs fed with grain husks and fresh grass cut every day like grandparents in the village must be more promising than pigs fed with feed in the market.

Starting in 2010, Wu Zhenqiong opened a restaurant in her hometown. She named the restaurant "Old cigarette knife". "Old smoke knife" is a local name for bacon, which is smoked and unboned, curved like a knife, which is an indispensable delicacy on the dinner table of the Miao family during the holidays.

The bacon and fresh meat in the restaurant are ecological black-haired pigs fed with forage. Wu Zhenqiong came up with a slogan for the restaurant: "look for the taste of childhood, find the feeling of home." In order to make the pork taste more authentic, Wu Zhenqiong borrowed her relatives' pigsty and raised 10 black-haired pigs herself.

Soon, the restaurant became well-known locally. After eating black-haired pork, many guests repeatedly praised the quality of the meat, and often some guests specially ordered the meat to be packed and taken away. Wu Zhenqiong feels that the time has come to expand the scale of farming.

In 2012, Wu Zhenqiong, who first tasted the sweetness of starting a business, built the Old Yandao Villa, covering an area of 1440 square meters, with the support of her husband. But this time, when expanding the scale of breeding, Wu Zhenqiong encountered the difficulty of shortage of funds, invested more than 1.8 million yuan in the early stage, and built pig houses and villas at the same time, but the later investment could not keep up, and the bank loan also hit a brick wall. "No matter how much water you run, the bank only looks at the collateral." To this end, Wu Zhenqiong ran off and on for a year, and the loan was not successful. "only money, no money." Wu Zhenqiong often suffers from insomnia in the middle of the night and her weight has dropped from more than 100 jin to 80 jin.

Later, Wu Zhenqiong changed her mind, "stay warm together, you can't fight alone," and a partner joined her startup team. Using the partner's property as collateral, she borrowed 2 million yuan from the bank.

When there was a shortage of hands, Wu Zhenqiong did everything to grow vegetables and feed pigs, and became a "swineherd". She turned to put on a professional suit and black high-heeled shoes, and she was also an able restaurant manager.

In this farm, which covers an area of more than 200 mu, there are not only villas that provide catering places, but also vegetable fields, pig sheds and fish ponds, which has also become a venue for rural leisure tourism. There are more than 500 black-haired pigs in 300 pig houses. In the villa, guests can enjoy the pastoral scenery and see the breeding process of black-haired pigs, and then taste the black-haired pig feast developed by the villa itself.

On one occasion, some non-local guests saw a piece of wild vegetables in the growing area of the villa and specially asked the waiter to pick it and stir-fry it. "this wild vegetable is for pigs." Wu Zhenqiong said to the guests. The guests were surprised that the expensive wild vegetables in the market were the delicacies of black-haired pigs. The guests were very satisfied with that meal.

In Wu Zhenqiong's villa, half of the area is used to grow vegetables, green vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes, radishes. These dishes are used for pigs. After the vegetables are chopped, they are stirred together with rice bran and cornmeal, cooked in a large iron pot, without any feed, which is the daily delicacy of black-haired pigs.

The average white-haired pig comes out in four or five months. Wu Zhenqiong's black-haired pig takes at least 14 months, and some 18 months. "if you give pigs what people eat, pigs will give people more in return." Wu Zhenqiong said that people attach importance to health care, health care, in the end is the pursuit of green food.

A Hunan businessman was introduced by a friend to eat "old cigarette knife" pork. When he found that the meat was of good quality, he regularly bought fresh meat from here, refrigerated and transported it to Beijing and airlifted it to relatives and family members.

"two jin of fresh meat makes a jin of bacon." Wu Zhenqiong said that the production process of bacon is also very fastidious. It takes a month and a half to select meat of good quality, soak it in salt, pepper and wine, and then bake it over and over again after a week of pickling. Cut the roasted bacon, the meat inside is transparent, fat but not greasy, which proves that the whole production process is successful.

"the mastery of heat is very important." Wu Zhenqiong learned a painful lesson. On one occasion, because the master of the cured meat did not master the heat, it became so hot that the outer layer of the cured meat was scorched and the moisture on the inside was not yet dry. "the whole 400 jin of pork worth tens of thousands of yuan has gone to waste." Although such cured meat is still edible, Wu Zhenqiong does not allow such cured meat to circulate on the market. "the brand that has not been easily established cannot be smashed."

Wu Zhenqiong said that 100 yuan per jin of cured meat, 68 yuan per jin of fresh meat, now the annual sales of cured meat is about 10,000 jin, fresh meat mainly depends on restaurant sales.

Wu Zhenqiong locates the sales of black-haired pigs to people who pursue a healthy life. She opened the old cigarette knife restaurant she founded to Kaili, the state capital, and Guiyang, the provincial capital, where black pork was in short supply.

Seeing Wu Zhenqiong's prospect of starting a business getting better and better, the villagers around her also came to beg piglets and develop pig farming. In the past three years, Wu Zhenqiong has distributed more than 3600 local black soil piglets to villagers free of charge, which will be recycled at the agreed price after the pigs grow up.

Every time she sends piglets, Wu Zhenqiong tends to choose villagers in remote areas. It is very difficult for villagers in the mountains to have access to the water from restaurants. They can only feed wild vegetables with local materials. Although the growth cycle is long, the quality is guaranteed.

After the Spring Festival this year, more and more villagers ordered piglets from her, and the rapid rise in pork prices has made many villagers see better benefits. Wu Zhenqiong's pig-raising cooperation has one principle: no feed and water, but must go up the mountain to dig wild vegetables. A large farmer came to her to cooperate and told her that as long as it was a superficial black-haired pig, although feeding could guarantee the sales channel, Wu Zhenqiong disagreed that when the liquidity was most difficult, she had not given a mouthful of feed to the pig. "the quality cannot be changed. The 'old cigarette knife' made with one hand cannot be destroyed."

Wu Zhenqiong's struggle to adhere to quality has won Wu a lot of honors. In 2015, Wu Zhenqiong became a member of the all-China Youth Federation on the recommendation of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League. Not long ago, Wu Zhenqiong became a candidate for the 20th China Youth May 4th Medal. Recently, she made two special trips to Beijing to inspect the market. She hopes to open the "Old cigarette knife" restaurant to Beijing, so that Beijingers can also eat meat-flavored black pork.