China News Service, Hefei, April 1 (Liu Honghe) Cheng Zaowei, who is in his early 50s, is a native of "Ancient Huizhou" and grew up in Jixi County, Xuancheng City, Anhui Province. In 1988, 16-year-old Cheng Zaowei came to Beijing with his father and opened the first Anhui cuisine restaurant in Beijing at that time. After opening six Anhui cuisine restaurants one after another, Cheng Zaowei felt that the time was ripe to repay his hometown. In 2015, he began to return to his hometown to start a business, and at the same time he was committed to promoting the development of Anhui cuisine industry.
"When I opened an Anhui cuisine restaurant in Beijing, I would go back to my hometown every year. After I made money, I wanted to contribute a little to the development of my hometown." Cheng Zaowei said, "Because Jixi is the 'hometown of Anhui cuisine in China'. And I opened an Anhui cuisine restaurant, so after I came back, I opened a standardized factory for Anhui cuisine ingredients."
After several years of hard work, Cheng Zaowei established an intelligent precision control mathematical model in the Ecological Industrial Park of Huayang Town, Jixi County, researched and developed cabinets and standardized operating processes, and achieved standardized and large-scale production. At present, the processing plant mainly produces stinky mandarin fish, stinky seabass, daobanxiang, air-dried chicken and duck and other raw materials for making Anhui cuisine. The products are sold to Beijing, Shanghai, Hebei, Shandong and other places.
"As 'Hui merchants' in the new era, we have the responsibility to carry forward Anhui cuisine and promote the development of the Anhui cuisine industry." Cheng Zaowei said that in the next step, we will also carry out the breeding of smelly mandarin fish to drive more elders. Villagers are employed.
Cheng Zaowei is inspecting vacuum-packed stinky mandarin fish products. Photo by Liu Honghe
According to reports, the production base currently provides more than 30 jobs for local residents, and can produce up to 5,000 stinky mandarin fish, sea bass and yellow croaker per day. In addition, Cheng Zaowei also opened a "Consumption Poverty Alleviation Enterprise Pavilion" to actively help local farmers sell Jixi's high-quality Anhui cuisine ingredients and help farmers increase their income. Like Cheng Zaowei, Hu Qingjun, a young man born in the 2000s who dreams of his hometown, started an e-commerce company after returning from the army in 2020.
“When I was a soldier and had dinner with my comrades from home, I saw the braised pork on the menu and wanted to try it, but when I ate it, it didn’t taste like home.” Hu Qingjun said, after leaving the army and returning to his hometown to start a business, we wanted to have such good quality Jixi black pork is brought to everyone’s dining table, so that people all over the country can taste the deliciousness of Jixi black pork.
Hu Qingjun is inspecting the Jixi black pork delivered. Photo by Liu Honghe
Just do what they say, Hu Qingjun and three like-minded friends established a company in 2020 that integrates Jixi black pig breeding, processing, and sales. It also formed a model of signing an adoption agreement with local villagers, promising to guarantee a minimum price and purchase one yuan above the market price to encourage everyone to expand breeding.
"At present, we have driven more than 1,000 farmers, and there are 2 farms that have been supplying us with pigs for a long time. The average daily sales are about 150,000 yuan. The market not only covers the Yangtze River Delta, but is also exported to the Pearl River Delta." Hu Qingjun believes that rural pigs Development is indispensable without the support of young people. The active thinking of young people can make the marketing model more diversified, and at the same time, it can bring back more advanced technologies to provide more help for the development of their hometown.
Hu Qingjun is selling goods via live broadcast, selling Jixi black pork across the country through the Internet. Photo by Liu Honghe
According to reports, Jixi County in Xuancheng City, as the "Hometown of Chinese Anhui Cuisine" and "Hometown of Chinese Chefs", has vigorously implemented the 10-billion modern agricultural industry cultivation project and built a high-quality national standardized production base of green food raw materials. In 2023, the county achieved e-commerce online retail sales of 1.726 billion yuan, effectively promoting the "selling of landscape specialties across the country." (over)