Opening remarks
The Twelfth Party Congress of Maoming City proposed that from the integrated development of production, processing and sales, the whole industrial chain should create "four trees" of lychee, longan, orange red, agarwood and "one fish" of tilapia, play the "four cards" of industry, market, science and technology and culture, and cultivate a number of modern agricultural industry clusters of more than 10 billion.
Electric white, which has the title of "China's Agarwood Town", has an annual output value of more than 3 billion yuan in the agarwood industry in 2021. The business history of electric white agarwood can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, with a history of more than 1,000 years.
How many people are struggling to explore the story behind an agarwood tree, and how does it become the golden sign of electric white? From now on, "Southern Daily Electric White Window" launched a series of reports on "Electric White Fragrance Floating in the World - Entering the Whole Industrial Chain of Electric White Agarwood", which entered all aspects of the whole industry chain of agarwood cultivation, planting, production, processing and sales, and deeply explored the history, status quo and future development of electric white agarwood.
On January 5, the 04th edition of the "Southern Daily Electric White Window" special report.
Wang Ruguo and Gao Shanji, who were old, went into the mountains to collect agarwood more than 60 years ago, and wrote the story of Shannon's arduous livelihood.
From the moment Guan Maoyou and He Hanlin went south to collect incense and crossed the Qiongzhou Strait, adding a chapter of "Agarwood Guys" to the history of the electric white people going to Hainan.
Wang Keyuan, Wang Jinli and Huang Chunlong, who found business opportunities from incense picking, relied on the identity of traditional shannon to discover the dawn of the electric white agarwood industry.
A new generation of agarwood people, Huang Fuyi, Li Peng, and Liu Qihao, have transferred from other industries to the field of agarwood, hoping to find new opportunities and make up for richer details in the prototype of the agarwood kingdom that their ancestors have drawn.
From deep mountains to incense hunting hainan; from transformation and acquisition, to commercial operation; from building industries to finding new opportunities. The story of four generations dreaming of the deep forest of agarwood is also the process of cultivation and development of electric white incense pickers.
Gao Shanji's pass to Go to Hainan to pick incense that year. (Remarks: The photo in the picture is of his brother Gao Shande) Deng Jianqing
Incense generation: deep mountains in search of incense
After the founding of New China, wild agarwood trees (white wood incense) grew everywhere in the Dianbai Mountains, and local incense farmers went up the mountain to collect incense according to the traditional incense picking method. They sawed off the part of agarwood with a small saw under the head of the agarwood tree, and then removed the white part, kept the agarwood pieces, and then handed them over to the acquisition station. During this period, electric white agarwood occupied a place in the country.
"At the beginning of Guanzhu, there was basically no incense farmer who was picking incense, but outsiders came to pick incense, and the villagers knew that this thing made money, so they followed it. The agarwood originally collected was sold in no place, and it was transferred to foreign shannons to be sold in Guangzhou. Gao Shanji, 82 years old this year, recalled that although wild white wood incense trees could be found in front of and behind the house, most people in the village did not understand this. Many shannons from Gaozhou and other places came to Guanzhu to collect incense, and the villagers followed to learn the incense picking technique. Wang Ruguo, an incense picker who is also in his old age, has the experience of "knowing incense" in his youth, and there are also the figures of foreign incense farmers. In his father's generation, there were Guangxi Shannon who went to Guanzhu to collect incense, and it was Wang Ruguo's father who took them up the mountain to find them.
In the 1950s, Gao Shanji first learned to pick incense when he was only 14 years old, and Wang Ruguo also began his career as Shannon at the age of 17. They took incense picking as a means of livelihood, and later went south and north to collect agarwood, and then influenced a new generation of incense pickers. In this sense, they were the first professional Shannons to be denouned after the founding of New China.
"At that time, we had to pick the best, and after the best harvest, we had to pick the worst." For Wang Ruguo, the number of wild agarwood trees was still in full swing at that time, even if the agarwood trees did not necessarily have agarwood, but the agarwood trees that could be seen everywhere made the first generation of shannons a little more or less comfortable with resources.
A pass for incense picking. Photo by Deng Jianqing
"At that time, agarwood did not have so many names. The government only buys according to the grade, 1 pound of the first class 40 yuan, the second class 32 yuan, the third class 24 yuan, and the other foreign products, 16 yuan per pound. "At that time, it was a very good side business in terms of income.
Of course, in the midst of harvest, there are often dangers. Searching for incense often requires going into deep forests, which are naturally dangerous, in addition to ferocious birds and beasts of prey, there are even hunters' traps. Gao Shanji had accidentally stumbled twice and fell into a trap set by the hunter, the trap was four or five meters deep, and he had to endure the pain and use his hands and feet to support the rock walls on both sides before slowly climbing up.
The time for wild agarwood trees to flourish for shannons to find is actually only five or six years. "Around the 1960s, there were very few wild agarwood trees around, and to find good ones you had to go far." Gao Shanji recalled that at that time, some Shannon still stayed in their hometown to collect incense, and a small number of Shannon began to try to go to the Pearl River Delta and Hainan to collect incense. As a result, Dianbai gave birth to the first batch of shannons who went out to collect agarwood after the founding of New China.
According to the distribution map of agarwood in the provinces of southern China handed down by his grandfather, Wang Ruguo and more than a dozen other people went to the sea and land to collect agarwood and made a lot of profits. Later, they switched from Hailufeng to Conghua, Zengcheng, huizhou, and then back to Kaiping, Enping, Xuwen, and Haikang (now Leizhou), basically all over the mountains of eastern guangdong and western Guangdong. In the early 1960s, Wang Ruguo's incense pickers crossed the Qiongzhou Strait and went to Wuzhi Mountain in Hainan to collect incense. Wang Ruguo said that at that time, Hainan Shannon was almost extinct, and he was surprised to see the fine agarwood of the incense in the deep mountains and old forests such as Bawangling and Jianfengling.
"Making agarwood is too hard for many people to do." Some have returned to farming, some have started medicinal materials business, and some have become doctors, but Wang Ruguo has not stopped.
In addition to Wang Ruguo and Gao Shanji, the representative figures of the first batch of Shannon were Wang Qing, Wang Fuxian, Lu Jiannan, Lu Jianxin, Lu Jianli, Chen Yongfu, Yan Jintang and more than a dozen others. Most of them are alive, but many of them are elderly.
Agarwood forests that roam the mountains. Photo by He Wei
Xiang II: South to Hainan
In the 1970s and 1980s, the stories of Shannons were written in the journey to the north and south.
As there are fewer and fewer local agarwood trees, Shannon can only move the idea of "leaving home" and go to other places to collect incense. Just like the Shandong people broke into the Kanto in those years, the electric white people have long had the tradition of going to Hainan to find a life. In the 1970s and 1980s, under the words and deeds of the first generation of Shannon who went out, Dianbai soon gave birth to the second batch of Shannon who went out to find agarwood. There are quite a few people in this group of Shannon, the most well-known of which are Yan Yongbin, Guan Maoyou, Wang Yaqiu, Wang Shuqiang, Lu Hongke and more than 30 others.
Guan Maoyou, who is revered as the "Father of Agarwood in Western Guangdong", is a native of Dashuipo Village, Guanzhu. GuanMao was 8 years old and went up the mountain with his father to collect wild agarwood, and in his early 20s, because the commune enterprise station took the agarwood business as a breakthrough in invigorating the economy, Guanmao was ordered to lead a group of shannons to Hainan Island and traveled all over the mountains to collect agarwood. From the moment he led the crowd across the Qiongzhou Strait, the history of the electric white man going to Hainan added a chapter of "Agarwood Guy".
He Hanlin, a shannon in Nanshan Village, Wangfu Town, who went to Hainan to collect incense, said that when he and his companions were looking for agarwood trees in the deep mountains, they saw some agarwood trees so big that two people could not hug each other. Such a huge tree takes several people two or three days to complete the cutting and collecting of incense, and then processed and sorted into agarwood to send back to the baiguan beads for purchase by the supply and marketing cooperative.
Despite the discovery of a large number of wild agarwood trees, this generation of Shannon may be the most bitter generation. In order to find wild agarwood, they had to build a small grass hut in the deserted ravine for sleeping at night, and sometimes even directly found a cave on the mountain and laid some leaves on the ground as a bed. Every morning at less than 5 o'clock, Shannons get up and drill deep into the mountains and wild forests, and almost every step is a difficult step. They can only eat up to two meals a day, and usually don't finish work until after 7 p.m. to return to their sleeping place. During the day on the mountain, thirsty, do not dare to drink the spring water on the mountain, if you do not drink it, you are likely to get a terrible malaria. Sometimes when it gets dark and they can't find their way back, they have to stay up in the mountains hungry for a long night.
In addition to enduring hunger and thirst, they also had to fight the weather, mountain locusts, poisonous snakes, etc. Hainan is mostly a tropical rain forest, the mountain will often rain heavily from noon to noon, Shannon sweats and rains, it is easy to catch a cold, plus the mountain is foggy all day long, many people suffer from malaria, and finally die. Some Shannon were accidentally bitten to the lower limbs by mountain locusts and almost maimed. Such a difficult and difficult life is almost the limit that human beings can bear. Many old Shannons were buried in the deep mountains and old forests and never returned.
Guan Maoyou recalled that in that year, he brought several groups of Guanzhu Shannon to Hainan to collect agarwood, and only seven or eight of the forty or fifty people were able to persevere in the harsh environment. But it is under the leadership of this group of incense farmers who go south to pick incense, the ancient and traditional incense picking industry of electric white has been rising.
In addition, it is also the incense picking life in the south and north in the past few years that many shannons have found the opportunity to buy agarwood. Some incense pickers gradually collected incense and resold incense from other incense farmers, transforming into the earliest batch of agarwood merchants; and Guan Maoyou and Wen Zhenxian, in the process of collecting incense and collecting incense, discovered and perceived an unusual agarwood - Qinan, which was another dawn for the electric white agarwood industry to usher in a huge development later.
Agarwood Mountain is located in Guanzhu Town, Dianbai District.
Xiang Iii: the prototype of the industry
After the reform and opening up, China's economic development accelerated, and the descendants of Shannon gradually withdrew from the deep mountains and wild forests, ushering in an excellent period of opening up new battlefields.
"I went to Hainan to pick incense, and after 20 days of hard work, I only earned 100 yuan; I made 200 yuan a week after acquiring agarwood." Wang Keyuan, a descendant of Guanzhu Xiangnong, also crossed the Qiongzhou Strait at the age of 17 and followed his master Guan Maoyou to the Wuzhi Mountains in Hainan in search of agarwood. His first trip to Hainan lasted 20 days and earned 100 yuan. Soon, Wang Keyuan found that picking incense was far less profitable than buying agarwood, and he decided to raise funds to go to Hainan to buy agarwood. Although he only had 80 yuan in his hand, Wang Keyuan, who successfully borrowed 3,000 yuan, resolutely decided to go down to Hainan. A week later, he spent all 3,000 yuan on the acquisition of agarwood, and suddenly earned 200 yuan.
The huge business opportunity to acquire agarwood immediately attracted many young people in the same village. On the second trip to Hainan to buy agarwood, 18-year-old Wang Keyuan brought 4 apprentices. In the past three years, Wang Keyuan has traveled to Hainan many times to buy agarwood, becoming one of the earliest households in Guanzhu. Later, Wang Keyuan transformed into a salesman, went out to do agarwood, pepper, spring sand kernel and other medicinal materials business, and contracted the Shalang Town Medical Station, and the career has since entered the fast lane. Around 2000, Wang Keyuan developed a large-scale "Agarwood Mountain" in Guanzhu and Shalang, artificially planting white wood incense trees in an area of more than 30,000 mu, and developing a series of agarwood derivative products.
Wang Jinli, a pearl watcher, stopped following in the footsteps of his father Wang Ruguo after 8 years of going out to collect incense, and instead focused on the agarwood sales market. For a long time, he went abroad three or four times a year to purchase agarwood, and his footprints spread throughout Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries. After purchasing agarwood locally, it is mailed back to China, which is exactly the same as when I went to Wuzhishan in Hainan to collect agarwood, and then mailed it back to Guanzhu down the mountain. Wang Jinli later opened his own agarwood shop, created a agarwood chain stores, and also set up an agarwood processing factory to process and carve agarwood handicrafts.
Huang Chunlong established the Agarwood Planting Professional Cooperative in Mata. At present, his agarwood nursery can produce more than 3 million high-quality agarwood seedlings per year, which are sold to Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi, Hainan, Yunnan and foreign Countries in Vietnam, the Golden Triangle and other places, becoming the leader in the cultivation of agarwood in dianbai and even western Guangdong.
The 74-year-old Liu Jisheng is not from Shannon, and in terms of age, he is not an electric white "three generations" in the traditional sense. In the 1990s, he entered the agarwood industry with all his strength, vigorously developed the cultivation of white wood incense, and then transformed into the cultivation of Qinan seedlings around 2016, fully witnessing and participating in the development process of the "three generations of incense". Today, Liu Jisheng's cooperative has planted a qinan agarwood forest on 640 acres of woodland. At the rate of the five-year harvest of the Chi Nan wood, he and the members of the cooperative are looking forward to the upcoming harvest.
This generation of Shannon, almost completely abandoning the traditional image of Shannon who trekked through mountains and rivers to collect incense, more through acquisition, sales, commercial operations and other ways, achieved a bumper harvest of personal economic benefits, and effectively promoted regional social and economic development, forming a new image of Shannon. Especially in recent years, there are more and more foresters similar to them in electric white, and they have made efforts from various aspects such as research and development, planting, processing, and sales, laying a solid foundation for the take-off of the electric white agarwood industry.
Incense is taken from the agarwood tree. Photo by He Wei
Xiang IV: Looking for a new machine
For their ancestors, they have used decades of hard work, from incense picking, incense collection to development and management, and have already given a gorgeous dance song to the agarwood industry; in the eyes of young people in their twenties and thirties, dealing with agarwood, they hope to find new opportunities and make up new strokes in the prototype of the agarwood kingdom that their ancestors have drawn.
"At present, there are relatively few e-commerce companies in guanzhu scale, especially in the live broadcast area. We hope to use new forms of e-commerce to help the agarwood industry expand sales channels. In mid-2021, Huang Fuyi and Li Peng gave up the clothing live e-commerce that has laid the foundation, returned from Guangzhou to Guanzhu to develop agarwood live streaming with goods, and officially plunged into the blue ocean of rural e-commerce.
"Now the initial operation is normal, the current monthly turnover is two or three million yuan, and I hope that the monthly turnover in 2022 can exceed 10 million yuan." The Hanxiangdao Live Streaming Company founded by Huang Fuyi and Li Peng currently recruits 36 anchors who are talking and selling incense in the agarwood forest in the live broadcast room, and are also telling the story of a new industry.
The road of online merchants in Han Xiang Dao is still being explored. Liu Qihao, born in 1991, is already looking forward to creating an agarwood chain store brand with an annual output value of 3 billion yuan. "At present, we are still mainly family-style and small workshops, and the industry needs to integrate resources, concentrate all retail households, and make the industry bigger." Liu Qihao stopped operating a civil engineering company in 2017 and devoted himself to the agarwood industry, and now serving as the secretary of the party branch of the Guanzhu community, he hopes to use the existing ecological advantages of Guanzhu to initiate the construction of a high-tech industrial park integrating research and development, production, processing and sales in the next three to five years, gathering scattered resources and making the industry bigger and stronger.
Born in 1984, Gao Shiwei, who runs an agarwood handicraft company, won the title of the top ten well-known brands in the national agarwood industry in 2015, and has become a well-known "capable person" in the agarwood industry. Gao Shiwei's ancestors have been engaged in the agarwood industry for three generations, but he often likes to jump out of the old tradition and produce agarwood mobile phone cases, agarwood belts and other products. He hopes that the agarwood industry will become more and more innovative in the future.
Liu Feng, 25 years old, followed his father Liu Jisheng into the agarwood industry as soon as he graduated. He hopes to use the new e-commerce knowledge he learned to help his father Liu Jisheng's agarwood base to innovate its business model.
The fourth generation of Shannon, who was established around the age of the year, is the epitome of the new generation of agarwood people, although they may never be as deep into the mountains and wild forests as the older generation of Shannon to collect incense, but in another way, in the "deep forest" of the agarwood industry to find their own opportunities, but also with their own efforts to glow the new hope of the industry.
After four generations of hard work and development, the electric white agarwood industry has developed rapidly. In 2010, the area of agarwood planted by electric white was 110,000 mu, which became the largest area of artificial planting of agarwood and Qinan agarwood in the country. In 2012, the electric white agarwood industry was famous at home and abroad, and the electric white was named "the hometown of China's agarwood" by the state. According to the data, there are nearly 40,000 people engaged in the agarwood business in Dianbai, with 5 leading agarwood enterprises at or above the municipal level, 65 at the district level, 1,068 farmers' professional cooperatives, and more than 800 family workshops, forming a "one-stop" business model of planting, processing and sales. The annual output value of nearly 3 billion yuan depicts the magnificent development process of an industry and also records the lives of generations.
■Related
What is agarwood
Agarwood, also known as white wood incense, since ancient times is regarded as a valuable spice and rare Chinese medicinal materials, with a unique geographical environment and climatic conditions of Maoming City Electric White District, is one of the central distribution areas of Natural Agarwood Tree in China, with nearly a thousand years of history of collecting and processing agarwood. As early as the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, electric white agarwood was famous all over the world. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the politician, military and social activist Mrs. Sin led the army to fight, and the "battlefield sachet" carried by the soldiers was a golden sore medicine mainly based on agarwood. The allusion of "Taizong Asking Agarwood" recorded in the Taiping Guangji Caomu and the Guangdong Tongzhi Wuxian tells the story of Feng Ang, the grandson of Lady Xian, who paid tribute to Tang Taizong with electric white agarwood. Electric white agarwood was also called "tribute incense" or "imperial incense" by Emperor Taizong of Tang. In the era of Tang Xuanzong, because Yang Guifei was addicted to agarwood, electric white agarwood was known all over the world. Agarwood is a natural mixture of agarwood species formed after being injured during the growth process, and in order to bear incense, the agarwood tree must be "injured". Trees are wounded by insect moths, animals biting the tree body or artificially chiseling, and the tree condenses resin in the damaged area, and it becomes agarwood over time.
[Writing] Deng Jianqing, trainee reporter of Nanfang Daily
【Planner】 Huang Xiaomeng Liu Jun
【Coordinator】Deng Jianqing, Liu Dongming, Lai Guangzhao
【Author】 Deng Jianqing
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client