New Year goods are running on the land of the motherland, painting a spiritual totem about happiness and the future.
Text | Zhang Zhan
| Shi Can
With 10 days left before the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, Li Xiaoou could not hold back the heart that wanted to go home.
She works as a media worker in Beijing in her hometown of Hunan. Every day, she watches her parents dry all kinds of newly bought New Year goods in the family group, melon seeds, sausages, Spring League, bowls and chopsticks... She even felt that this WeChat group was the most flavorful place in her life.
She has long begun to take a holiday in her heart, and she misses the days when she followed her mother to the market to buy New Year goods when she was in elementary school. She would see many unfamiliar faces on the street, who had returned from working in various parts of the country and re-spoken their local voices; she would also see that the usually empty streets were crowded with small traders and vendors, who were either shouting or bargaining.
Li Xiaoou feels that as she grows up, the Spring Festival is also changing: red envelopes have changed from paper to electronic, blessings have changed from text messages to WeChat, fireworks have changed from fireworks to bans on fireworks... She also found that the New Year goods seem to be quietly changing, for example, in the past two years, her mother has bought fewer and fewer melon seeds, and more and more high-grade nuts such as macadamia nuts and badan wood.
Two days ago, she remembered that her mother loved to eat pecans, but it was not easy to buy them in her hometown, so she bought a full kilogram online and sent it home. Now, this box of New Year goods is bumping on the road, and Li Xiaoou's return is also shaking with the repeated epidemics.
Guangdong, where pecans are shipped, is 800 kilometers from Hunan, while Beijing is about 1,500 kilometers from Hunan – one road to the northwest, one road to the southwest, and the New Year goods are running with us towards our hometown. Whether it is returning to the hometown or looking at the hometown, whether it is the purchase of traditional New Year goods or new New Year goods, a belief is prompting countless "two-way rushes" to be staged in this land, that is, reunion.
Traditional New Year goods, spanning thousands of mountains and rivers
Zhang Zi'an is a native of Nantong, Jiangsu Province. The dish he looks forward to most every year during the Spring Festival is lamb – he doesn't know if this is a tradition that belongs to his family alone, or whether the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Baotou postal districts all have the custom of eating lamb during the Spring Festival. His father always carried a piece of lamb into his bowl and said, "The lamb is warm, and it is very replenishing to eat in winter." ”
He knew that the sheep in the town's vegetable market were usually raised locally, but what he couldn't forget was the Yongchang mutton he had eaten during his previous trip to Gansu.
Yongchang is a county under the jurisdiction of Jinchang City, Gansu Province, located in the central and eastern part of the Hexi Corridor, and is the choke point of traffic between China and the West. As early as 2,000 years ago, after Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty opened up the Western Regions, he took a fancy to the "heavens and wild expanse" here, and listed Yongchang as a royal pasture.
Today, Yongchang has 4.42 million mu of dedicated grassland, and the middle of the grassland is mixed with hundreds of wild and valuable Chinese herbs such as goji berries, licorice, ephedra, etc., which are watered by the "selenium-rich" ice and snow meltwater of Qilian Mountain. Yongchang sheep grew up eating Chinese herbs and drinking Qilian snow water, which makes the flesh of Yongchang meat sheep bright red, thin but not chai, nutritious and without a trace of smell. In 2015, "Yongchang Mutton" was approved by the Ministry of Agriculture as a geographical indication agricultural product.
Despite its unique geographical conditions and long history of breeding, Yongchang lamb faces a prominent dilemma – large in number but small in scale. According to a public report released by the local government, the number of sheep raised in Yongchang County is stable at about 1.6 million, but the total output value of animal husbandry is less than 400 million yuan, and the per capita animal husbandry income of farmers is only 2079 yuan.
The reason behind this is not difficult to understand: under the traditional channel circulation model, herders sell sheep to sheep traders, who in turn sell them to larger dealers, and the profits are diluted layer by layer, leaving little value for Yongchang. However, it is not easy to break through such a distribution model, at least there are two major difficulties in front of Yongchang Aquaculture: First, how to find end customers? Second, the freshly slaughtered lamb temperature is high, easy to produce bacteria, in order to avoid mutton spoilage, then how to build a mature high value-added industrial chain?
Yongchang County Xiyuan Meat Processing Co., Ltd. handed over their answer sheets, at present, Xiyuan Meat Processing has formed a comprehensive industrial chain of cattle and sheep breeding, slaughtering, fine segmentation of beef and mutton, frozen storage and sales, and registered the two major brand trademarks of "Qilian Tianbao" and "West Cow Preferred".
In the whole processing process, the white and fat meat sheep are transported to the slaughtering workshop after quarantine and slaughter, they are neatly hung on the iron hook, and the staff uses a knife to remove the lymph and excess oil from the sheep; then, the treated sheep are only sent to the acid discharge workshop, the acid drainage treatment can effectively inhibit the enzyme activity and the reproduction of most microorganisms; finally, the workers cut off the cut meat in the processing workshop, and then weigh, pack, and paste the inspection and quarantine labels one by one according to the type of customer needs. It is then transported to a cold storage store for preservation.
So, where will these fine lambs be sold?
In order to let more consumers eat Yongchang's good lamb, Xiyuan Meat Union Processing has opened up a dual channel of "online + offline", of which the online part has adopted a new game of "live broadcast + shopping + direct hair from the place of origin". Zhou Feng, sales director of Xiyuan Meat Processing, said that customers around the company can buy directly from the company, while consumers in other regions can directly place orders on new e-commerce companies such as Pinduoduo. The company's direct origin model eliminates a large number of intermediate channels, so that the price of mutton processed by Xiyuan Meat Union can be stabilized at a more affordable 10 pounds and 300 yuan.
In 2020, Xiyuan Meat Union Processing tried for the first time in the form of live streaming with goods. They set up a live broadcast room on Pinduoduo, and chose the live broadcast location directly next to the ranch - looking at the camera, behind the anchor is the blue sky and white clouds and herds of cattle and sheep.
"Qilian Tianbao" brand Pinduoduo live broadcast room
Zhou Feng said that through live broadcasting, not only consumers from farther away can eat affordable lamb, but the life of local farmers in Yongchang is also getting better. He said: "In the past two years, after direct production and consumption through e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, herders no longer have to sell sheep cheaply, and the more than 100 farmers we have cooperated with can basically increase their income by more than 10% every year." ”
Nowadays, Yongchang lamb has become the most popular explosive lamb on the Pinduoduo platform, but Zhou Feng still feels that there is room for improvement. He said that in the future, it is necessary to further consolidate the e-commerce team and introduce e-commerce talents, enter first-tier cities through more professional operation methods, and make every effort to create the brand image of Yongchang mutton, so that the people of the whole country can truly eat Yongchang's mutton.
Veteran New Year goods, embark on the road to upgrading
The Yongchang people in the northwest of the motherland are very busy eating good lamb for everyone to eat for the New Year, and the Jieyang people in the southeast of the motherland have also broken their hearts in order to let everyone have a good year.
Jieyang is famous for its Chaoshan culture, but many people don't know that Jieyang has a developed snack food industry - more than 300 snack raw material workshops are located here, more than 150 snack food brands have grown here, and hundreds of food companies have formed a agglomeration effect and jointly opened up the domestic market. Some people say that one in every 3 consumers in the country eats pistachios from Jieyang.
Next to the national highway in Houliao Village, Puning, Jieyang, there is a person who is busy explaining his work to the workers - he is Lai Zuoxin, the head of micro-ant cloud warehouse e-commerce, and micro-ant cloud warehouse is the top 1 merchant in the pistachio category on the Pinduoduo platform. Lai Zuoxin said: "The year is approaching, and nine times out of ten this year's livelihood has fallen into the month of the year before. We have prepared about 2 million orders and about 4 million bottles of pistachios for Pinduoduo's 'New Year Festival', but even so, we are still worried that we will not sell enough. ”
The warehouse of the micro-ant cloud warehouse is piled high with pistachios
According to iResearch's report, the market size of China's nut fried goods is growing steadily, and the consumer group is showing a trend of rejuvenation, and consumers aged 26-35 account for more than half. According to iResearch's market research, pistachios are one of the nuts that are most concerned by young people.
Li Xiaoou recalled that when he was a child, the only nut fried goods prepared for the New Year at home were melon seeds, peanuts and broad beans. In middle school, pistachios began to appear on snack plates, and it wasn't until recent years that alba and macadamia nuts were gradually added. "In fact, you can also see the change from the plate, the original melon seeds and peanuts are placed in a plastic bag, who comes to grab a handful, and now these nuts have a delicate plate. All this shows that people's living standards have improved. Li Xiaoou said.
The pistachios in the micro-ant cloud warehouse are full of nuts
Along with people's consumption, there is also the local snack food industry in Jieyang.
Talking about a single explosion incident on Pinduoduo before, Lai Zuoxin's memory is still fresh. He recalled: "At that time, our orders on Pinduoduo rose from one or two thousand '噌噌', all at once more than 3,000 orders, breaking through 10,000 orders, breaking through 50,000 orders, and the highest number of orders in one day was close to 80,000 orders, which meant that we had to produce nearly 160,000 bottles of pistachios in one day to meet the delivery demand." "But the reality is that even if Lai Zuoxin stops all offline orders, there is still a production capacity gap of 70,000 or 80,000 bottles."
In order to make up for this gap, Lai Zuoxin found many local enterprises to suspend the production line to help produce, and finally caught up with the delivery time. This burst single incident gave Lai Zuoxin an "e-commerce lesson": "The original explosive power of e-commerce is so big, we had to carry out the transformation and upgrading of the production line for support. Later, Lai Zuoxin purchased new production and packaging machines, which roughly doubled the factory's production capacity.
Many local merchants in Jieyang have seen the potential of e-commerce, and they have gradually abandoned the original candied fruit business and turned to the higher value-added nut fried goods industry. There are more and more competitors, but this does not deter Lai Zuoxin.
According to iResearch's survey, more than 80% of consumers prefer to buy mixed nuts. The People's Network New E-commerce Research Institute also said in a public report that "one-stop shopping" is the desire of many "home- and home" online shopping consumers. In order to better meet the market demand, micro-ant cloud warehouse is also constantly expanding its product categories, the current products have covered pistachios, macadamia nuts, cashew nuts, pecans, bamudan, small white apricots and other dozens of categories of nut products and dried fruit products.
From capacity expansion, to high value-added products, to product diversification – e-commerce is helping Jieyang's snack food industry open a new chapter.
New-style New Year goods, incarnated as the darling of the Spring Festival
If lamb and pistachios are classic New Year goods, then strawberries are the new face of the Spring Festival.
Gao Shuo is a native of Hebei, and in her memory, strawberries never seem to appear during the Spring Festival, but this year, she told her parents to let them buy some online and prepare them.
Strawberries were weaker in the "presence" of new year goods before, for no other than three reasons: expensive, fragile, and not easy to buy. Compared with strawberries, citrus is a very common fruit during the Spring Festival. "I remember that every new year, the vendors on the other side of the house would enter a lot of citrus, and it was almost standard for everyone to carry a box of citrus when they visited the New Year." Gao Shuo said. Unlike strawberries, which are expensive and easy to break, citrus is cheaper and easier to preserve, and can be bought everywhere, making it a natural "new year's choice".
But how can strawberries, which look both festive and delicious, lose this "Spring Festival fruit war"? Nowadays, the "Dandong Strawberry" produced by DandongDongGang, China's largest strawberry production base, has become the new favorite of New Year goods on Pinduoduo, and more and more young people like to spell a box of New Year gifts from Dandong. What these consumers can't see is actually a comprehensive breakthrough in the strawberry production model, production technology and sales model of Dandong people.
Workers are packing strawberries in boxes
The authentic Dandong strawberry is called "Red Face" - as the name suggests, each Dandong strawberry has a rich red color, and the golden yellow seeds are embedded in the pit, reflecting a seductive luster. In the past, Dandong strawberries did not seem to have a better fate to match its name, they could only be sold to the local market in Liaoning, the root of which was that local production could not meet the standardization requirements necessary for the large-scale commercialization of fruits, and the same problem as Yongchang mutton once encountered - unable to expand sales.
In order to improve the degree of standardization, Dandong people have made both institutional and technical efforts.
In the early years, in order to improve the market premium ability and anti-market risk ability, Dandong Donggang established a strawberry cooperative. At first, the cooperatives aimed to increase their power and vigorously expand their membership, but as the scale of the cooperatives grew, the focus of the strawberry cooperative shifted to quality.
Donggang Strawberry Cooperative has two criteria for joining the society: the first person must be a grower, and the second person must have a good reputation and cannot use pesticides indiscriminately. After joining the cooperative, the cooperative implements unified management of production and circulation of the members: seedlings, inputs, planting technology, acquisition standards, traceability supervision, sorting and packaging, logistics and distribution, etc., all managed and supervised by the cooperative. In this way, the problem of lack of standardization of products has been greatly solved, especially through careful selection and exquisite packaging, and the problem that strawberries are easy to break during the New Year is also largely avoided.
The Spring Festival is a specific time point, and the ripening period of strawberries is a long period of time, and this natural contradiction between "man and nature" has been perfectly resolved by technology.
Scientific planting and technology cultivation is not new in Donggang. Ma Tingdong, president of the Donggang Strawberry Association, used the Internet of Things equipment on a large scale earlier in Donggang, and he led the team to develop the "Red Face" low-temperature refrigeration to promote early maturation cultivation technology, which can make the market time of Dandong strawberries more than 1 month earlier.
In 2021, Donggang Jiujiu Farm went a step further, and they introduced the AI technology of Zhiduoberry Company, the winning team of the "Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition". When to fertilize, how much to fertilize, whether cooling/humidification is needed... These original empirical problems can be handed over to the AI, let it calculate the optimal solution, and then adjust it through intelligent water and fertilizer, temperature control, plant protection and other strategies, so as to achieve the goal of accurately controlling the time to market of strawberries.
The upstream production problem is solved, and the downstream channel problem also needs a new solution.
Donggang farmer Wang Qiu opened an online store on Pinduoduo, called "RareBerry Good Fruit Fresh Flagship Store", this store once rushed to the first place in the Pinduoduo strawberry best-selling list - into the fresh e-commerce, which is the new solution given by Wang Qiu and other "new farmers".
Wang Qiu treats online channels with stricter standards: she draws a separate sorting line to weigh each strawberry, and only those who meet the standards can enter the next link; in order to keep the strawberries warm, each box is packed in an insulated bag. It is precisely because of the highly responsible attitude towards the product that Wang Qiujia's strawberries were selected for the Pinduoduo Ten Billion Subsidy Festival - consumers can get real price concessions and buy strawberries at a lower price; shopkeepers can also further harvest income growth under the dual blessing of platform traffic and product quality.
Strawberries from the Multi-Year Festival need to be weighed
Epilogue: A spiritual totem
Zhang Zi'an's grandfather is almost 70 years old this year, and he especially likes to tell Zhang Zian the story of the past - he had to go to the water wheel when he was a child, and he couldn't eat a few meals of meat all year round, let alone have the conditions to study, only in the New Year could he feel the "richness" and "prosperity" of life. Of course, Grandpa couldn't say these two words, they were all "translated" by Zhang Zi'an, who graduated from the Chinese Department.
Zhang Zi'an's grandfather also said that even in the countryside, the taste of the year still feels more and more faded: the collective activities in the village are getting less and less, the sound of firecrackers is getting smaller and smaller, and the Zhao Benshan he is familiar with is almost not in the Spring Festival TV program. But he was still on the phone, asking Zhang Zi'an, who works in Shanghai, when he would return home for the holidays.
Towards the end of the year, positive cases of COVID-19 began to appear again, but the desire for reunion seemed to have become stronger. Perhaps society is changing, the taste of the year is changing, and the goods of the New Year are also changing, but the common emotion carried by the Spring Festival seems to have never changed, and people have melted all their hopes and wishes into the fiery eyes of looking at the distance - whether you look at your hometown or your family.
Everyday food and utensils have a common name at such a special time - New Year goods. At this time, their meaning has long been beyond their own use value, and pinned on people's beautiful hopes for the future. Today, some of them are ready to go, and some of them are running more freely on the land of the motherland than humans, and together they paint a spiritual totem about happiness and the future.
(At the request of the interviewees, Li Xiaoou, Zhang Zi'an, and Gao Shuo are pseudonyms)