Fan Jiangfeng, courtesy of the interviewee
Fan Jiangfeng (middle) and his entrepreneurial partners at the Cross-Strait Youth Heart. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
This year is the 14th year that Taiwanese youth Fan Jiangfeng has "landed".
In the past two days, he has just finished the 2023 Xiamentai Youth and Taiwan Compatriots Exchange Association. From the "dreamer" who first came to the mainland to start a business to the "ferryman" who can help many Taiwanese youths "land" and start a business today, Fan Jiangfeng said that he has been moving forward and exploring.
In 2009, 28-year-old Fan Jiangfeng was sent to Xiamen by his Taiwanese company to carry out car marketing work. At that time, he knew very little about the mainland, and he had no relatives or friends to answer him, so his family advised him: "Don't go." In the end, Fan Jiangfeng decided to go to Xiamen. In his words, he may be a Gemini himself, loves to explore and is full of curiosity about new things.
After landing in Xiamen, the city gave Fan Jiangfeng a very intimate feeling from the accent of the citizens, to the food Xi, to the cultural customs, and he felt that it was not much different from the Taiwan where he lived.
In the next three years, this Taiwanese young man carried out business in Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan in Fujian, and his down-to-earth travel gave him a more real understanding of the mainland and made many good friends in the mainland.
After the expatriate ended, Fan Jiangfeng returned to Taiwan. After working in the mainland for 3 years, he saw the prospect of the mainland market and hoped to have the opportunity to return to the mainland for development. In 2014, an old Taiwanese businessman in Xiamen threw an olive branch to Fan Jiangfeng and asked him to help him do food market planning work, and Fan Jiangfeng left Taiwan again for Xiamen.
Compared with the previous job, this invitation from the old Taiwanese businessman not only crosses industries, but also requires Fan Jiangfeng to change from a single sales in the past to a co-ordination: building a team, making products, building a brand to opening up sales channels, and so on.
Meeting challenges often leads to rapid growth. After the tempering of this job, Fan Jiangfeng soon tried to start a business in brand planning and cultural creativity. On the way to start a business, he kept summarizing and reflecting, and always felt as if he was missing something. Later, he mentioned that although the two places were of the same origin, he was not "down-to-earth" enough at that time in terms of specific market demand, information communication and policy understanding.
Coincidentally, at this time, by chance, Fan Jiangfeng learned that the Fujian Provincial Youth Federation launched the "101 Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Support Program" for the first time, and he hurriedly signed up.
Through the Fujian Provincial Youth Federation, Taiwanese entrepreneurial young people like Fan Jiangfeng can seek advice from entrepreneurial mentors in the mainland at close range, and also make friends with many like-minded young entrepreneurs on both sides of the strait. One of Fan Jiangfeng's subsequent mainland venture partners met at this event. He regards this opportunity as an event of great significance in his entrepreneurial journey in the mainland.
"When I first started my business in the [mainland], I probably did market planning according to the logic of Taiwan. Fan Jiangfeng said. After the entrepreneurial mentor gave him guidance, he suddenly became enlightened. In the past, Fan and his entrepreneurial partners set goals and usually pursued more refined services. After the mentor's guidance, they realized that there are already more than 40 million people in the market in Fujian, and if you look at the whole of China, it is a market of 1.4 billion people.
After participating in the "101 Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Support Program" in Fujian Province, Fan Jiangfeng began to think more. On the one hand, he wanted to connect with Taiwan youths who were starting businesses and finding employment on the mainland; on the other hand, he wondered if he could do anything to serve more Taiwan youths who had already started businesses on the mainland or wanted to come to the mainland to start businesses and find employment? It was precisely with this idea in mind that the former entrepreneurial "dreamers" began to transform into "ferrymen" who supported more Taiwan youths to start businesses on the mainland.
In 2016, Xiamen Qida Taixiang Entrepreneurship Service Co., Ltd. was established in Siming District, Xiamen City, and the Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Base created by Qida Taixiang under the jurisdiction of the company also landed in Xiamen. Since its establishment, Qida Taixiang Youth Innovation Base has served more than 40,000 Taiwanese youths, helped more than 500 Taiwanese youths successfully start businesses in the mainland, and successfully incubated more than 500 Taiwanese youth enterprise projects, covering cultural creativity, brand design, biomedicine, financial technology, catering services and other fields.
In addition to the above work, Fan Jiangfeng and his entrepreneurial partners have also made more planning and layout, and participating in rural revitalization is one of them.
Nanping, Fujian Province is located in the mountainous area of northern Fujian. Fan Jiangfeng and his mainland entrepreneurial partners are leading young people from both sides of the strait to devote themselves to rural revitalization work here. Fan Jiangfeng introduced that Taiwan's beautiful countryside has done a good job, and he hopes to bring good experience and practices to inject fresh blood into the mainland's rural revitalization cause.
Based on the countryside itself and excavating humanistic values, it is the development plan designed by this group of young people for the revitalization of Nanping countryside. Take Wufu Town in Wuyi Mountain, Nanping, for example, which originally retained rich relics of Zhuzi culture. This group of young people set up a team of "Dahua Xi Tour", dug deep into the cultural connotation related to Zhu Xi in Wufu Town, and created a cartoon Zhuzi cultural characteristic town by combining culture and tourism; integrated the cartoon Zhuzi image into the billboards, billboards, and lamp pole flags in the core area of Wufu Town; and integrated Zhuzi cultural characteristics into the high-quality agricultural and sideline products of Wufu Town.
Fan Jiangfeng said that in the whole process of leading Taiwanese youth to do rural revitalization projects, Taiwanese youth need to communicate and cooperate closely with mainland youth, gain an in-depth understanding of the mainland market, and also have to go into the village to communicate with villagers and village cadres.
Talking about the future, Fan Jiangfeng hopes to establish a larger entrepreneurship fund to support Taiwanese young people who come to the mainland to start their own businesses. He said: Young people in Taiwan who have just come to the mainland to start a business are faced with a very practical problem: It is relatively difficult to borrow a start-up fund. In 2022, Qida Taixiang launched the "Youfan Venture Capital Fund", which is the country's first "10 million yuan Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Fund", aiming to find high-quality Taiwanese youth entrepreneurship projects and help them develop. In the future, Fan Jiangfeng will seek more cooperation and support in this regard, help more Taiwanese youth start their own businesses, and cultivate high-quality Taiwanese youth entrepreneurship projects.
From starting his own business to helping others start their own businesses, Fan Jiangfeng said that this concept of altruism may be influenced by the inheritance of family tradition.
Fan Jiangfeng's surname is Fan Jiang, and his ancestors originate from Fan Zhongyan. The Fan Jiang clan later migrated to Taiwan from the mainland, where they took root and spread out. It is reported that there are currently more than 6,000 Fan Jiang villagers in Taiwan.
After coming to the mainland to start a business, Fan Jiangfeng made a special trip to Yueyang Tower, where he felt the family and country feelings of the ancestor Fan Zhongyan, who "worries about the world first, and enjoys the joy of the world after the world".
Fan Zhongyan's family and country feelings of "worrying first and then being happy" are still remembered by many descendants of Fan Jiang living in Taiwan. Fan Jiangfeng said that the belief in family and country feelings should be based on the daily work of every bit and complicated, and he hopes to become a bridge to help more young people in Taiwan understand the mainland and come to the mainland to start a business and live.
China Youth Daily and China Youth Network reporter Tian Hongwei
Source: China Youth Daily