Feng Gensheng, Lu Guanqiu, Zong Qinghou, three legends, an epic

The wind rises and the tide of money, three entrepreneurs, the glory and dream of a generation of Hangzhou businessmen!

This article is about 7000 words, and it takes 10 minutes to read, so please read it patiently.

The Wind Rises (1)/1984

Hangzhou City, 1984.

At that time, the city was far less dazzling on the map of China than it is now. The ancient and elegant West Lake has maintained its beauty for thousands of years, but Hangzhou's urban construction has been repeatedly criticized by visitors. "Beautiful West Lake, dilapidated city" This half-mocking evaluation has accompanied Hangzhou for many years.

This ancient capital, born with a comfortable and lazy aura, makes the people living here not outstanding in the initial tide of reform and opening up. Of course, in the streets and alleys, you may see a lot of people pedaling tricycles, who were affectionately called "Brother Ta'er" by the people of Hangzhou at that time. They walked through the narrow streets and alleys of the city, doing "speculative" business, which was a special scenery in the early days of reform.

Among them, there is a college entrance examination repeater with a distinctive appearance, who has failed the list for two consecutive years due to poor math scores. The family got him a tricycle, so that he could have a living while studying. More than 20 years later, the young stepper became known worldwide under the name Jack Ma. But at that time, he didn't even recognize the "@" symbol.

Feng Gensheng, who is 50 years old, is different from them. Known as a "madman", he has been the director of the second state-owned Chinese medicine factory for 12 years. In the past 10 years, he has developed this little-known small factory from a small workshop to a "national traditional Chinese medicine industry model factory" with a total output value ranking seventh in the industry. This has made him a veritable veteran in this wave of reform. Six years ago, he painstakingly developed the traditional Chinese medicine health product "Qingchun Bao", because the leaders of the higher-level examination and approval department reprimanded it as "not serving the workers, peasants and soldiers", made a "directional mistake", and could not get the production approval for a long time. Feng Gensheng decided to take a risk and put the youth treasure into production ahead of schedule. In the context of the time, it was a huge gamble.

The special family background and early experience may have added key weight to Feng Gensheng's gambling balance. He was born into a family of doctors, and his grandfather Feng Yunsheng and father Feng Zhifang were both senior pharmacists in the well-known Chinese medicine brand Hu Qingyutang. And Feng Gensheng himself also stepped into the threshold of the "Jiangnan Medicine King" at the age of 14 and went to be an apprentice.

The apprenticeship of the old man is very harsh, and can even be said to be "miserable". After three years of apprenticeship, Feng Gensheng had to get up before dawn every morning, began to study medical and pharmacology, and worked for 16 hours in a row, until 90 o'clock in the evening before he could rest. This work intensity is much greater than the current 996. However, just five months after he became an apprentice, the city of Hangzhou was liberated. Apprenticeships were also gradually abolished. Feng Gensheng became Hu Qingyutang's "last apprentice" by mistake.

The golden signboard of Jiangnan Yaowang coupled with the persistent dream of the "last generation apprentice" of traditional Chinese medicine made Feng Gensheng win the favor of a group of old experts from the State Administration of Medicine, who strongly supported that the Qingchun Bao made of traditional Chinese medicine should be put into production as soon as possible. Gambling and getting away with it.

Six years later, Feng Gensheng faced the second huge juncture on the road to pharmaceutical reform. At that time, state-owned enterprises and factories were still implementing the old system, and the factory director responsibility system had not yet been popularized throughout the country. This makes many factories and enterprises empty of good products, but because of the constraints of mechanism and personnel, they cannot open the situation for a long time. The market is changing rapidly, and opportunities are fleeting. The middle-aged Feng Gensheng decided to go crazy again.

This time, he pointed to the most sensitive personnel mechanism. He firmly believes that if you want to change, you must change thoroughly. Since he wants to be the first person to eat crabs, why don't he make up his mind to eat a big crab? He took the lead in experimenting with the cadre appointment system throughout the country, and implemented the labor contract system for all employees in the factory, thus completely breaking the "iron rice bowl," "iron chair," and "iron salary." At the same time, he also made a heavy hand, completely broke the traditional and backward pharmaceutical enterprise supply and marketing model, with his own efforts, eliminated many contradictions between the upstream and downstream, and established a complete supply and marketing team within his own enterprise.

Feng Gensheng's astonishing courage and courage made the newspapers of that year call him "the first bird of state-owned enterprise reform". The term "bird-on-the-top" is a two-fold one, one that carries both praise and concern. Feng Gensheng's whole life has been based on "madness", and he has long been aware of the risk of making a head bird, but he doesn't care about it. Feng Gensheng once responded: "What does it mean to shoot a gun out of the head? Reform must be carried out in one go, and it cannot fly and stop, and if it stops, the target will be exposed, and it will definitely be killed." And when the reporter asked him why he couldn't hit, he said: "My heart has never been hit, the heart is selfish, and the selfless are fearless." ”

The Wind Rises (2)/1984

Another reform "bird" in Hangzhou was still staying in Xiaoshan, which was generally considered to be a remote countryside at that time. Lu Guanqiu, who was 39 years old at the time, was an alternative, although it had only been a few years since the reform and opening up, he had more than ten years of experience in starting a township enterprise.

Lu Guanqiu's family background is somewhat similar to Feng Gensheng. His father was a worker in a pharmaceutical factory in Shanghai, so he was originally the envy of the "second generation of workers" in the village - according to the rules of that era, he could inherit his father's business and become a worker in a large state-owned factory when his father retired. It's a pity that in the year he graduated from junior high school, his father was persuaded to quit by the pharmaceutical factory because of his old age and returned to his hometown to become a barefoot doctor, and Lu Guanqiu's life path was also forced to change and became an apprentice blacksmith instead.

Although the blacksmith apprentice is not as good as the workers of state-owned enterprises, he is not bad. At the age of 18, Lu Guanqiu's iron-playing career came to an abrupt end, and he was streamlined back to the countryside. He got a job grinding rice for people. He looked at the rice and flour processing factory for a long time, and felt that he could do it - this is quite a bit of Xiang Yu's uninhibited attitude when he saw Qin Shi Huang traveling, "He can take his place". So, he first persuaded his parents to take out the 200 yuan he gave to his daughter-in-law, and then lobbied around, scraped together 3,000 yuan of start-up capital, and started working in full swing. But in those days, this kind of speculation must not have lasted. Even though Lu Guanqiu tried his best to fight a guerrilla war, the factory was still identified as a black factory and was forced to close down, and Lu Guanqiu went bankrupt. This painful lesson had a profound impact on Lu Guanqiu, and his entrepreneurial style was more stable and pragmatic than that of others of his time, which may be inseparable from his experience in his youth.

At this time, Lu Guanqiu was in charge of the township enterprise that he set up in 1969 with six farmers and raised 4,000 yuan. In 79 years, Lu Guanqiu, with a high degree of sensitivity to the industry, seized the opportunity of the take-off of the automobile industry and gained a firm foothold with a small universal joint. This is also the starting point of the "car-building dream" that Lu Guanqiu insisted on all his life.

1984 was also a crucial year for him. The year before, he had just contracted a factory with seedlings worth more than 20,000 yuan in his own land as collateral. In order to make the factory develop faster and better, he considered restructuring the factory into a joint-stock system. But at that time, he was not as lucky as Feng Gensheng: the shareholding reform report he submitted was returned by the superior unit.

Lu Guanqiu has been thinking for a long time, and he has always been known for his steadiness and pragmatism on the road of entrepreneurship. At the risk of being completely liquidated again, he decided to implement the internal soil law of the enterprise and engage in the shareholding of internal employees. The prototype of Wanxiang Group also began to sprout in this year.

The Wind Rises (3)/1987

In 1987, a middle-aged man who was not good-looking joined the army of "Brother Ta'er". There were no new and expensive things in his car, just ordinary sodas, popsicles, and stationery for students. This man's name was Zong Qinghou, and he was 42 years old at the time.

As his name suggests, "Qinghou", compared with Feng Gensheng and Lu Guanqiu, his entrepreneurial journey can definitely be regarded as a late bloomer. He is a descendant of the famous general Zong Ze of the Song Dynasty and was born in Suqian, Jiangsu. His grandfather was Zhang Zuolin's finance minister, and his father was also a clerk in the Kuomintang government. The originally prominent family background became a huge burden after 1949, and the life of Zong Qinghou's family became very difficult. At the age of 17, Zong Qinghou moved his family to Hangzhou. After that, he worked as an educated youth in Zhoushan and Shaoxing for 15 years.

In 1978, Zong Qinghou returned to the city as an educated youth and replaced his mother's position as a primary school teacher. However, 15 years of farm labor delayed his knowledge learning and made him unable to work as a teacher, so he could only be arranged to work as a worker in a school-run carton factory in Shangcheng District, Hangzhou.

At the end of 1986, the Shangcheng District Bureau of Culture and Education decided to contract the distribution department of the school-run enterprise. Zong Qinghou seized the opportunity and won the right to contract and operate. At the beginning, there were only 3 people in the distribution department, in addition to the 42-year-old Zong Qinghou, there were two retired teachers with inconvenient legs. Zong Qinghou often pedaled three wheels by himself to deliver goods. Gradually, he established a reputation and a distribution network in more than 40 primary and secondary schools and kindergartens in Shangcheng District. At that time, he never imagined that this kind of grassroots sales network would later become one of the important magic weapons of Wahaha's rise.

Of course, if you rely solely on soda popsicle stationery, Zong Qinghou's career may be delayed for a long time. In the crucial year of 1987, he also took a serious look at the children's nutritional oral solution. At that time, he sold a nutritional product called "Chinese Pollen Oral Liquid", and he found that this thing had an effect, but it was expensive, resulting in poor sales. He asked the manufacturer for a lite version. This move completely opened up the market. At the end of November, the filling workshop of 10,000 boxes per day was completed at No. 160 Qingtai Street in Shangcheng District, a small six-story building that later became the origin of Wahaha.

Zong Qinghou saw that children's health care products were selling so well, and he also moved the idea of self-development. At that time, many only children were suffering from malnutrition due to picky eating. Zong Qinghou decided to take a gamble. He first found Zhu Shoumin, a 63-year-old professor of the Department of Nutrition of Zhejiang Medical University, to develop a formula, and then asked Zhang Honghui, a technician from the century-old Hu Qingyutang, to preside over the manufacture of nutrient solution. In order to move Zhang Honghui, Zong Qinghou "looked at the thatched house" and did not hesitate to give up a set of three bedrooms and one living room just allocated to him by the Education Bureau, while his family of three was still crammed into an old house of 10 square meters. Finally, it was made of a nutrient solution made of longan, red dates, hawthorn, lotus seeds, etc., and was named "Wahaha".

Tidal / Early 90s

If you happen to be born in the post-80s in Hangzhou, then you will most likely have the following memories:

At that time, the most common advertisement on TV was "Drinking Wahaha, eating is fragrant". If you are not physically fit enough, you and your classmates and friends will be asked by your parents to drink "Wahaha" nutrient solution. The taste is not bad. On holidays, your parents will take you to Hangzhou Zoo to see the treasure of the town, a pair of giant pandas named "Peipei" and "Yingying". Outside the Panda Pavilion, there are two huge billboards with green backgrounds, one is an advertisement for Dongbao Air Conditioner, one of the four major air-conditioning brands of the year, "National Treasure with Dongbao", and the other is promoting "Youth Treasure Protects National Treasure". When I got home, I found that the elders in the family were also eating youth treasures and enjoying the treatment of national treasures. If you go shopping in the Hangzhou Tower in the center of the city, you will see a high-rise building not far across the road, with a sign on the top of the building that reads "Wanxiang Hotel", which stands out against the backdrop of the low building.

Qingchun Bao, Wanxiang, Wahaha, these three brands were all the rage in Hangzhou that year. However, the scenery on the surface is well known, but few people know the ups and downs behind it.

Behind the popular advertising slogan "Drink Wahaha, eating is fragrant" is a big gamble by Zong Qinghou. On the occasion of the launch of the children's nutrition solution, Zong Qinghou successively invited two TV stations to negotiate, and the other lion opened his mouth and asked for 200,000 yuan. Now, 200,000 is nothing, but back then, it was an astronomical amount. Especially for Wahaha at that time, the annual liquidity was only 100,000 yuan, and spending 200,000 yuan on advertising would be bankrupt if it failed.

Zong Qinghou did not hesitate and quickly signed the contract. Fortunately, the effect of the advertisement was echoed, and before the broadcast was finished here, orders from that side were flying in an uproar. Wahaha Company instantly had a surplus of customers and traffic, and Qingtai Street, where it was located, once became congested because of too many pick-up vehicles. Since then, Wahaha has embarked on the fast track.

Feng Gensheng is facing a completely different dilemma. Qingchunbao has always been a state-owned enterprise, with many rules and regulations, and in the face of the ever-changing market environment, there are huge disadvantages. Feng Gensheng's struggle began in 1991, in the face of a variety of examinations for state-owned factory directors, he publicly declared in the media to "boycott the examination", won the opportunity to loosen his bonds, and then in 1992, he entered a joint venture with Thailand's CP Group, while retaining the brand and the secret recipe of traditional Chinese medicine, agreed to let the foreign party hold, and established a new brand of "CP Qingchunbao", which loosened the restrictions on the enterprise and made Qingchunbao rejuvenate again.

One of the results of the relaxation is that the giant panda, a national treasure of Hangzhou Zoo, has also eaten the treasure of youth. In 1993, the "Peipei" of Hangzhou Zoo was already 20 years old, and his health had declined significantly. After argumentation, the experts began to give "Peipei" a dose of Qingchun Bao, taking 30 tablets a day, twice in the morning and evening. The results have proven to be significant. This food was eaten for 10 years, until August 2004, which is equivalent to the death of "Peipei", who is 100 years old. ”

Together with the national treasure, Qingchun Bao remained in the collective youth memory of Hangzhou people.

The battlefield of township entrepreneur Lu Guanqiu is on the issue of property rights. For the first time, he put forward the idea of "spending money to buy nothing" - to clarify universal property rights with the government. In the history of contemporary Chinese enterprises, Lu Guanqiu may be the earliest entrepreneur with a sense of property rights. In order to achieve a complete separation of government and enterprises, he transferred half of the company's net assets of 15 million yuan to the Ningwei town government. This ratio was later changed when a bus factory owned by the local government was on the verge of closure, and the town government used the "bought" equity in exchange for Wanxiang's help, and eventually the government's shareholding fell to one-third.

Another big event happened in 1991, when Lu Guanqiu appeared on the cover of Newsweek USA.

As a township enterprise, Wanxiang is one of the few companies that dared to take bold steps towards internationalization in the early eighties and nineties. At that time, township enterprises could not enter the national plan of the automobile industry because of qualification problems, which meant that no matter how high the product quality and good reputation were, they could not enter the mainstream market of the domestic automobile industry. If you don't have an identity in the country, you can't do business. Lu Guanqiu doesn't matter, then we will work hard in the international market without looking at identity!

As a result, Wanxiang's products have entered the markets of developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Italy, and France since the 80s. In the 90s, the internationalization process of Wanxiang was further accelerated. Not only are the products exported overseas, but also the acquisition of several well-known factories in the industry, expanding the territory of Wanxiang to overseas.

In 1994, Wanxiang Qianchao Co., Ltd., the core enterprise of Wanxiang Group, landed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange with the name of "Wanxiang Chao A", becoming the first listed private enterprise in China.

Glory and Dreams / circa 2000

In 2002, the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government decided to give 3 million yuan to Lu Guanqiu of Hangzhou Wanxiang Group, Zong Qinghou of Wahaha Group and Feng Gensheng of Qingchunbao Group to thank them for their special contributions.

At the award ceremony, the reporter asked the three entrepreneurs what dream they wanted to realize after winning the 3 million award?

Lu Guanqiu said, "I want to build an automobile city in Hangzhou", and I want to realize a dream of building a car.

Zong Qinghou said, "I want to become Li Ka-shing in Hangzhou", and I want to realize the dream of being the richest man.

Feng Gensheng said, "If Chinese medicine is not prosperous, my life is not smooth", and he wants to realize a dream of traditional Chinese medicine.

But will they have enough time to realize their dreams?

On the other hand, the world is changing dramatically. Two years ago, Ding Lei, a small character merchant from Hangzhou, successfully landed on Nasdaq with his portal "NetEase". Alibaba, another Internet "giant whale", is brewing a huge change under the leadership of Jack Ma and 18 Arhats. It seems that the baton is about to be handed over to the next generation.

But none of the three stopped.

In 1996, Hu Qingyutang, a time-honored brand of Sinopharm and Feng Gensheng's "old mother's family", was on the verge of bankruptcy due to debts of nearly 100 million yuan. Feng Gensheng withstood the pressure, and the "son" merged with the "Lao Tzu", turning this golden signboard into a profit in the shortest possible time, and it became a beautiful talk for a while.

In 1998, Qingchunbao was restructured and the management was required to buy the company's shares. The whole company was looking at Feng Gensheng, and many people said that as long as Mr. Feng bought it, they would buy it themselves. Although Feng Gensheng was crazy, he didn't have much savings, and he had to borrow millions from banks to barely buy shares. Such a huge risk was strongly opposed by the family.

But Feng Gensheng withstood the pressure. In his view, as the head of an enterprise, if he is not determined enough to implement the transformation, then the reform of the enterprise will end here. After all kinds of thoughts, Feng Gensheng broke the kettle and resolutely chose to take out a loan to hold shares. He borrowed 2.7 million yuan from the bank to buy his own shares, and encouraged employees to buy shares with practical actions, so that the restructuring work was successfully completed.

In 2003, SARS was raging. Hangzhou people lined up at the door of Huqing Yutang to buy a pack of SARS preventive medicine. Feng Gensheng, who had just returned to Hangzhou from other places, saw this scene and immediately announced that he would make every effort to produce anti-SARS Chinese medicine and sell it at a loss. Hu Qingyutang's gold-lettered signboard and Feng Gensheng's righteous deeds soothed the panic of the people of Hangzhou at that time, and the spirit of Chinese medicine hanging pots to help the world was once again carried forward in the body of the "last apprentice" of this pharmacy.

In 2010, Feng Gensheng retired as a "state-owned enterprise nanny", but Zong Qinghou, who was "slow down", rushed to the top. After dealing with the dispute with the joint venture Danone, Wahaha started a period of rapid development. In the following 2010, 2012 and 2013, Zong Qinghou became the richest man in Chinese mainland by Forbes three times in four years, fulfilling his dream of being the richest man.

However, 2013 was a watershed year for his good fortune. A migrant worker who had not been able to find a job since coming to Hangzhou had seen an interview with Zong Qinghou on television about his enthusiasm for helping migrant workers, so he went to Zong Qinghou near his residence and asked him to arrange a job. In the ensuing 2014, Wahaha's performance fell off a cliff. Many people have questioned that in the face of new technologies and new models of the Internet, the old magic weapon is useless?

But Zong Qinghou was by no means so easy to admit defeat. 30 years of ups and downs in the business world have already cultivated his tenacious personality. In 2016, Zong Qinghou, who was "a little outdated", and Ma Yun, who was in full swing at the time, exchanged feelings in the air. Zong Qinghou first criticized Ma Yun, which triggered a big discussion about the "virtual and real economy". And Ma Yun was not to be outdone, and refuted in the air: "It's not technology that makes you eliminate, it's backward thinking that makes you eliminate, it's unwillingness to learn, self-righteousness that makes you eliminate...... It's not that China's real economy is failing, it's that your real economy is failing. ”

The argument soon ended with a seemingly peaceful handshake between the two. But Zong Qinghou listened to Ma Yun's criticism very seriously, and really began to change his "backward thinking". In 2021, the 75-year-old Zong Qinghou obtained a fund qualification certificate, and in 2023, he has been publicly declaring that Wahaha will never be listed, and he will also start public auctions of shares online for the first time.

Compared with many young people, the resilience and learning ability of this dying old man are truly admirable.

And Lu Guanqiu, who has a dream of building a car, may have gone the farthest on the road of his dream among the three. He has long focused on clean energy, advocating for the development of batteries and electric vehicles. As early as 1999, Lu Guanqiu formally established an electric vehicle project team and set a development route of "battery-motor-electronic control-electric vehicle".

In 2002, Wanxiang established Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd., but it failed to obtain the qualification to make cars for many years. If you can't go at home, you will go abroad. This is Lu Guanqiu's old idea. In 2011, Wanxiang established a joint venture with an American company to establish a power battery company, and soon officially started the construction of a lithium-ion battery project with an annual output of 300 million ampere. Soon after, they acquired A123 Systems, the largest new energy battery manufacturer in the United States at the time. In 2014, Wanxiang took a step further by acquiring Fisker in the United States, introducing BMW's powertrain, and successfully developing the first hybrid car, the Revero: a car that can run on electricity, oil and solar power.

Universal Motors – Revero

The industrial chain of Wanxiang car manufacturing has been spreading overseas. At a public event in August 2017, Ni Pin, general manager of Wanxiang America, introduced that one out of every two cars produced in the United States that year used Wanxiang's products. Lu Guanqiu's more ambitious plan, a new energy power vehicle industrial base called "Wanxiang Energy City", is still under construction.

In 2022, Lu Guanqiu, who has been dead for 5 years, was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit, USA, and his name was finally ranked alongside Thomas Edison, Carl Bentz, Henry Ford and other legends in the automotive industry.

Curtain call

Feng Gensheng, an apprentice in Chinese medicine and director of a state-owned pharmaceutical factory, retired in 2010 and passed away on July 4, 2017.

Three months later, on October 25, 2017, Lu Guanqiu, an iron-striking apprentice and township entrepreneur, bid farewell to the world forever.

The youngest of the three, Zong Qinghou, who returned to the city and the director of the school-run factory, also drew a life on February 25, 2024.

Feng Gensheng, Lu Guanqiu, and Zong Qinghou each have their own characteristics. If summed up in one word, Feng Gensheng is "crazy", crazy in the courage to make thunderous decisions in the image of a madman at a critical moment, leading the team out of the predicament; Lu Guanqiu is "stable", Wanxiang has always been clear about his main line, avoiding too many resources to invest in irrelevant fronts, and moving forward step by step; while Zong Qinghou is "tenacious", he only started his first business at the age of 42, has experienced several major turmoil in his career and life, and can rely on resilience to lead the company back on track after suffering blows.

The three of them also have a lot in common, for example, they all maintain a simple and simple personal life all year round. Feng Gensheng, a migrant worker, has been living in an old 42-square-meter building with his family for many years; Lu Guanqiu has been living in a small farmhouse built in 1983, as long as he is not on business, he will go home on time to have dinner with his wife, and he has no extravagant hobbies; Zong Qinghou has been encountered by netizens in the second-class seat of the high-speed rail and the economy class of the plane, so that Wahaha insiders have specially come out to confirm that he "has less than 50,000 yuan of living expenses for a year after quitting smoking".

Wave after wave, countless enterprises and entrepreneurs are struggling to move forward between the ebb and flow. The long river of time meanders, some people take a curtain call, and some people appear, but what remains unchanged is the spiritual core that has been passed down from generation to generation by Zhejiang businessmen.

Resources:

Jiemian News: Feng Gensheng, the CEO of the "longest-lived" state-owned enterprise, passed away, and he once opened a precedent for state-owned enterprises to introduce foreign capital

Yicai: Feng Gensheng, a craftsman of Sinopharm, in 1996: He wrote the legend from the "last apprentice" to the chairman of a state-owned enterprise丨40 people in 40 years

The Paper: Feng Gensheng, the successor of Hu Qingyutang and the founder of Qingchunbao Group, passed away at the age of 84

City Observation: He is the person Ma Yun admires the most before his 47-year-old dream of building a car, and half of American cars use his accessories

Huashang Taoluo: Dear Mr. Lu Guanqiu, he left today

People Weekly: Lu Guanqiu, President of Vientiane Group, interprets the ten-year myth of township enterprises

The Paper: The era of Zong Qinghou and Zong Qinghou

China Entrepreneur Magazine: Zong Qinghou Dies: The Richest Man and the Moderate Hawk

Banshu Finance: Review the top ten life nodes after Zong Qinghou

Global Network: The legend of Zhejiang businessmen came to an end, Zong Qinghou publicly "scolded" Ma Yun, and Zhong Sui was once an agent of Wahaha

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