The audio clip | Hu Junxiang
Senior Editor | Ni Min
[Editor's Note] Zhejiang is a major province of overseas Chinese affairs in China. For decades, groups of Zhejiang people have stepped on the spring breeze of reform and opening up to go abroad and go abroad with "Made in Zhejiang/Made in China" to the world to start a business and make a living. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up, Zhejiang Businessmen Magazine and The Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese of Zhejiang Province jointly launched a series of reports entitled "Tribute to Reform, Overseas Chinese, 40 People", selecting 40 representative overseas Chinese (countries) to tell the story of Zhejiang people bravely breaking overseas through the perspective of reform and opening up, or returning to their hometown to start a business to feel the story of earth-shaking changes brought about by reform and opening up.
The fourth article launched today is about the story of Guo Shenghua, a member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the Federation of Overseas Chinese in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai in the French Province of Guyana.
In the overseas Chinese community, Guo Shenghua's name is not unfamiliar, this overseas Chinese leader who won the title of "Fengyun Zhejiang Businessman" in 2005 is the "big brother" of the overseas Chinese community.
"No matter how far you go, your heart is always connected to me; no matter how long the tree's reflection is at dusk, it is always connected to the roots." Guo Shenghua liked these poems of Tagore. Forty years of foreign entrepreneurship cannot erase his heart of a pure son who loves the motherland; the 20,000-mile guanshan barrier hinders his wandering feelings of being attached to Sangzi.
Guo Shenghua
Bring Chinese department stores into the South American market
In 1955, Guo Shenghua was born in Qingtian Shixi Village. In 1976, before the reform and opening up, at the age of 21, he went abroad to reunite with his parents. Before leaving, many neighbors and childhood friends came to see off, and when he was young, he stood at the entrance of the village and solemnly promised to the father and elder of the villagers: "Earn 100,000 yuan, I will come back as a production captain and lead everyone to get rich together!" ”
The plane crossed the ocean, crossed the coconut grove on the coast, and landed at the airport in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, with a fishy smell of sun, sea, and sand. "I felt as if I had come to another planet."
After a period of adaptation, Guo Shenghua quickly overcame the language, cultural barriers, environment and strangeness brought about by the region. On weekdays, he worked in a watch shop that had been passed down to his father by his grandfather. But he found that just by repairing clocks and taking pictures, he could not achieve great things, nor could he place other relatives and friends. So he rode his bicycle every day after work, bringing dry food and water, and a few local partners to Cayenne and other surrounding areas to learn about local business. Although he would encounter "white eyes" from time to time, he really saw something famous when he looked at it. At that time, French Guiana was in short supply, and the department stores run by The French and Jews were mostly imported from Europe and the United States, so they were expensive.
In 1978, China began a new journey of reform and opening up, after which the "Made in China" with high quality and low price began to go global and was loved by people around the world. In the same year, Guo Shenghua went to Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places to purchase some watches, bicycles, electric fans, daily necessities, etc., and brought them back to cayenne. In the beginning, he rode a bicycle and walked through the rainforest paths every day, knocking on the door from house to house to sell.
At that time, China, the door of the country had just been opened, and the countries and peoples on the South American continent on the other side of the world knew very little about China, and even the Chinese refused to accept Chinese goods. However, Guo Shenghua firmly believes that cheap and good Chinese goods do not worry about the market, the problem lies in publicity. He found more than 100 Chinese shops in the area, none of which were sold in department stores. This was the opportunity, and he put the goods in these stores for consignment, without conflict with the business operations of the stores themselves. "I wasn't in a hurry to collect money, but I often went to see how the goods were selling and what feedback customers had." In this way, these Chinese department store products began to creep into the homes of ordinary people in French Guiana.
In October 1980, Guo Shenghua founded the "Friendship Department Store" in Cayenne, which was the first department store in The region specializing in the wholesale and retail of Chinese department stores.
Newly opened shopping malls need to find ways to open up the situation. What Guo Shenghua still remembers is the sales case of a rice cooker: at that time, when he saw this iron lump that resembled a small wine barrel, he heard that it was cooked by using electricity, and most of the local residents were curious and fresh. So Guo Shenghua set up a demonstration table in front of the store, placed 3 rice cookers of different sizes and specifications side by side, for several days in a row, publicly demonstrated the process of cooking rice, boiling soup, boiling porridge, and at the same time using Chinese condiments to fry several Chinese dishes in an iron pot, so that customers could try and taste on the spot. This rather intuitive sales demonstration produced an unimaginable effect, and after the demonstration, customers flocked to the scene as if they were rushing to the market, and there was a long queue in front of the Friendship Department Store to buy such a treasure. A container of rice cookers sold out in less than half a day, in order to meet orders from all over Guyana, Guo Shenghua continued to expedite the delivery to domestic suppliers. When the goods are out of stock, looking at the queue of people, Guo Shenghua first collects money and then sends a voucher to the customer, and when the goods arrive, they can exchange this note for a rice cooker.
The sale of rice cookers also led to the sale of electric fans, bicycles and other goods, made in China with the advantage of high quality and low price, quickly occupied the department store market in French Guiana, friendship department store has since become famous. At that time, the people circulated such a saying: "Friendship" store is the most complete, the price is also the cheapest. As a young man who has just entered the business war, Guo Shenghua was greatly encouraged by this, and his store not only opened up the trade channel between China and Guyana, but also opened up a potential market for Chinese goods to enter the South American continent smoothly.
Next, Guo Shenghua naturally gradually expanded the scale of operation and continuously improved the level of the enterprise. The number of various types of commodities imported from the country is increasing day by day, and the business operation is also extended to bulk commercial wholesale on the basis of the original. Driven by him, his brothers and sisters have expanded their operations independently, and one shopping mall after another of the Guo family has opened one after another. Since then, the Guo family's overseas wholesale operation has formed a relatively complete network, covering more than 500 retail stores operated by overseas Chinese from Zhejiang and Guangdong, becoming an enterprise group with prominent economic status and influence in the local overseas Chinese community, and also laying a solid foundation for Guo Shenghua's rapid development in French Guiana until the formation of the French Yameijie International Investment Group.
Guo Shenghua is one of the "2008 Beijing Olympic Torch Bearers"
The "village elder brother" led everyone to get rid of poverty and get rich
After the success, Guo Shenghua's wealth far exceeded the 100,000 yuan he dreamed of at the time. However, he never forgot his belief: "get rich together"; he never forgot the promise he made to the villagers when he left home.
In order to change the economic situation of relatives and friends in his hometown, since the end of the 1970s, Guo Shenghua has gradually assisted the local neighbors of Qingtian to go to Guyana to start a business and become rich. In order to adapt them to the local environment as soon as possible, Guo Shenghua hired four professors from Fudan University and other universities to give them language lessons at their own expense, so that they could remove cultural barriers.
For these Qingtian compatriots in Guyana, Guo Shenghua naturally became their "village chief": from immigrant passports to brother fights, couple divorces, and civil mediation, they would all come to him to manage. "When I was a child, I was the king of children, and when I had something delicious, I would immediately share it with everyone." Guo Shenghua did his best to arrange work for the villagers, or provide financial support, help them open stores, or coordinate the supply of goods, relieve their worries, and so on. "My own shop is cheaply rented to the villagers, the monthly rent outside is 20 to 25 yuan a square meter, but I rent out only 3 yuan 8 square meters." Guo Shenghua believes that when starting a business, everyone is not easy, he himself earns tens of thousands of yuan a year without affecting his life, for the villagers, it is a little bit of saving, which is conducive to their accumulation of wealth and rapid prosperity.
Today, in Guyana, there are more than 5,000 overseas Chinese going out from Qingtian and other places. He said happily: "I am extremely pleased that through hard work, I have finally realized my long-cherished wish to lead everyone to get rich together." There are now about 600 shops in Cayenne, and more than 450 belong to local Chinese, the vast majority of whom are Qingtian people in Zhejiang who have benefited from Guo Shenghua.
In the face of the gratitude of his fellow villagers, the leader who has worked hard for decades said emotionally: "I left my hometown as a young child, started a business overseas for 40 years, experienced various hardships, and came to this day step by step. I am most happy that common prosperity has become a reality. Seeing that everyone has embarked on the road to prosperity, I feel sincerely happy, and I have experienced the highest state of life. ”
The heart of a pure child, repay Sangzi
After being tempered, it will eventually become a great cause. With guo Shenghua's continuous efforts, his own industry has developed from the original store to 10 shopping malls and nearly 500 dealerships today, and the French Yameijie International Investment Group formed by him has also become a diversified multinational group enterprise mainly based on commerce and trade, in addition, thousands of compatriots led by him have also owned their own careers and wealth.
According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 2 million Zhejiang people distributed in more than 180 countries and regions, and their businesses cover all industries around the world. Scattering is full of stars, gathering is a fire. How to unite more overseas Chinese compatriots and bring them back to the motherland, so that they can merge into a living force of seeking development with one heart and one mind and striving for development and cohesion and cohesion? Guo Shenghua thus thought of a new platform - "overseas Chinese business hive".
Bee cluster life, division of labor and coordination, common prosperity and coexistence, reproduction, in Guo Shenghua's view, overseas Chinese businessmen are just like bees, he hopes to build a honeycomb-like platform to undertake the return of overseas Chinese businessmen, gather overseas Chinese business elements, integrate overseas Chinese business resources, give play to the advantages of overseas Chinese businessmen, develop the overseas Chinese business economy, merge the stream into a river, develop in groups, so that overseas Chinese businessmen "come back, stay, thrive, do strong, work long", and then make new contributions to Zhejiang's economic transformation and upgrading, and even provide a development model for the whole country.
Nowadays, the construction of the "Overseas Chinese Merchants Hive" platform has been carried out in many places in Zhejiang (such as Hangzhou, Yiwu, Lishui, etc.), and has realized the landing of one project after another.
"Return to serve the country and share development." In the past 40 years, only my appearance has changed, and what has not changed is my dreams, persistence and feelings. I have a strong sense of responsibility, a belief in serving the country and a deep affection for Sangzi in my heart! I am willing to dedicate my mental energy to my persistent dream and dedicate my blood to my hometown! Speaking of this, Guo Shenghua's eye sockets were moist. He has lived and worked abroad for more than 40 years, but from the heart, he has always longed for the prosperity of the motherland; he is always concerned about the comprehensive economic and social development of his hometown. ”