Chapter 86 Great Change of Dream Fate

On May 6, 2011, Zhu Xinli, chairman of Huiyuan Group, accepted my interview in a reception room of Huiyuan headquarters in Shunyi, Beijing.The reception room is covered with light brown woven carpet, gray fabric sofa, covered with a white sofa cover with "Huiyuan" red LOGO printed on it - this reveals a strong flavor of the 1980s.Huiyuan’s various low-concentration fruit juice products are placed on the tea table, and there is a palm-sized notice board next to it: “I like it when I drink it, and I cherish it when I take it away.”The staff of Huiyuan told me that the placement of the notice board was ordered by Zhu Xinli, and all departments in Huiyuan implemented it in this way.Hanging on the wall is a plaque congratulating the 13th anniversary of Huiyuan Group, and the inscription is "Wanrong County Committee of the Communist Party of China, People's Government of Wanrong County".

Zhu Xinli was wearing a gray and black suit and a light blue shirt, reclining on the sofa.He has a kind face, and during the three hours of communication, he was basically smiling.Only when talking about Coca-Cola's merger and acquisition of Huiyuan, his face elongated suddenly, his mouth was tightly shut, and his cheeks were also tense.After the Ministry of Commerce stopped Coca-Cola's acquisition of Huiyuan on the grounds of violating the "Monopoly Law", Huiyuan, which wanted to be in the upstream industry, had no choice but to turn around and recruited thousands of ex-military salesmen in one go to rebuild the disbanded sales system.Although it took a lot of energy to redo the downstream, Huiyuan's layout of upstream industries has been non-stop. In addition to fruit cultivation, Zhu Xinli has also focused on organic agriculture.Huiyuan built a 1,500-mu organic agriculture demonstration garden in Miyun, and cooperated with the Dezhou Municipal Government of Shandong Province to build a 10,000-mu organic agriculture demonstration garden.

Dr. Wang Shiping from the Industry and Enterprise Research Center of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences said: "Huiyuan is now in the stage of enclosing land, and its listed beverage production only accounts for a part of its business in the group." Zhu Xinli estimated that it will need 3 billion To 5 billion yuan to do organic agriculture, "Without the approval of the board of directors, the money of the listed company cannot be used to do organic agriculture, and the money of shareholders can only be used for fruit juice."

From fruit juice to organic agriculture, Zhu Xinli has always been closely connected with China's agriculture. Thirty years ago, it was the giant hand of national policy that changed the fate of Zhu Xinli, a farmer in the Yimeng mountainous area, drastically.Starting from Jinan, go east via G2 Beijing-Shanghai Expressway and G22 Qinglan Expressway, turn to Provincial Highway 332, turn southwest, and arrive at Dongli Town, Yiyuan County, Zibo City, Shandong Province, about 180 kilometers by car.Outside the car window, everything but apple trees flashed by quickly.Yiyuan is one of the main apple producing areas in China.

This is Zhu Xinli's hometown.Unlike today's national highways, provincial highways, and township roads that are densely laid out on the land of China, connecting a road network with complete aortas and capillaries, Dongli Town has always been an isolated village in Zhu Xinli's childhood and youth. .This is the hinterland of the Yimeng mountainous area, tens of kilometers away from every county seat, closed and backward, relying on the sky for food. Huiyuan located the Zibo branch in Donglidong Village, Dongli Town, Zhu Xinli's hometown, and built a dairy beverage processing plant there.The factory is located at the foot of the mountain. Walking up the mountain along the red brick wall, standing on the hillside, you can see eight rows and seven rows of 56 ready-to-go trucks parked inside the wall.Zhu Xinli's hometown is on this mountain, only 200 meters away from the factory building, overlooking the entire factory.

Along the trail up the mountain, I looked for Zhu Xinli's old house.Farmhouses made of stones and yellow mud are scattered in the mountains in twos and threes. There are no people on the road, only vicious dogs barking.Fortunately, I found an old lady in her eighties to guide me, and I found my destination.There are six houses in a row, built of yellow-brown stones, with red tiles on the roof, and crooked door frames inlaid with wooden strips. Zhu Xinli was born here in 1952, and it was not until 1986 that he left the mountain to say goodbye to his hometown.He was the second of six sons born to his mother.In Zhu Xinli's description, his home is "backed by mountains and facing Yihe River, a place with beautiful mountains and clear waters".The poetic flavor of this pastoral landscape cannot conceal the harsh living conditions of Chinese farmers in those days. In the 1950s and 1960s, the countryside organized production in the form of people's communes, and Dongli Town only grew corn, sweet potatoes, and wheat. During the three years of natural disasters from 1959 to 1961, natural disasters combined with man-made disasters, a large-scale famine broke out in China, and starving people died everywhere.Zhu Xinli kept the memory of the Great Famine. He remembered that many people around him could only eat corn cobs, locust flowers, and locust tree leaves when they were starving, and their eyes were swollen from hunger.He once chatted with Zhu Jimin, the boss of Shougang, whose sister starved to death.

His family survived the famine.His father was an accountant in the village and had studied in a private school, so he was more far-sighted than ordinary farmers.In the bumper harvest year before the three years of natural disasters, his father used the scattered land in front of and behind the house to open up wasteland. He started digging in autumn and spent the whole winter digging the soil around the house. Pick soil with good fertility, pour it into the ditch, and spread a layer of accumulated chicken manure and sheep manure.A layer of soil and a layer of dung overlap like this.The advantage is that it not only retains water, but also keeps the soil loose, and there are a lot of organic fertilizers.Next spring, plant pumpkins.When the pumpkins mature in the fall of that year, each pumpkin weighs dozens of catties.Take it off and put it in the house.Pumpkin can be stored for a long time as long as it is kept ventilated and not frozen.The house is full of pumpkins, so that the Zhu family can survive every time they are green and yellow.

The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee was held in 1978. This was an epoch-making event. It is no exaggeration to say that it saved the lives of Chinese farmers.At this meeting, the new policy of reform and opening up was determined, and the starting point of reform and opening up was rural reform.Wu Jingxue, an expert in agricultural economics and director of the Industrial Economics Research Office of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, believes that the period from 1978 to 1985 (some scholars divided it into 1986) is the first stage of China's agricultural development after the reform and opening up. The household contract responsibility system implemented in the early 1980s stimulated the enthusiasm of farmers for production, and the rural economy showed a momentum of rapid development. The shortage of agricultural products turned into a basic balance between supply and demand.At the same time, relative to the income of the urban population, the income of farmers grew the fastest during this period, and the price scissors difference between industrial and agricultural products was the smallest, approximately 1:1.8.In addition, Chinese farmers gave full play to their intelligence, hard work, and ability, and a large number of township enterprises sprung up.These township enterprises are small and nimble, like water snakes swimming around the huge and cumbersome tortoises of state-owned enterprises, and have seized many markets.In the early 1980s, sociologist Fei Xiaotong put forward the famous "Southern Jiangsu Model".

Zhu Xinli is one of the beneficiaries of the rural reform. Around 1981, he contracted a Jiefang car in the village to drive apples from Yimeng Mountain to Nanjing and Shanghai for sale.His family is poor, but he has a flexible mind. He has stopped asking his family for money to study since the second grade of elementary school. During summer vacation, he went to the mountains to dig Chinese herbs, climb trees to pick up cicada sloughs, and turn over rocks to catch scorpions. Tuition fees in yuan.A truckload of apples can probably earn him several hundred yuan in shipping fees.With the money, he bought two cars one after another, took four apprentices, and took turns driving three Jiefang cars to transport fruits. In 1983, he earned more than 300,000 yuan and became the first person to install a telephone at home in Yimeng mountain area.

The village secretary mobilized him to go back to be the village director.Since the founding of New China, Dongli Village has been fed relief food every year, and 3,000 people have only 1,000 mu of land, which is less than a quarter of the land per capita.Zhu Xinli sold his car and became the village party secretary.When he was a car driver, he traveled all over the world, learned a lot, and had a plan in mind. He asked everyone to hand over their land and concentrate their operations.Everyone is very conflicted. The land that was finally obtained has not been warmed up yet, and they want to spit it out again?Zhu Xinli simply drove a bus, yelled at party members, cadres and village representatives, and drove all the way to Pingdu City, Jiaodong to observe.Grapes are grown on a large scale in that place, and the income per mu of land is 10,000 yuan.This was an "ideological emancipation" in Dongli Village. The wealth of the outside world shocked these farmers who had never walked out of Yimeng Mountain.After that, Zhu Xinli ordered party members to either hand over their land or be punished.Party members hand over, cadres hand over, and ordinary people follow suit.These lands were collected to grow grapes and contracted to 40 specialized households.For this reason, someone wrote a letter and put an eight-cent stamp on it to report to the State Council. Someone from above came to investigate and criticized Zhu Xinli for not farming.This move disqualified Zhu Xinli as a candidate for the National People's Congress.

From the village party secretary to the juice king (photographed by Li Zhigang from Zhu Xinli's office) However, Dongli Village has benefited from growing grapes. 1,000 mu of land planted with grapes, the original income of more than 200 yuan per mu will be more than 5,000 yuan in the second year, and 10,000 yuan in the third year.He successively established 27 village-run enterprises, such as brick and tile factories, flour factories, leather shoe factories, and fur factories.Except for 40 professional grape-growing households, the labor force of more than 700 other households is absorbed by these factories. In 1986, this village of 800 households produced more than 4 million households worth 10,000 yuan, becoming the first telephone village in Shandong Province. Elderly people over 60 years old have pensions, and the village provides tuition fees for those who are admitted to university, and the villagers distribute 500 catties of flour every year. Talking about those years, Zhu Xinli was very excited and full of emotions. He mentioned that Wen Yuankai, a man of the reform and opening up, proposed to Deng Xiaoping to resume the college entrance examination.Articles written by Wen Yuankai on reform and opening up were passed on among young people like Zhu Xinli, who devoured ideas and beliefs from the articles. "For a long time, we have felt that our wisdom has been suppressed. In this situation (reform and opening up), once it breaks out, it will be terrible and liberate productivity. China's reform and opening up has been liberating productivity for more than 30 years."