Chapter 9 One hundred thousand troops make trouble in Shenzhou

One day in the 1990s, domestic reporters from Xinhua News Agency gathered in Beijing. During the conversation, the topic came up in Wenzhou. The reporter from Zhejiang talked for two hours, and everyone was interested in it.In the end, the reporters asked a colleague from Zhejiang to clarify what kind of place Wenzhou is in one sentence. The eloquent Zhejiang reporter was stuck there for a while, seeing his embarrassment, everyone broke up laughing. In the early morning of the next day, the Zhejiang reporter who hadn't slept all night finally found an explanation. With red and swollen eyes, he said loudly, Wenzhou is such a place, where there are copper coins beating in every corner.

In fact, this Xinhua News Agency reporter used a "self-proclaimed speech" from Wenzhou people.That sentence was invented by Wenzhou people themselves, and it has been widely spread; in the whole of China, wherever there are copper coins beating, there are Wenzhou people. Now, let us put it another way, that is: Wenzhou people may be the first batch of people in China to dance with copper coins. Wenzhou people danced the "copper coin dance" the first time because they felt that they were most short of copper coins. In 1985, when Wenzhou was already famous all over the world, Wu Xiang, a reporter from People’s Daily and a well-known expert on rural issues, went to Wenzhou to explore the mystery of the market. He wrote in the report:

In Zhejiang Province, a land of fish and rice, Wenzhou can be regarded as a poor area.The city's land per capita is only four quarters, which is less than half of the Pearl River Delta, which has more people and less land.Since ancient times, local farmers have had to go out to make a living in order to survive, so the business atmosphere is particularly strong. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Wenzhou was famous for "its goods are abundant, and its people are merchants". Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, Wenzhou's industrial foundation has been extremely weak, and the city's per capita fixed assets are only equivalent to 28% of the average in Zhejiang Province.Therefore, under the acquiescence of the local government, the flames of cottage industry have not been extinguished. After 1978, this economic form has flourished. By 1982, there were more than 100,000 cottage industries in Wenzhou, employing 400,000 people .

Wu Xiang also summed up the four characteristics of Wenzhou household industry: first, it can make up for the shortage of large-scale industries in the city and meet the needs of people in various aspects of life, so that it can gain a firm foothold; second, it is easy to learn, easy to do, and easy to popularize among farmers , so that it can continue to expand; the third is less investment, low cost, and strong competitiveness, so that it can make small profits but sell more, and occupy the market; the fourth is to change "small and complete" into "small and specialized", so that products are specialized and series , and soon formed a "hit product" and "ace product".

In fact, apart from Wu Xiang's "four major characteristics", there is another even greater characteristic that supports the prosperity of the entire Wenzhou household industry, that is Wenzhou's 100,000 buyers and sellers. In this regard, Lu Shengliang, who served as mayor of Wenzhou City from 1983 to 1988, has a better understanding.This veteran leader who claimed to be a "warm production cadre" said: Wenzhou people are known and talked about by the outside world, first of all because of its peasant buyers and sellers flying all over the sky.Some people say they are "locusts", some say they are "gophers", some say they are "contemporary heroes", let it be good or bad, in short, it is these 100,000 people who pushed Wenzhou into the market in a hurry economy.

These people traveled all over the country, selling Wenzhou's products and purchasing raw materials.The "Four Thousand Spirits" that became very popular later were summed up by them, that is: going through untold hardships, speaking thousands of words, traveling all over the world, and trying every means. So many farmers have traveled the world. In the process of going out, they brought back the demand information from all over the country to Wenzhou, and then digested it through thousands of family factories. In this way, Wenzhou is connected to the national market one by one. The red line is also loomingly drawn.

Around 1980, some specialized commodity production and sales areas appeared in rural Wenzhou.Due to the novelty of the products and the extremely low price, the reputation gradually grew, and people from all over the country began to rush there to purchase after hearing the news. Then, those large-scale places are commonly called "Wenzhou's top ten professional markets" by good people.