From "Unknown" to "Famous" —— The "Rise Code" of Caoxian County, Shandong Province

"Cao county is on fire, haven't you heard of 666?" In mid-May, the best hotel in the county was once full. After a rest, the chef picked up his mobile phone and "showed off" his work in Cao County with his friends.

There is a free bus parked in front of the hotel. When you sit around the county seat, you will see pale yellow old buildings, new parks and many buildings under construction. Advertising slogans circulate on the small tricycle selling milk Ginza Shopping Center and RT Mart are the larger shopping centers in this city.

Old men and women playing mahjong sat on the edge of Nanhu Park until nightfall. The stalls in the night market are very lively. On the fence by the lake in the park, someone scribbled with a black pen, and scrawled "The Rise of Cao County".

When asked about the "rise password" of Cao County, the locals will suggest you go to Zhuangzhai Town in the north, where the coffins exported account for 90% of the Japanese market; Or go to the big market town in the south, which is the largest clothing producing area in China, and one third of Hanfu in China also comes from here.

After the sudden popularity, various media, tourists and visitors poured into Cao County, and various exposures brought nearly 5 billion flows to this small county. On the hottest day, Mayor Hou of Daji Town received more than 20 media.

The people of Cao county have also started new thinking. The upgrading of traditional industries will attract more talents to return home, making Cao County "unable to burn for a long time".

Become widely known

"Never mind the fire, change the name of the store first."

Cao county suddenly caught fire, and even the locals felt "inexplicable."

"I'd rather sleep in a bed in Cao county than buy a suite in Shanghai." Cao county has blocked the hot search list. From April 13 to May 17, Weibo read more than 500 million topics about Cao County.

In mid-May, the best hotels in the county were once full, and all the media people from all over the country came. The government set up a special group to receive the media. Hou Liangzheng, the mayor of Daji Town, is busy from morning till night, and receives more than 20 media at most one day.

After a break, the hotel chef said to his friend with a mobile phone, "Cao County is on fire. Haven't you heard of 666?" The chef of the buffet was frying steak and looked up and asked the customer, "How did you come to Cao County?" "I asked my friend to get the pass," the other party replied with a smile.

Fan Qunying, the owner of a steamed bread shop in Daji Town, sells Shandong steamed bread online. The name of the store is "Fan Qunying is OK".

/kloc-in may of 0/9, his daughter who went to college from other places suddenly said to him, "Cao county is on fire, don't you know?" Fan Qunying was puzzled and then asked, "I don't know, why are you angry?" The daughter replied: "Don't worry about the fire, change the name of the store first."

According to her daughter's suggestion, Fan Qunying added the word "Cao County" to the name of the online store. "The conversion rate has really improved. For example, 65,438+000 people browse our online store. In the past, only 10 people may place an order to buy, but now it has become 15. "

There are also many wealth stories of Cao County circulating on the Internet.

The owner of a coffin shop is looking for relatives for his daughter. He requires a bachelor's degree or above, and fluency in English and Japanese is preferred. He also hopes that the other party can accept living in Cao County. When I mentioned my own conditions, I pointed out that I have been operating e-commerce in the village for 10 years. There are 8 online stores, all of which will be handed over to their daughters and sons-in-law. It is estimated that the total dowry will be more than 7 million yuan.

In the past many years, Cao County has been a poor county.

With a population of 6.5438+0.75 million, Cao County is the most populous county in Shandong Province, and also a major labor export county. According to the data, in 2005, Cao Xian exported 200,000 rural laborers, which means that only four or five out of every five or six hundred working-age laborers were idle at home.

Writer Wei Xin is also from Cao Xian County. He once mentioned that he studied hard to leave. For more than ten years, when he came home, he always felt that time and space were stagnant: "The outside world is changing with each passing day. Every time he goes back, there are only those mean streets in the county town, like a few black tapes stuck on the wall, motionless. "

In the past ten years, the changes in Cao Xian County still surprised Wei Xin. From 20 10 to 2020, the GDP of Cao County will rise from12.2 billion to 46.38 billion, and its ranking in Shandong Province will rapidly rise from 108 to 55th, ranking among the top in Heze City.

Become rich

Coffins are exported to Japan, and the annual sales of manufacturers are over 100 million yuan.

When asked about the way to get rich in Cao County, locals often suggest you go to Zhuangzhai Town, which is the earliest known place in Cao County.

The town is only an hour's drive from the county seat, and the roads are covered with paulownia trees. At that time, Jiao planted paulownia on a large scale in lankao county to control desertification, and the neighboring Cao County was also the best growing place for paulownia because of its suitable water resources and climate conditions.

The coffins exported by this town account for 90% of the Japanese market.

According to Japanese funeral custom, the remains and coffins are cremated together, so light and flammable wood is needed. Paulownia produced locally has a short maturity, light texture and moisture resistance, and is the first choice for making Japanese coffins.

Tian Liang's father switched from wood processing to coffin manufacturing in 2000, and now he is one of the three coffin manufacturers in Zhuangzhai.

In mid-May, different types of coffins were neatly arranged in noisy factories, including wooden coffins carved with dragons and phoenixes and cloth coffins embroidered with cherry blossoms. There is a plastic "window" on the coffin for relatives and friends to see the remains, and the workers are stepping up their work.

Coffins sold to Japan are divided into "wooden coffins" and "cloth coffins", and the prices range from several hundred yuan to several thousand yuan. It takes more than 200 accessories to make a Japanese coffin, and it takes more than a dozen processes in the factory, mainly done by workers.

Locals also call it "doing happy work" to make coffins. Ten years ago, it was still an unlucky job.

"We used to hire people, dare not say it's a coffin. We only say that we are making handicrafts. " Cai Xiufang remembers that when workers came to the factory and saw them making coffins, they immediately turned around and left. Some of them got scared and resigned after working for a few days. Some truck drivers can't sleep for three days after delivering the goods once and refuse to come again.

Cai Xiufang owns several coffin factories. 20 17 A Japanese variety show "Unbelievable World" entered Cao Xian County, and the coffin factory in the lens was Yunlong Wood Carving Company founded by Cai Xiufang.

Today, Cai Xiufang has three or four hundred employees in her factory.

In order to test whether the coffin floor is firm, the workers even lie in the coffin and let others lift the coffin and shake it from side to side. "In our opinion, these coffins are a work of art and there is nothing to be taboo." A worker said this.

Unlike China's coffin reliefs, Japanese coffins need to be carved separately and pasted on the coffins, most of which are carved with dragons, phoenixes and peonies. Machine carving can't make smooth effect by hand.

Cai Xiufang 17 years old began to learn wood carving skills. She first became attached to the coffin export business in 1993. A coffin export enterprise in Cao Xian county is looking for a woodcarver, and Cai Xiufang took over the business, and personally designed patterns and made samples to send to Japan.

The customer was very satisfied and placed 3000 coffins. She took more than 80 relatives, apprentices and others to process together, and all the houses that could be vacated in the village became "temporary factories". They worked overtime and finally completed the order as scheduled, opening up the coffin processing market.

For Zhuangzhai Town, coffins are only a subdivision of local woodwork.

As the largest paulownia processing and production base in China, 80% farmers in the town are engaged in the timber industry. There are more than 600 local wood processing enterprises, more than 2,000 self-employed, and more than 60,000 employees, involving furniture, wine boxes, tea boxes and other wood products.

According to the data provided by the town, the annual output value of Zhuangzhai is 50 billion yuan, which is almost equivalent to the economic volume of a county in the central region. The town's annual wood processing capacity is 3 million cubic meters. If piled up in an area as big as a football field, it will be as high as Shanghai Jinmao Building.

In addition to coffins, local wood products are also sold abroad in large quantities.

Cai Xiufang mentioned that most children of local manufacturers will go to Japan to study and study trade-related majors. Her son Li Zilei returned to his hometown after studying in Japan for four years. "The factory's annual sales revenue is hundreds of millions. When I retire, the baton will still be passed on to my son. "

chance

Take the online express train from Taobao shop to Taobao town.

The second largest industry in Cao county is garment processing, which is mainly distributed in the big market town in the south of the county.

Hou, the mayor of Daji Town, mentioned that in the early years, there were businessmen in the town who operated costumes. 20 15 with the wave of e-commerce, the production and sales of local costumes are booming.

The road leading to the big market town is a spacious cement road. At the entrance of the town, a red arched signboard crosses the road, and the golden characters on it shine in the sun: "Welcome to China Taobao Town Daji".

Embroidery, accessories, buttons, shoes, clothing ... As can be seen from the names of shops on both sides of the road, the clothing here has formed a complete industrial chain. At the end of May, many people will be busy from morning to early morning, looking for goods, taking orders, packaging and so on. There are also 27 logistics companies that are racing against time to deliver goods.

Ren Qingsheng, the village party secretary of Dinglou Village, is the first person to do e-commerce in Daji Town.

In the past many years, Daji Town was still a "ghost village" with no street lamps and houses everywhere. Most young people have gone out to work, and Ren Qingsheng is also a construction worker in Beijing and Zhengzhou. In 2000, he returned to his hometown to work as an electrician with a monthly salary of 130 yuan.

His wife Wang Aihua works in a photo studio in Dinglou Village. At that time, there was a boss in the village who made studio clothes all the year round, mainly relying on people to carry them and transport them to various cities for sale. Women in the village helped her with garment processing, gradually mastered the skills of cutting and sewing, and more and more people went it alone.

In 2009, Wang Aihua overheard a classmate talking about selling things in an online shop, so she discussed with her husband and wanted to buy a computer. Ren Qingsheng disagreed. He once did pyramid schemes with a friend and lost all his money. "I thought the online store was another pyramid scheme."

At his wife's insistence, Ren Qingsheng agreed. Wang Aihua borrowed 1 1,000 yuan from her mother's family, and made up 1. 400 yuan bought a computer. This is not a small number. At that time, planting an acre of crops only earned five or six hundred yuan a year, and the family's income from farming was less than two thousand yuan.

After the computer was bought back, Ren Qingsheng and his wife were in trouble. Facing the desktop with only 1G memory, they don't know how to operate and can't type. "Shandong dialect has a strong accent and cannot be typed according to pronunciation." Ren Qingsheng found her daughter's first-grade textbook, and the Chinese characters were marked with Pinyin. According to the textbook, he tapped the keyboard slowly with one finger, which opened the door of e-commerce.

The couple's online shop ushered in the first "big business" on 20 10.

A school teacher asked him if he could make a suit. He looked at the pictures sent by the other party and thought, "Simple, just process them." . But he didn't sell clothes, and he didn't know the price, so he quoted the unit price in 60 yuan. Finally, 36 sets were sold, with a net profit of 100 yuan.

"At that time, I felt that costume made more money than costume." Ren Qingsheng found some pictures of clothes online and uploaded them to his online shop. As long as a customer places an order, he will do it according to the picture. In the first year, I earned six or seven thousand yuan, which is three or four times the income from planting crops.

In 20 12, Ren Qingsheng earned 70,000 yuan and bought a van, becoming the first person in Dinglou Village to get rich.

The villagers also started e-commerce, and cloth for making clothes was piled at the door of every household. Government workers don't know much about e-commerce and only see fire hazards. "Dinglou Village doesn't know what it is, and it seems to be quite profitable."

Su Yongzhong, then secretary of the Party Committee of Daji Township, keenly felt that this was an opportunity of the times. He set up an e-commerce development office to repair roads and transform the power grid. ...

The first group of wealthy villagers built houses and factories on farmland, but they were faced with the dilemma of illegally occupying cultivated land. County leaders visited the village, and all they saw were randomly built houses. They were so angry that they cursed: "No matter how well the big market towns develop!"

The newly-built brick house was demolished by the hook machine, and the town began to build Taobao Industrial Park. The industrial park is built in the north, and the villagers in Dinglou Village in the south are unwilling to move in. First, I don't want to leave the fertile ground for entrepreneurship, and second, I am worried about the prospects of the industrial park.

"We spent a long time doing the ideological work of merchants and took measures such as tax reduction and exemption." Hou remembers that at that time, they invited some large enterprises to settle in, and then slowly led other merchants to settle in the industrial park, which opened the road to large-scale production.

In the list of Top 100 Taobao Counties in 2020 released by Ali Research Institute, Cao County ranks second in the country with 17 Taobao towns and 1 Taobao village, and it is also the second largest Taobao village cluster in the country after Yiwu.

In Dinglou village, which became rich first, "going north to Cao" is not necessarily a mockery. According to the pear video report, in the "ranking of per capita income of all parts of the country" of 20 18, the per capita income of Dinglou Village in Cao County reached 654.38+10,000 yuan, far exceeding that of the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. There are 336 families in the village, with 350 cars, many of which are luxury cars, and two fire engines.

change

Cao county, which has repeatedly grabbed the limelight, is also facing new challenges and opportunities.

According to statistics, there are more than 600 Hanfu processing enterprises in Cao Xian County. In 20 19, the sales of Hanfu in Cao Xian County was nearly 1900 million yuan, of which1300 million yuan came from big towns. The town specializes in cheap Hanfu, and the price is generally between 100 yuan and 300 yuan.

Merchants are mainly transformed from making clothes. Last year, affected by the epidemic, many domestic performances were suspended, and the clothing market once stopped. Caoxian businessmen had to find another way, which coincided with the rise of Hanfu style and began to enter Hanfu track.

"We have a mature clothing industry chain, and we only need one import to switch to Hanfu." Some merchants also mentioned that some people in the town have been making Hanfu for a long time. Later, due to the epidemic, a large number of merchants began to seize the Hanfu market.

Compared with clothing, Hanfu has higher regulation and aesthetic requirements, and its production process is more complicated. The lack of local designers has left Hanfu manufacturers in big towns at a loss in design.

They have to outsource their design work or borrow elements from other products, which will also involve counterfeiting and quality problems. Therefore, it was criticized by people in the industry, and even some companies took lawyers to Cao County to go to court.

"Some merchants are not aware of copyright, so they can use it directly when they see a good design." Hou said that in order to enhance villagers' legal awareness, government workers held many legal lectures and encouraged enterprises to set up legal studios. Copying with the wind rarely happens after 20 18.

"Shandong people love face, and my family thinks that it is a waste of education for me to come back to Taobao as a college student." At the beginning of his business, Meng didn't understand Shandong dialect, and his business was not so smooth. The opposition of her family also made her feel pressure. But she doesn't care, silently supports, and is still busy buying goods, placing orders and delivering goods every day. "We don't want to tell anyone until we succeed."

Hu also returned to the big market town four years ago. Being a "doctoral student" has brought convenience to his entrepreneurship. The government found them a "poverty alleviation workshop" and set up a "doctor's studio" in the county, and various policies and subsidies were also slightly tilted. Taking advantage of studying fine arts, Meng has unique views on the design and production of clothing, and takes the villagers to explore the new direction of this industry.

difficult position

Labor shortage, "children want to go out"

This sudden popularity has enabled Cao Xian people to gain traffic and open up new ideas.

Li Zilei also happened to catch up with the "window".

The cloud live broadcast platform he founded was launched in May, which opened the form of online live broadcast with goods. In the huge warehouse, some brands of clothes are neatly hung on the shelves, and dozens of anchors are holding clothes in the live broadcast. In recent days, people have been commenting on "Are you from Cao Xian" and "Cao Xian 666" in the live broadcast room, and the traffic has also increased. Some bloggers broadcast live for 27 hours in order to seize the opportunity.

"I hope to provide ceremonial funeral services for China people", which became popular last time, made many Japanese know about Yunlong woodcarving. Li Zilei hopes to seize this opportunity to open the domestic market. He has registered several trademarks and is planning to start with pet coffins and domestic funeral homes.

According to Hou's preliminary statistics, under the reports of many media, the exposure flow of Cao County this time is about 500 million people.

But "going north to Cao" is just a ridicule after all. Liang Huimin, the county magistrate of Cao County, also mentioned in an interview with the media that Cao County is incomparable with these big cities.

Compared with "star towns" such as Zhuangzhai and Daji, other towns and villages in Cao County also have some agricultural products processing and sales industries, but they are not "out of the circle".

There are 7 expressways in Cao County, which is half an hour's drive from Heze Peony Airport. The county's high-speed rail will not be opened until next year. From Beijing to Cao Xian, you can only take the train to Heze, and then transfer to Cao Xian.

Liang Huimin, the county magistrate, once mentioned that in recent years, more than 3,000 college students, including doctoral students and international students, have started businesses in Cao County. But this figure can't meet the needs of the development of Cao county.

Zhuangzhai and Daji also have the problem of labor shortage. Ren Qingsheng said that he has four factories with 100 workers. "Now the surrounding villages are doing e-commerce, and it is getting harder and harder for us to recruit people. You can only go to other surrounding counties and cities to recruit people. "

Cai Xiufang is more worried that there are fewer and fewer people making wood carvings. "Even if teaching is free now, many young people are not willing to learn." Meng has the same concern. "There are people who have returned home, but they are still short of people. Children still can't do it and want to go out. "

In order to attract entrepreneurs to return to China, the local government has formulated a series of preferential policies.

For example, the house is sold at cost; Rural commercial banks have different quotas of 300,000, 500,000 and 654.38+00,000 for college students, master students and doctoral students respectively. They can apply for buying a house and starting a business directly from their mobile phones without mortgage or guarantee.

Editor Zuo Yanyan

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