Southeast Asia Information Port News (www.dnyxxg.com) As the Spring Festival approaches, freshly picked highland vegetables are being shipped from Chengbu Miao Autonomous County in Hunan Province to Longsheng Various Nationalities Autonomous County in Guangxi Province on the highway, arriving on tables in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area the following morning. This major transportation artery has reduced the travel time from Chengbu County to Guangzhou to 7 hours and to Shenzhen to only 9 hours, accelerating the development of Chengbu's distinctive industries.
In this industrial transformation, Yang Shengchun, affectionately known as "Brother Aniu of Nanshan" by his fellow villagers, has become a leader in the development of Chengbu's highland vegetable industry with his enterprising spirit and deep passion for agriculture. He has brought high-quality vegetables from the remote mountains out of the Miao region, making them known throughout the country, and leading the local people onto the road to prosperity through increased income.
Born in 1983, Yang Shengchun is a native of Xintang Village, Dankou Town, Chengbu County, a Miao village. After graduating from junior high school, he went to Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, to work hard. For 16 years, he rose from an ordinary worker to a brand representative stationed in large supermarkets such as Walmart and Carrefour, honing his excellent marketing skills. In 2015, to support his elderly mother, he gave up his comfortable life in the city and returned to his hometown, forging a deep bond with the mountainous land of Chengbu.
Upon returning to the countryside, Yang Shengchun also experienced setbacks. He leased over 50 mu (approximately 8.7 hectares) of farmland to try growing watermelons and chili peppers and raising native pigs. He lived and ate in a shack next to the pigsty, adhering to traditional farming methods, hoping to reap the rewards of his hard work. Although online orders poured in, his lack of planting techniques resulted in watermelons only producing leaves and no fruit. Furthermore, swine fever claimed the lives of over 20 native pigs overnight, ending his first entrepreneurial venture in failure.
This experience didn't diminish Yang Shengchun's initial aspirations; instead, it made him realize that agriculture couldn't rely solely on passion. He needed to leverage his strengths and avoid weaknesses, using his market advantages to empower his hometown's agriculture. Having found his direction, he focused his attention on the high-altitude vegetables of Chengbu.
The area surrounding Nanshan Mountain has an average altitude of over 1600 meters. Its unique high-altitude climate and fertile black sandy soil nurture radishes with thin skin, thick flesh, and a sweet, crisp texture. Red mustard greens and cabbages also have excellent flavor, making them naturally high-quality ingredients. However, at that time, Chengbu's high-altitude vegetables suffered from limited sales channels, relying solely on the Guilin market. Their prices were driven down to "common goods," and during market downturns, they even rotted in the fields unsold.
Yang Shengchun secretly resolved to bring Chengbu's high-altitude vegetables to high-end dining tables and restore their value. Starting in 2018, he officially focused on the cultivation and sales of Chengbu's high-altitude vegetables, leasing over 300 mu of land in the Nanshan area to create a core planting base, specializing in Nanshan radishes, cabbages, and red mustard greens, among other specialty varieties.
Abandoning the traditional, fragmented planting model, Yang Shengchun insists on standardized variety selection and planting, adhering to green and ecological cultivation to ensure that every vegetable retains its original mountain flavor. Simultaneously, leveraging his sales expertise, he adopts a busy "three-point" work schedule: spending the first half of the year guiding planting at the base and traveling to various markets to negotiate partnerships; and the second half of the year overseeing and coordinating the distribution of goods nationwide, measuring the market with his own footsteps and winning over merchants with sincerity.
"Nanshan vegetables, sold in the city, good ingredients, good taste." This is a phrase Yang Shengchun often uses, reflecting his initial motivation for deeply cultivating the high-altitude vegetable industry. To make Chengbu's high-altitude vegetables more widely known, he has become a "spokesperson" for Chengbu's agricultural specialties, venturing deep into the fields of Nanshan to introduce the local ecological advantages, planting methods, and product characteristics to merchants and netizens. He has also invited culinary experts, including masters of Hunan cuisine and inheritors of Zu'an cuisine, to Nanshan to promote the high-altitude vegetables.
In the internet age, Yang Shengchun jumped on the e-commerce bandwagon, opening eight online store accounts to bring his mountain vegetables to the "cloud" sales channel. He has over 5,000 friends in the catering and supermarket industries on his phone. Leveraging his years of accumulated connections and superior product quality, he successfully connected with over 700 restaurant chains nationwide, bringing products like Chengbu winter bamboo shoots, Nanshan radishes, and red mustard greens to high-end restaurants and ordinary households in over 20 first-tier cities.
The opening of the Chenglong Expressway has further propelled Yang Shengchun's mountain vegetable industry. The logistics time has been reduced by two hours, enabling efficient "same-day shipping, next-day delivery" circulation. This allows fresh mountain vegetables to reach the tables of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area from the fields of the Miao region as quickly as possible, greatly enhancing the freshness and market competitiveness of the products.
Today, Yang Shengchun's cooperative ships an average of over 100 orders daily, reaching peak sales of over 2,000 jin of winter bamboo shoots, over 3,000 jin of radishes, and over 2,000 jin of red mustard greens and cabbage daily. The purchase price of Nanshan radishes has increased from 30 cents per jin to 0.8 to 1 yuan, with retail prices reaching 5 yuan per jin, achieving premium prices for high-quality produce.
As the head of the cooperative, Yang Shengchun has always adhered to the concept of leading his fellow villagers to prosperity. His core planting base directly supports the development of over 50 farming households, creating more than 40 local jobs, allowing villagers to increase their income right at their doorstep. He is always responsive to the village's agricultural product oversupply problems. The unsold corn from Datong Village and the golden pears and cured meat from Xuntou Village were successfully sold with his help, relieving the villagers' urgent needs.
In 2025, Yang Shengchun's cooperative achieved an output value of over 3.5 million yuan, becoming a benchmark for the development of the high-altitude vegetable industry in Chengbu County. To further enhance the brand of Chengbu's highland vegetables and ensure a stable supply throughout the year, he plans to invest 800,000 yuan this year to build a 50-mu (approximately 3.3 hectares) constant-temperature greenhouse in Hujiaping, Nanshan, to achieve off-season planting and standardized cultivation of highland vegetables, further improving the yield and quality of Chengbu's highland vegetables and laying a solid foundation for industrial development. (End)
