Chongqing " Tianyou " Dairy
Five cows started
Chen Lisheng was an early national industrialist in Chongqing. In the 1920s, he was ranked among the four major salt merchants in the port and served as director or manager of many companies. In 1928, he sent his son Chen Shujing to Beijing and studied in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture of Yenching University. Influenced by family, Chen Shujing is very business-oriented. He found that there was a milk farm near the university. Every morning, servants from nearby mansions, wives of professors, employees of the company, and wealthy students went to the milk farm store to buy milk. 365 days a year, every day, business is prosperous.
Chen Shujing had a sudden inspiration and felt that the prospect of starting a milk farm was unlimited: First, most investors are keen on business and finance, and have few competitors. Second, the threshold is low, the investment is not large, and the risk is small; Third, the reproduction of cows can be multiples from one birth to two, two birth to four, four birth to eight... in just a few years.
Therefore, he resolutely dispelled the plan to join the literary world after graduation and began to plan and start a milk farm. He heard that the first batch of cows in China were brought to Shanghai by foreign missionaries and businessmen, so he used the winter and summer vacations to go to Shanghai to inspect and collect information in detail.
In early 1930, Chen Shujing dropped out of school and returned to Chongqing. He raised 20,000 silver dollars with his brother Chen Dunchuan to officially establish a Chongqing dairy farm. On the one hand, they sent people to Shanghai to learn the techniques of raising dairy cattle, and on the other hand, they chose Tuwan on the Jialing River as the cattle farm, and set up a store in Duyou Street in the city.
Imported dairy cows are expensive, with a price of over a thousand yuan per head, and you can’t afford it if you have too many. The Chen brothers ordered one Dutch purebred bull and four purebred cows from Shanghai Animal Company. They temporarily borrowed a milking worker and transported the cows to Chongqing together.
Milk farm is named after Chongqing, with Chen Shujing as the general manager and Chen Dunchuan as the manager. They opened up the old houses they purchased and connected them into a piece, making them spacious, ventilated and non-humid, which was conducive to the living of dairy cows. I also went to Geleshan , Xiyong and other places to contact farmers, and asked the other party to provide feed on time to sign the contract.
In April 1931, dairy cows began to produce milk one after another, with a daily yield of about 100 pounds, and milk began to be sold in early May. Chen Shujing will make May 1 the opening day of Chongqing Dairy Farm. At that time, there were only five or six staff members in the venue. These people were not only responsible for raising and milking cows, but also transporting the entire bucket of milk from Tuwan to the city, disassembly into bottles, and then sending people to the subscribers.
Follow the subscriber for the door
The old citizens of Chongqing have never drunk milk and are used to drinking soy milk in the morning. They even think that drinking milk will cause heat and cause constipation. Therefore, Chen Shujing had to run around at first and go to the homes of relatives and friends to promote it in person. Fortunately, the Chen family has a wide connection and has met many rich people, but they are just in love and become the first subscribers. His foundation in the Chinese Department of Yenching University came in handy. He quoted a sentence from "Book of Wei: Biography of Wang Ju": "Drinking milk often is like a virgin." Then he introduced the proportion of fat, protein, lactose, minerals and vitamins contained in milk, indicating that milk is rich in nutrition and easy to absorb by the human body. It is a good tonic for middle-aged and elderly people, infants and patients.
After publicity and sales, Chongqing dairy farm finally gained a foothold in 1933. In 1936, the Chen brothers once again introduced five foreign dairy cows and nearly a hundred yellow cattle to breed a large number of hybrid dairy cows, and contacted farmers to feed them, which was purchased by the dairy farm. In just a few years, the annual output exceeded 90,000 pounds. The rare milk once came into the homes of ordinary people.
In 1938, Chen Shujing installed neon lights in the second store of Minsheng Road, and the three red words "fresh milk" are bright and dazzling. That was one of the earliest neon sign advertisements in Chongqing, attracting widespread attention from passers-by and housewives.
According to old citizens' recollections, after the milk in Chongqing milk farm is disinfected, it is bottled in half a pound of glass jars, sealed with wax paper and hot paint , which is hygienic and beautiful, far exceeding the bulk milk sold by ordinary retail investors. Chongqing milk farm also delivers goods to your home. No matter where the subscriber lives, they will send milk to their homes and come with a carnation, which was a relatively novel marketing method at that time.
Everything is as Chen Shujing expected. Chongqing dairy farm has no competitors in the local port. Most retail investors can only fight back and have no power to fight back.
moves towards serialization
full-scale war of resistance broke out, and millions of people flocked to Chongqing, bringing greater development opportunities to the milk farm. Subscribers are endless, and even top food factories like Guanshengyuan have come to place large orders, and a branch can be opened for a profit per year. Chen Shujing seized the opportunity and added five new branches in Shimahe, Shankong, Gaotanyan, Panxi and Qingshuixi, with more than 300 cows of all sizes and sizes. It produced 230,000 pounds of milk in 1939, and doubled again in 1942.
The most urgent task is to develop a series of products. Chen Shujing hired more than 20 outstanding students from colleges and universities with a high salary, and the monthly salary for animal husbandry experts was more than 200 yuan. The "Lotus Brand" milk powder, "Dali Brand" paper-packed butter, paper-packed ice cream, butter pastries, as well as casein needed by industry and medicine, are well-selled in the rear.
Chongqing milk farms have successively purchased various equipment from the United States. In addition to the necessary cream separators and butter stirrers for production, even glass bottles, scraping combs, scrubbing brushes, milk buckets, and bottle brushes of different specifications are all imported. After foreign experts and other visitors came to visit, they all believed that the Chongqing milk farm's equipment was advanced and the products fully met the hygiene requirements.
Chongqing milk farm also uses void sites to use cow dung as fertilizer to plant good varieties of tangerines, and package them into boxes for shipping and sale in other places using the trademark name of "Chongqing Plantation". The processed and packaged Fuling pickles were also sold in Thailand and Hong Kong under the trademark name of "China Food Processing Company". This kind of business variety is diverse. Although the brand names are different, it is allocated to one production method, which is quite similar to today's agricultural, industrial and commercial joint enterprises. Chongqing dairy farms have such production and sales scale, and are one of the few large dairy farms in old China.
Creatively released a new product
In 1951, Chongqing Milk Farm signed a contract with a Chinese department store to hand over its "Lotus Brand" milk powder pricing and quota to the other party's general distribution in Southwest. In 1954, it owned more than 400 cows and produced more than 1.5 million pounds of milk per year. In July 1955, the venue participated in a public-private joint venture and embarked on the path of socialism.
At the invitation of Deputy Mayor Hu Zi'ang, Chen Shujing joined the Chongqing Federation of Industry and Commerce and served as the deputy director of the Federation of Industry and Commerce. Later, he served as the vice chairman of the 6th to 8th Chongqing CPPCC.
Relying on Chongqing Milk Supply and Marketing Office and Chongqing Dairy Company, which were formed successively, are constantly innovating. In 1963, the first batch of "Shancheng Brand" milk powder was produced using a centrifugal separator, ending the old process of drum production. In 1964, the horizontal milk powder drying tower drawing was purchased and renovated according to the drawings, and the equipment for processing 20 tons of fresh milk per day was built. Since the 1970s, 12 series of products such as infant nutrition milk replacement powder, yogurt, and hyaluronic acid have been developed.
enterprise was reorganized, and the old factory was reorganized into Chongqing "Tianyou" Dairy Co., Ltd., continuing to serve economic and social development and the general public.
