It’s the best season to eat mushrooms again.
text/Jiang Xuefen
editor/Fan Tingting
"Pay with one hand, deliver the goods with the other hand, can you just sell it quickly?" The buyer urged to place an order for a mushroom called shallot , Yunnan boss Hu Ergou Start creating "transaction obstacles" and slowly type the next line on the screen: "1. You must first prove that you are from Yunnan; 2. Provide transaction screenshots of purchasing shallots more than 3 times. If you do not meet one of the requirements, add No matter how much money you have, you won’t be able to sell it!”
has been in business for more than ten years, and this scene has often happened. This is not surprising, after all, the delicacies he sells are wild mushrooms from Yunnan. "It must be absolutely safe, otherwise 'red umbrella, white pole, let's lie down together after eating', this song is not sung blindly, because I have been exposed to it since I was a child and have seen its power."
Don't worry about selling Yunnan bacteria Hu Ergou, born in 1982, is from Chuxiong, Yunnan. The elders in his family have been in the mushroom business for 31 years. Ever since his grandparents, the family has been collecting and selling mushrooms. In his memory, wild mushrooms in the past were not as popular as they are now. Tricholoma matsutake only cost more than 10 yuan per kilogram, and chicken fir was 41.5 yuan per kilogram. In the past, locals only dared to eat green-headed mushrooms and porcini mushrooms. Mushrooms, the current white onion mushrooms, red onion mushrooms and even red mushrooms , the locals still dare not eat them.
He remembered that around 2012, local mushrooms suddenly became valuable. Matsutake has always been very popular in Japan. After learning about the high yield of matsutake in Shangri-La, Yunnan, Japanese businessmen came to buy large quantities of matsutake there. When the market is good, the price can rise to 820 yuan per kilogram; with the participation of some wealthy businessmen in Fujian , the price of wild mushrooms has been rising all the time, and even chicken fir has risen more than 100 times, becoming about 150 yuan per kilogram.
"In the past, the mountains were full of mushrooms, waiting for people to pick them up. Later, there were more people picking mushrooms than mushrooms on the mountains." He said that every year from June to October, it is the season when most wild mushrooms in Yunnan are on the market. , tens of thousands of local villagers go to the mountains to pick mushrooms. From 4 a.m. to 2 p.m., a person can pick one or two kilograms a day on average, and a village can pick two to three hundred kilograms.
When the price of mushrooms in his hometown was soaring, Hu Ergou was working in Guangzhou, selling clothes and cosmetics, with a monthly income of over 10,000 yuan, but his food was mediocre, and he was reluctant to spend money while living outside. He continued to eat even if the food was bad, and finally suffered. All sick. He worked hard to save money, and after five years of "floating", he returned to Yunnan with more than 700,000 yuan in savings, planning to start a mushroom business with his relatives.
He has rich experience in making money since he was a child. When he was studying, he fried potatoes and rented books near the school, sold pickles and marshmallows, and even led his union brothers to collect materials and sell equipment in the game. His father was so angry that he severed the father-son relationship, but he felt full of accomplishment: "At that time, office workers in my hometown only earned a few hundred yuan a month, and teachers' salaries were only more than 1,000 yuan. When I was at my peak, I earned over 10,000 yuan a month."
replies After arriving in his hometown, he found it difficult to sell mushrooms that he grew up growing up as a snack. You don’t have to worry about the supply of goods, but you can also sell them at a high price. The more people buy, the more you earn.
But he soon discovered that he was too optimistic, because how to keep it fresh was a headache. "The growth cycle of wild mushrooms in the soil is up to five days, and they are valuable in their freshness." He found that if the wild mushrooms collected that day were not baked or frozen, many insect eggs would hatch after 12 p.m. Come out and start eating mushrooms like crazy, losing at least 30% the next day. The more
receives, the greater the loss will be if it cannot be processed on the same day. He remembers that in one day at most, the two counties collected more than 20 tons of wild mushrooms and hired hundreds of workers to wash and scrape the mushrooms. The houses and warehouses were full of people. Unfortunately, they failed to beat the time and lost a lot. Mushrooms.
Hu Ergou was picking mushrooms, and his mood became more and more depressed: In this season, he can't sleep, he competes with wear and tear every day, staying up late and all night long, even sleeping for one or two hours a day has become a luxury. There are so many obstacles in doing business. !
At the end of the year, he calculated that he had made almost no money.
Complaints are complaints, but he is still optimistic about the mushroom market. He found that high-end wild mushrooms are mostly exported abroad; in the domestic market, Sichuan Province consumes a lot of "sweeping gray mushrooms (the dried residue of wild mushrooms)". Some people also buy them as seasonings, and some local hot pot restaurants with unique flavors like them. Use it as the bottom of a pot, and you can't get this natural and rich fragrance anywhere else; even poisonous mushrooms can be sold to some medicinal materials factories as long as they are picked and processed.
In short, there is no need to worry about selling wild mushrooms, as long as the problem of preservation is solved.
Safety is the bottom line
In the next five or six years, Hu Ergou raced against time and finally figured out how to reduce the loss of mushrooms and how to keep them fresh. For example, after roasting, red mushrooms must be placed in the cold storage immediately. They should be sealed in a sealed bag instead of a large square bag, so that the probability of mold and worms growing when taken out next time can be reduced.
During this period, the price of wild mushrooms has been rising, and many people are eager to try varieties that they did not often eat before. He heard that there are people who specialize in high-end mushrooms with high profits. Foreign purchasers purchase matsutake mushrooms from Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and other places and ship them to Yunnan, where they are mixed with local wild matsutake and sold. When the market is good, they can earn several million yuan a day. .
Under the temptation of high profits, some people use artificial matsutake to pass off as wild matsutake. When selling products, the top layer is paved with the best, the middle ones are lower grade, and the bottom layer is sometimes rotten. They also require "once sold" No returns."
Some of his colleagues are envious and think that only by doing business can he make big money, but he is not envious. The price of high-end mushrooms fluctuates greatly. If matsutake is out of stock, the price can rise to two to three thousand yuan; if the supply exceeds demand, the price may suddenly drop to two to three hundred yuan, and you will lose a lot of money if you are not careful. He didn't want to ruin the brand name of his fathers, so he took the common delicious porcini as his main product and started a mushroom business in a down-to-earth manner.
The older generation often told him that you can’t just sell whatever the price is, and you have to keep safety in mind when doing mushroom business. There are about 90 kinds of common edible mushrooms, but we only sell 17 kinds that are "absolutely safe". This is the rule.
Over the years, Hu Ergou’s mushroom business has been cautious, because even if there are 17 kinds of “absolutely safe” mushrooms, he cannot refuse all comers. For example, fellow villagers often collect Fiber fungus , which is "fresh." But Hu Ergou will ask where it was picked from. Because the soil composition is different, even edible mushrooms may be poisonous when grown in some places, so they refuse to purchase them.
But the fellow couldn’t bear to throw it away, and he didn’t believe there was anything wrong with the mushrooms, so he muttered, “I’ll eat it when I get home and show it to you.” As a result, I was taken to the hospital after going home and eating.
Hu Ergou, who sticks to safety and runs a solid business, can earn hundreds of thousands of yuan in a year from mushrooms.
But three years ago, the mushroom market changed. Affected by the epidemic, overseas orders fell sharply. Hu Ergou and his colleagues focused their attention on the domestic market.
"Empty nesters born in the 1980s"
In the early days, most people in China did not dare to eat wild mushrooms and it was difficult to sell them. He opened an online store in 2005, but 15 years later, his sales have only reached diamond level. But starting in 2019, the domestic mushroom market suddenly took off, and more people discussed mushrooms online.
How to find people who like to eat wild mushrooms? Seeing that live broadcasts are booming, many big anchors’ live broadcast rooms have been decorated with splendor and sparkle. He also bought a high-end-looking background board to hang on the earthen wall of his home, and also equipped it with several fill lights. During that time, he broadcast for 12 hours, but only 15 people watched it a day.
Later, he dismantled the splendid scenery and began to "play freely" in the live broadcast room, live broadcasting the scenes of purchasing mushrooms and eating mushrooms himself. As a result, this wild and original picture attracted many new fans. As soon as the broadcast started, more than 70 people watched it, and there was also interaction in the live broadcast room. As long as someone asked about mushrooms, he would tell them all about the growth environment, how to eat them, whether they are poisonous, and their history. He also said that if the goods were damaged, they would be compensated. After more than a year of sowing, he harvested hundreds of A die-hard fan.
In order to retain this group of fans, he responded to every request and made many mistakes in delivery. For example, if you send an ordinary express delivery at the beginning, but it breaks down on the road when the temperature rises, you will be compensated; if the express delivery wanders through the epidemic area for eight or nine days and is destroyed on the spot, you will be compensated.
At the worst time, he lost 8,000 yuan a day, which was heartbreaking. Die-hard fans never give up, giving him advice on how to reduce losses, and some even said they would send him a refrigerator to encourage him to persevere.
In order to facilitate delivery, he moved to the city and negotiated a special fruit truck and cold chain express delivery. As a result, the loss is lower, but urban acquisition is inconvenient and the price has no advantage. He felt that he had to be a first-hand source of goods and go to the foot of the mountain to buy mushrooms. Live broadcasting in the village would be more in line with his taste, so he moved back to the village.
However, the signal in the village was poor and water and electricity were inconvenient, so he moved to the loudspeaker of the village committee to conduct live broadcasts. As a result, news about the anti-epidemic was mixed into the live broadcast room through the loudspeakers, and he was pinched for violating the rules. The live broadcast showed an old man smoking, and he was pinched; A young man in rural areas was photographed taking off his clothes when it was too hot to work and was pinched. From near the loudspeaker to the foot of the mountain to the earthen house, his live broadcast room changed to 6 places in half a year.
However, there are many fans in the live broadcast room, and sometimes tens of thousands of people watch a live broadcast, which gives him the motivation to persevere. A wealthy boss from other places likes wild mushrooms and even says, "Brother, if you need it, call me and I will invest in a villa for you, with complete water and power grids." Seeing the fans' support, Hu Ergou felt that he had to stand up even more this year.
In addition to being a business, mushrooms are also the driving force for his survival.
10 years ago when he returned to his hometown, he had just been diagnosed with cancer by the hospital. I originally thought that I would be alone for the rest of my life, selling mushrooms to make money and treating illnesses was my whole life. In the live broadcast room, I called myself an "empty nester born in the 1980s".
But now, it’s the season for eating mushrooms, and his wife and workers are busy washing and shipping mushrooms. He can chat about food and life online with fans from all over the world. Such a day is something he never imagined ten years ago. of.
