Food tycoon goes back to his roots

By Xu Jingxi | China Daily USA | Updated: 2015-03-02 07:10

Businessman Chen Yu has never been one to go with the flow. When his alcohol retail business made him a centimillionaire (a millionaire 100 times over) in early 2002, instead of taking the usual path and investing in real estate - which could have made him a billionaire - Chen returned to Zurong, his home village in Leizhou, a city in Guangdong province, and set up Guangdong Modocom Food Group to produce and sell local culinary specialties.

Having achieved success with Modocom brand chili sauce, Chen slowed the development of other potentially profitable products, such as dried turnips, and invested tens of millions of yuan in the renovation of the Leizu Shrine in Leizhou and the construction of a five-star hotel and a scenic spot featuring ancient-style architecture to boost local tourism.

He explained his unusual approach with a simple sentence: "I'm from the countryside." Chilis and turnips are two of the main crops in Zurong, and every year Chen's chili sauce factory buys the year's last batch of chilies - which are usually unsaleable because chilis grown in the north are ripe by then - so they don't rot in the fields.

The Modocom factory in Zurong employs more than 200 full-time workers from local villages. "The closer a businessman is to his or her hometown, the better. If your business can be linked to your hometown, as Modocom is, it will greatly benefit local development, irrespective of whether the factory is big or small," he said.

"It may help the village build up a promising industry and find a way out of poverty."

As a graduate of Minzu University of China in Beijing, Chen is one of just a handful of Zurong residents to have attended college, and although he worked in a bank immediately after graduation, he quickly quit the "monotonous job" to start his own business.

He set up the food brand, which is named after his grandfather, as a tribute to his rural roots. "My friends say that I was 'gutsy' to use my grandpa's name for the brand, because if I screw up, it will be a black mark against his name, so I've been working really hard and cautiously to develop the brand. As such, I demand that my company doesn't just bring economic benefits, but is also a force for good in local society."

In accordance with that philosophy, Chen didn't hesitate when the Leizhou government asked for his help in boosting local tourism nine years ago, and started his project to renovate the Leizu Shrine, and build the Zhangshuwan Hotel and Modocom Ancient Town.

The luxurious hotel, which was built with local stone and offers authentic local cuisine and performances of Leizhou Opera, recently made its first profit. "I have come across many difficulties, but I have held on, even though I have often felt lonely in the past 10 years," Chen said.

At one stage, he was forced to abandon a project to transform an uninhabited island into a tourist spot because people from a nearby village began asking for money and slept on the island to disturb the construction work.

Despite that setback, Chen hasn't given up on his ambitions to develop local tourism. "Many people believe that Leizhou is unsafe and the local people are a little rough and ready, but everyone here is making an effort to improve the city's reputation," he said.

"I must continue my efforts to change the situation. I want to show people here that I'm not like those businesspeople that leave the city after making a fast buck. I'll try my best to build up people's confidence in their culture, even though I'm not as rich as Li Ka-shing," he said, referring to the property tycoon who is Asia's wealthiest individual.