China Daily website Global Online News: There has been a well in Dong'e County, Shandong Province since ancient times. The water in it is clear and sweet, and the people call it "Ajing".
One day, Yu Chigong, who carried the imperial edict of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, broke the peace here. General Yuchi gave an order to seal the well and issued a royal order - only officials can "open the seal to draw water" and "boil glue to pay tribute". Local idlers are not allowed to seal the well privately and make donkey-hide gelatin, otherwise they will be killed without mercy. .
It turns out that the Ajing water in Dong'e County is very famous in the process of boiling donkey-hide gelatin. The "Compendium of Materia Medica" written by Li Shizhen records: "The donkey-hide gelatin is of the highest quality. Hong Jing said: 'Out of Dong'e , hence the name donkey-hide gelatin'". At first, donkey-hide gelatin was made by boiling cowhide and dong'a well water. Later, due to the hardness of cowhide, it became an important strategic material. Folks were not allowed to use cowhide to make glue without permission. After that, people began to use donkey skin and horse skin to replace cowhide. Over time, they discovered that donkey skin boiled into gelatin had better nourishing and wind-removing effects, and it became the authentic donkey-hide gelatin. The necessary conditions for brewing donkey-hide gelatin have become donkey skin and donkey-a-a well water.
In the blink of an eye, more than 1,000 years later, on the winter solstice in 2007, the ancient well was opened by the secretary of the Dong'a County Party Committee. At midnight, Qin Yufeng, general manager of Dong'e Ejiao Co., Ltd., wearing a Tang suit, announced the opening of the nine-day first China Dong'e Ejiao Cultural Festival. From that day on, the old rubber refiner personally led his disciples and followed the extremely strict and standardized ancient rubber-refining methods. He selected purebred aconite donkey skins, registered them with numbers, and used them with ancient well water. After 52 processes, the manual refining process was interrupted. Century-old Nine Dynasties donkey-hide gelatin.
At this time, Dong'e Ejiao's ancient donkey hide gelatin (imitation) recipe production line, which Dong'e Ejiao has invested heavily in, is being built non-stop. As the only representative inheritor of the Dong'e Ejiao intangible cultural heritage project, Qin Yufeng has repeatedly declared: "Our core competitiveness is culture!"
The local method of spelling out "China's No. 1"
Qin Yufeng was born in Dong'e County in 1958 and entered the Dong'e E-Jiao Factory when he was 17 years old. The Dong'e donkey-hide gelatin factory had been established for 6 years, but the conditions in the factory were very simple, that is, a row of bungalows, a few iron pots, and dozens of glue craftsmen recruited from nearby villages. The nature of the enterprise is state-owned.
Qin Yufeng first started as a glue dryer and gradually became a rubber refiner. Since impurities had to be filtered out during glue refining, Qin Yufeng's hands were often soaked in glue. As time passed, he found that his hands were not rough even in winter. He secretly wondered, could it be that donkey-hide gelatin has a protective effect on the skin? So he carefully observed the hands of several other rubber refiners. Sure enough, they were all white and tender, whiter than women's hands. At that time, Qin Yufeng had an idea in his mind. If he had the opportunity in the future, he must develop the beauty and beauty functions of donkey-hide gelatin.
Not long after, this young man who liked to think came into the sight of Liu Weizhi, the then technical director. Liu Weizhi found that although this young man was not very old, as long as he explained some knowledge to employees, he would always understand it the fastest and most accurately, and he would always do his best work and have an unassuming personality. Liu Weizhi felt that he was a talented person and began to cultivate Qin Yufeng intentionally.
Because the gelatin blocks cannot be dried in summer, gelatin can only be produced in winter. Qin Yufeng still remembers many details of the rubber mixing process: because there was no money to build a leather soaking pool, the workers transported donkey skins to a river four or five miles away from the factory for soaking; in order to prevent the donkey skins from being washed away by the river, Just try to tie it to rocks. After the donkey skin is soaked, the ice is broken to remove the skin, shaved, and then taken to the factory for cleaning. The worker stood at the edge of the pool, holding a large iron fork, thrusting it into the donkey's skin, and then turned it over. During the process of soaking and washing the skin, the workers were so cold that their hands were chapped and bloody. The glue was being mixed, and the workshop was filled with smoke and stench. A large pot with a diameter of two and a half meters was placed on a high stove. The workers, shirtless, climbed onto the stove, turning and stirring each time with a 7-pound copper shovel. It needs to be stirred more than 1,200 times an hour. It was refined and concentrated like this for six days and six nights, and then cut into large strips with a large guillotine used in rural areas. The large tape was cut, and the worker's jaw was also cracked.
Continuing like this is not the way to go. The technology is too backward and must be improved! But there was no theory to refer to, so Liu Weizhi had no choice but to take Qin Yufeng and a few workers with high savvy to try and work on it. They designed their own drawings and worked on their own to create the first steaming and pelletizing machine in the modern history of China's donkey-hide gelatin production. Unexpectedly, this local method has greatly improved labor efficiency and realized the automation of rubber mixing. Qin Yufeng was so excited at that time that he couldn't fall asleep until two o'clock in the evening.
After that, Qin Yufeng followed Liu Weizhi’s technical transformation team to continue research and development, and the production of donkey-hide gelatin finally achieved industrialization. Donkey-hide gelatin has also become a medicine for ordinary people.
Qin Yufeng gradually emerged and worked in production, supply, quality supervision, technology, and marketing. In May 2006, without any suspense, Qin Yufeng became the general manager of Dong'e Ejiao Co., Ltd.
“Reporters are no exception”
Qin Yufeng told reporters that he has been making donkey-hide gelatin for more than 30 years, and there are several things that make him heartbroken when he thinks about it. First, China’s understanding of the function of donkey-hide gelatin is still limited to “blood replenishing”; second, in recent years, there have been three consecutive disputes over the existence and elimination of traditional Chinese medicine. China has been agitated, but South Korea has proposed to change traditional Chinese medicine to Korean medicine to apply for world culture. heritage.
Qin Yufeng said that traditional Chinese medicine has been passed down by ancestors for thousands of years, and the efficacy of the medicine has been tested in practice and must not be discarded. Only by making traditional Chinese medicine bigger and stronger will others have no chance to gossip. As a traditional craft, donkey-hide gelatin, like rice paper and cloisonné, has a traditional craft that cannot be copied by other countries. What he is most worried about right now is that one day the craftsmanship of donkey-hide gelatin will be copied successfully abroad.
In this regard, traditional Chinese craftsmanship has lessons: Chinese rice paper is known as "thousand-year-old paper" and "king of paper", especially those produced in Jingxian County, Xuanzhou, Anhui. The Japanese have coveted the secret recipe for a long time. They once sent intelligence agents to Xuanzhou to pretend to visit, but they were rejected by the Jingxian factory. The next year, another group of Japanese arrived in a county in Zhejiang. A paper mill provided warm hospitality and answered all questions. They even explained details such as the concentration of alkaline water for cooking raw materials. They also gave sandalwood bark and long straw as parting gifts. pulp and carambola vine. After that, the Japanese proudly announced: In terms of rice paper in the world, Jingxian County of Anhui Province ranks first, Japan ranks second, Zhejiang ranks third, and Taiwan ranks fourth!
So how does Dong'e Ejiao prevent this kind of premeditated theft? Qin Yufeng said, "In fact, the main thing is to be mentally vigilant. In order to prevent this phenomenon from happening, our national formula product production area will never allow non-production personnel to enter; even if we cooperate with other companies, it will not involve formulas, etc. Core secrets."
As expected, when the reporter asked to visit the production workshop of compound donkey-hide gelatin, he declined politely and said with a smile, "Sorry, reporters are no exception!"
In Dong'e Company, which employs more than 2,000 people, some state-level confidential formulas, such as compound donkey-hide gelatin pulp and Fu-character donkey-hide gelatin, are strictly kept confidential. Except for Qin Yufeng, only the rubber refining workers know about them.
"The influence of cultural products is unlimited"
"Don'e donkey-hide gelatin has such a good cultural history. If it is not unearthed, we will be sorry for traditional Chinese medicine, let alone our ancestors! "This is a sentence Qin Yufeng mentioned repeatedly in interviews. In fact, the original idea of ??cultural marketing was formed over the wine table.
Chinese people pay attention to discussing business at the dinner table, and wine is a medium that brings them closer together. It's a pity that Qin Yufeng is too drunk. In order to be able to sell products without drinking, I thought about how to divert customers' attention from alcohol. He thought, what to talk about? Since we are selling donkey-hide gelatin, let’s start with the history of donkey-hide gelatin! Why Concubine Yang secretly took donkey-hide gelatin to keep her appearance, and how Empress Dowager Cixi took donkey-hide gelatin to save her son... Gradually, Qin Yufeng discovered that seven or eight of the ten people who listened to the story would buy donkey-hide gelatin products, and there was no need to call each other brothers, drink and fistfight. Qin Yufeng firmly believes that Dong'e donkey-hide gelatin marketing must rely on culture to win sooner or later.
But culture is a broad concept after all. How does cultural marketing work specifically? Qin Yufeng thought of holding the "Don'e Donkey-hide Jiao Cultural Festival".
The touching stories told at the wine table were compiled into a book under the planning of Qin Yufeng, titled "The Surprise of the First Carving of Dong'e Ejiao". At the same time, the description of donkey-hide gelatin formula in ancient classics has been turned into actual donkey-hide gelatin products, forming a series of new donkey-hide gelatin products targeting the high-end market. For example, according to Bai Pu's description of Yang Guifei's Yuan Dynasty song, "a bowl of donkey-hide gelatin, a cup of sesame seeds, white rice and red rice" Filled with candied fruit, pink cheeks look shameful, and the apricot blossoms bring a smile to the spring rain, which moistens youth, protects life, and has capital." The donkey-hide gelatin cake was developed.
"The market benefits of material commodities are limited, but the impact of cultural products is unlimited." Qin Yufeng said it was his personal experience. It is precisely relying on cultural marketing methods that the brand value of donkey-hide gelatin has increased from 2.675 billion yuan in 2006 to more than 3 billion yuan now. (Source: "Global People" magazine)