Chongqing– The online promotional campaign "Pastoral Aspirations" aimed at highlighting the achievements of rural revitalization across Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Shaanxi featured a guided tour of cultivation bases for Chinese medicinal herbs deep in the countryside of Fuling District, as part of a four-day itinerary for media representatives across multiple districts and counties in Chongqing Municipality.

Cultivating herbs in "restored wildernesses"

The Tiantong Xiancaoyuan Cultivation Base in Dashun Township has gained renown for quality herbs, including sealwort and ganoderma, popularly referred to as magic fungus, which grows beneath the forest canopy as water pipes spray a cooling mist into the environment, protecting them from the harsh summer climate.

Advanced methods have given rise to the ecological practice of cultivating herbs in "restored wildernesses," which now cover almost 600 acres at Tiantong Xiancaoyuan, where a closed production loop has successfully provided the basis for health products derived from sealwort, ganoderma, and dendrobium, consumed either as beverages for processed food items.

In addition to promoting health through green and ecological produce, the cultivation system adopted drove the average expendable income of residents in the local village to 18,400 yuan in the year 2020, as overall turnover reached an impressive figure of 743,000 yuan. As a result, the formerly impoverished villages have become a national model for rural revitalization, while modern infrastructure and picturesque country surroundings have created a desirable living environment.

Town mayor Xin Peichang introduced the overall situation in Dashun Township, where a total of 10,000 cultivate exotic medicinal herbs, including rhizome, peucedanum, perilla, ginseng, and Zingiber strioatum.

"We have actively explored the development model incorporating government, state enterprise, social capital, village collectives, and rural households, which has attracted major investment from corporations such as Taiji Group and Tiantong Agricultural Ecology, who have built two factories able to process 10,000 tons of traditional herbs and 3000 tons of precious herbal medicines," Xin explained.

Villagers employed locally enjoy a higher income

Meanwhile, significant effort has been invested towards promoting agricultural skillsets, brand image, and packaging design for the village and exploring new sales channels integrating both on and offline platforms.

A representative of Tiantong Xiancaoyuan, Xia Yizhong, explained the motivation behind working at this thriving cultivation base. "It was mainly the natural environment of Dashun that attracted me. Sealwort grown on the mountainsides have great nutritional value, and the original ecology here is free of pollution. Also, the green economy here produces high-quality medicinal herbs, so there is no need to worry about finding customers."

Mid-summer is one of the critical periods for management in the cultivation of herbs. On any given day, roughly 50 villagers working here now enjoy the benefits of local employers, such as higher incomes, the ability to care in person for their families, and general satisfaction in their everyday lives.

The local villager Xia Xingfang commented. "I used to earn at most 1000 yuan working as a maid, so there was a lot of economic pressure. Now I work on the cultivation base as a cook, which brings a monthly income of around 3-4000 yuan with added social security benefits. I am very grateful for these good policies and to Tiantong for this opportunity."

In the next step, there are plans to increase the scope of cultivation so that more surrounding areas can benefit from this ecological agriculture model based on sealwort and ganoderma, raising income and quality of life for rural communities.