(Rural Travel·Looking at Revitalization) Yuan'an, Hubei: Small mountain goods "touch the Internet" to break into the big market

In the evening of early winter, in the e-commerce live broadcast room of Hekou Village, Hekou Township, Yuan'an County, Hubei Province, Xiao Qimei, secretary of the village party branch, was holding mountain goods and shouting skillfully into the mobile phone camera, and orders kept popping up.

During this year's "Double Eleven" period, Xiao Qimei, secretary of the Hekou Village Party branch, conducted a live broadcast to bring goods. Photo provided by Hekou Township Government

Yuan'an County is located in the mountainous area of western Hubei. Shiitake mushrooms and fungus are the main sources of income for many local villagers. Since 2018, Hekou Village has relied on a network cable to promote high-quality mountain goods from deep in the mountains to the national and even global markets, and has been selected as a "China Taobao Village" for five consecutive years.

On this year's Double Eleven, Xiao Qimei, as the "leading goose" in the village, was busy for several days in a row from selecting products, debugging equipment to writing live broadcast scripts. "This year's Double Eleven Hekou Village's e-commerce online sales reached 300,000 yuan," she said.

Major e-commerce players in the village are also operating at full capacity. In the e-commerce warehouse of villagers Chen Dayong, Song Guanrong, and Xiang Xingping, boxes of mushrooms and fungus are neatly stacked. In the past few years, these "leaders" who returned to their hometowns to start businesses have sold mountain goods to all parts of the country, as well as Malaysia, Cambodia and other countries through e-commerce, with cumulative sales of nearly 10 million yuan.

Chen Dayong, a large e-commerce business owner in Hekou Village, inspects dried mushrooms in the warehouse. Photo provided by Hekou Township Government

"We have prepared 20 tons of goods in the warehouse. We are confident to reach a new high this year." Chen Dayong said. The relevant person in charge of the Hekou Township government said that in order to ensure the efficient operation of sales and delivery during the "Double Eleven" period, the township has made full efforts in logistics support, employment security and other aspects through advance overall planning and dispatch.

In Chen Dayong's packing workshop, dozens of villagers are busy sorting, packing, and placing orders. Lu Xiaoling, a villager who packs mountain goods on the assembly line, is so busy that she is sweating. She said that in the past, she could only idle at home during the slack season. “Now I can earn an additional 2,000 yuan a month, and I can make money at home.”

The practice of Hekou Village is a microcosm of Yuan'an's efforts to activate rural industries through e-commerce. As a comprehensive demonstration county for e-commerce entering rural areas, by the end of 2025, Yuan'an County has 3,960 e-commerce entities, nearly 10,000 e-commerce employees, e-commerce transaction volume of 9.53 billion yuan, and has cultivated 28 "Internet celebrity village secretaries" and 122 wealth leaders; 102 administrative villages have achieved full express delivery coverage, with the average monthly express delivery to villages increasing from 8,000 to 100,000, and the delivery price of agricultural and sideline products has dropped by about 80%.

The "mountain goods" in Hekou Village continue to "go" out of the mountains through e-commerce. Photo provided by Hekou Township Government

In the next step, Yuanan will promote the "e-commerce +" action, promote the in-depth integration of e-commerce with agriculture, culture and tourism, and sports, strengthen the specialty industry of "rice fungus, tea and fruit", and turn "fingertip traffic" into the "source of living water" that drives rural revitalization. (over)