“One Belt, One Road” brings the century-old wig industry to life

Xinhua News Agency reporter Cao Kai, Wang Linyuan, Chen Shupin

In a private house in Xiaogong Village, Lingjing Town, Jian'an District, Xuchang, Henan, the 51-year-old Huang Fengrong pulled away the " hairs " and hair from the boss on the wooden puller bed and straightened it out. The yellow inch gauge is measured and divided into different lengths.

Huang Fengrong told reporters that when she was dyed by her grandmother and her mother, she would "do hair" when she was 15 years old. The weight of a 30-inch hair in her hand is more than 4,000 yuan, so it is also called "black gold."

This hand workshop preserved the craftsmanship of the wig industry when it was germinated more than 100 years ago. In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu Emperor Guangxu (1900), a businessman named Bai Xihe and a German businessman in Quandian Village of Lingjing Town made a deal: the German side funded, Baixi and mobilized local villagers to walk the streets. The acquisition of human hair, and the "Pega Horse" steel needles used by women and women for needlework to use the "sales bear". Since then, Lingjing Town has gradually developed into China's largest distribution center for wig raw materials.

The difference is that the wig materials of the year were mainly from the surrounding areas, and were simply processed and shipped to Qingdao for export to Europe. Today, most of the raw materials come from India, Myanmar, Bangladesh and other countries. After hundreds of wigs in Xuchang, they are processed into process hair, chemical fiber and other finished products and sold to the rest of the world.

The Xuchang wig industry with deep historical accumulation has ushered in a real "spring" after the reform and opening up. In 1980, the 26-year-old Xiao Gongcun youth Zheng Youquan became the "10,000 yuan household" envied by everyone, taking the lead in purchasing Japanese imported motorcycles and television sets.

Not willing to export low-level raw materials for others to "make a wedding dress", Zheng Youquan established Xuchang County Hair Products General Factory in 1990, high-paying talents to break through many barriers to equipment and technology set up by foreign companies, mastering the hair, color and craftsmanship The whole set of technology, "achieved the centuries-old dream of Chinese people doing real wigs."

In 1993, Sino-US joint venture Henan Rebecca Hair Products Co., Ltd. was listed. The company “borrowed the ship to the sea”, the products were sold directly to the United States, and at the same time, the import and export rights were obtained, and the leap to the international company was realized. In 2003, Rebecca was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and became the first stock of Chinese hair products. The market has also expanded to Africa and Europe. The products are sold in more than 40 countries and more than 100 large and medium-sized cities in China.

At present, there are more than 50 hair products enterprises with a export scale of more than 5 million US dollars. In 2016, Xuchang's hair products export revenue exceeded 1 billion US dollars, accounting for more than half of the country's hair products exports.

Zheng Wenqing, who was born in Xiaogongcun in 1981 and majored in economics in the UK, is now the father of the company and serves as the general manager of Henan Rebecca Hair Products Co., Ltd.

Zheng Wenqing said that with the proposal of China's “One Belt, One Road” initiative, Rebecca has set up factories in Nigeria, Ghana and Cambodia to achieve global production. More than 60% of human hair raw materials come from India and have become the wig market in Europe and Africa. One of the mainstream brands.

Wig products produced at the Cambodian factory have been exported to Africa. The near-production of the Nigerian and Ghana factories has solved the employment of thousands of local residents and has created enormous economic benefits for the company. In 2016, the company achieved operating income of 1.81 billion yuan and earned 179 million US dollars in exports.

Emeek Zenek, a businessman who has been in the Nigerian capital of Abuja for more than 20 years, said that there are several Chinese wig brands in the Nigerian market targeting different customer groups. The overall quality of Chinese wig products is good and the service life is long. The current economic downturn is more popular with consumers.

For Huang Fengrong, she did not know where the wig was finally sold. She is grateful for the craftsmanship passed down by her ancestors to make her life worry-free.

“When you are doing farm hair, you can earn 20,000 or 30,000 yuan a year,” Huang Fengrong said.