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Quan Meizhi, the legend of Chinese air-dried chicken production, adhering to the intangible cultural heritage skills. Since the age of 16, she has been associated with air-dried chicken, and has been persisting in her craftsmanship for forty years, developing the traditional family workshop into an air-dried food industry integrating modernisation and intelligence, and leading a team of more than a hundred people to inherit the skills, innovate and break through, becoming the industry benchmark. She is a model of the integration of traditional craftsmanship and modern business, but also an entrepreneurial story of perseverance, breakthrough and dedication.
In 1983, Quan Meizhi set up a small stall on the corner of Shilipu in Hubei province. She used the most simple techniques to make air-dried chicken, preparing the ingredients at three in the morning, marinating them by hand and drying them naturally. At that time, she may not have thought that this mouthful of salty and mellow hometown flavour, with the wave of reform and opening up, from the street stalls into tens of thousands of households, and ultimately become the output value of more than 100 million local characteristics of the pillar industries.
At the beginning of the business, she was both a researcher and a salesman. Cold winter months stationed in the air-drying shed temperature and humidity control, summer heat running around the townships to expand the market. Hands chapped and calloused from rubbing spices for years, but always hold two ‘keys’: one is the ancestral recipe for the secret marinade package, another is carved in the bones of the ‘integrity of the business’ credo. With this persistence, so that the ‘full of air-dried chicken’ gradually become the local festivals must be the tip of the tongue memory.
From 2021, the traditional food industry is facing the impact of industrialisation. With the strategic orientation of ‘Technology Enabling Tradition’, Quanmei Zhi led the team to build the first air-dried chicken intelligent production line in China:
1. developed constant temperature and humidity air-drying system to achieve standardised reproduction of natural air-drying environment. 2. established microbiological testing laboratory to promote the development of microbiological testing system;
2. establish a microbiological testing laboratory to promote the ancient craftsmanship and international food safety system;
3. applying blockchain traceability technology, which allows consumers to access the whole process data of each chicken's breeding and processing.
In the fusion of tradition and modernity, she accurately grasps the dialectical logic of ‘change and invariance’: ‘What changes is the production tools, what remains unchanged is the craftsmanship; what changes is the scale of the industry, what remains unchanged is the pursuit of quality’. She has always taken ‘guarding tradition and embracing change’ as the core concept. 2021, her team launched a cultural experience hall, integrating the history of air-dried chicken exhibition, DIY experience workshop and e-commerce live broadcasting, so as to make the non-heritage arts and crafts ‘visible, touchable, and purchasable’. She put forward the ‘three war paths’. 1:
1. deepening the craft: developing low-salt and healthy formulas to meet modern dietary needs. 2. internationalisation of the brand: relying on cross-border trade, the brand is now being developed;
2. brand internationalisation: expanding the global market through cross-border e-commerce;
3. integration of industries: linkage with culture and tourism to create the ‘air-dried chicken culture festival’ to empower the local economy.
Nowadays, Meizhi Food is not only a food processing base, but also an engine of rural revitalisation:
1. Establishing ‘Company + Farmers’ mode, driving more than 300 farmers in the neighbourhood to develop ecological aquaculture;
2. set up non-heritage workshops to train left-behind women, so that traditional skills can become rich;
3. donating materials during the epidemic, interpreting the entrepreneur's sense of social responsibility with practical actions.
Although Quan Meizhi has gained a lot of achievements, but in her heart, the most cherished is always the townspeople's sentence: ‘Eat your family's chicken, it is a reunion year.’
Nowadays, Meizhi Food is not only a food processing base, but also an engine of rural revitalisation:
1. Establishing ‘Company + Farmers’ mode, driving more than 300 farmers in the neighbourhood to develop ecological aquaculture;
2. set up non-heritage workshops to train left-behind women, so that traditional skills can become rich;
3. donating materials during the epidemic, interpreting the entrepreneur's sense of social responsibility with practical actions.
Although Quan Meizhi has gained a lot of achievements, but in her heart, the most cherished is always the townspeople's sentence: ‘Eat your family's chicken, it is a reunion year.’
The hard-working and conscientious Quan Meizhi still maintains the practice of touring the factory in the early hours of the morning. When she stood in front of the intelligent monitoring screen, through the data management screen to look back forty years, see is the rebirth of traditional craftsmanship in the digital age, is the team of 100 people on the quality of the collective adherence, but also the local flavour sublimation of cultural symbols of the road of metamorphosis. ‘Keep the old flavour, break into a new world’, the air-dried chicken inheritor is still in the wave of development in the new era to write a new chapter.
