Butterfly wedding dream takes off for former miner

There is a farm named Hualu (flower dews) next to the Yongding River in Longquan town in Mentougou district.

If you happened to drop by, you'll be amazed by what you see.

Within the netted shelter, streams murmur and red carp joyfully play with their own bubbles and, up in the air over the stream, hundreds of butterflies that have just emerged from their cocoons, dance among the flowers and trees.

Nearby is an exhibition hall dedicated to butterfly specimens and, in a gallery workshop, a woman is busy pasting butterfly wings.

Zhao Qinglin, 61, is the owner of the beautiful butterfly farm and the woman pasting the wings in the gallery is his wife, Deng Xiumei.

Their life has been flourishing along with the butterflies but it has not always been like this.

Zhao was born into a poor family in Yantai village, Mengtougou district. His mother died early, leaving his father with a struggle to look after the three children.

There is saying in the village "no one would mine for coal unless he has an empty bowl", which indicates how laborious and dangerous the job is.

However, despite his father's strong protests, Zhao decided to work as a coal miner, where he earned 0.12 yuan for each kilometer he carried a load of coal.

Backed up by the policy in 1987 that encouraged the proliferation of coal mines, Zhao soon discovered the quickest way to make money was to set up his own coal mine.

With 500,000 yuan he had accumulated from coal carrying, Zhao rented a piece of land and employed six workers. By studying maps and consulting experts, he finally settled on a place to start looking.

How well he did would depend on both hard work and good luck.

Work went slowly at first, with the advance of one meter each day and, when there were still no trace of coal after almost half a year of digging, all of Zhao's friends strongly advised him to give up, or at least choose another location.

But Zhao kept on working without doubt or complaint, even though he had to borrow money to carry on with the work.

His perseverance eventually paid off and he found coal.

While coal today sells for 400 to 500 yuan a ton, back then, and for a long time to follow, it sold for 17 yuan a ton.

But his wealth steadily grew and Zhao's family ended up becoming the first in the village to buy a car - a Santana.

Neighbors often borrowed that car from the generous Zhao for their weddings.

In 1994, Zhao had two properties valued at 300,000 yuan in the town of Mengtougou.

However, Zhao's business hit rocky terrain in 2000 when the government began to close private coal mines such as his because of safety concerns.

Zhao was paid 100,000 yuan in compensation and told to close his mine.

Unlike some mine owners who secretly carried on digging, Zhao shut down his mine and did not look back.

"Since the government asked us to close the mines, it was not worth it to break the law. All I thought about was how I could make money by other means from then on," he said.

But due to his lack of knowledge about other businesses, Zhao failed at the very beginning.

But it was the couple's love for butterflies that ended up being the answer they were looking for.

Zhao knew where to catch butterflies and his wife was good at making butterfly specimens, which could sell for 2 to 3 yuan each.

For Zhao, it was not difficult to make more than a hundred of the specimens a day, but to promote them to cultured men in the city was more of a challenge. Zhao says he found them to be more complicated than people he was used to dealing with.

And, long accustomed to wearing casual clothes, he was not too keen on wearing a suit and hawking the couple's wares.

"Cultured men never talk straightforward. They like to beat around the bush," Zhao said.

Therefore, it was up to his wife to do the promoting and bargaining.

Although the couple made good money by selling butterfly specimens, it was still not the kind of life they wanted.

Then, one day, a piece of news in a local magazine inspired him - we must hold "butterfly weddings" he said.

"I thought it would be very romantic and interesting to have butterflies dancing around at a wedding ceremony. If I raised butterflies myself and offered to let them go free at a wedding, it might bring in a lot of money," Zhao said.

His idea met with strong opposition among friends who could not understand why anyone would raise anything they could not eat.

But Zhao again ignored what others said and devoted himself to raising butterflies at home.

In order to make their business known, the couple drove around town and visited restaurants that held wedding ceremonies where they advertised their services.

However, since the idea of a "butterfly wedding" had rarely been heard before and because insects might scare some brides, their offer was always rejected, even when they offered the service free of charge.

The turning point came when one of Zhao's friends held a wedding ceremony for his son and asked Zhao if he would like to release some of his butterflies. He took the opportunity to take a series of pictures of the butterfly wedding and used them in advertisements aimed at wedding planners.

Slowly at first, the orders came in and the business finally took off.

Today the business has wings and each butterfly sells for 10 yuan. The family now earns hundreds of thousands of yuan each year.

But Zhao says he is still living on the money he earned from coal mining because he is reinvesting most of his new income in expanding his butterfly business.

And today the couple has new plans to help the business really take flight, with the idea of opening a butterfly village to attract tourists.

METRO

(China Daily 05/26/2010)