Nicaraguan couple's planting career takes root in China's Hainan

HAIKOU, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- When Marcos Rodriguez arrives in the city of Dongfang, south China's Hainan Province, he holds up a handful of earth and takes a deep sniff at it.

"It smells just like home," he said.

Rodriguez, 50, is a tobacco planting expert from Nicaragua. Born and raised in a family that runs cigar businesses, he became an expert at a young age. By age 14, he started making a living from growing tobacco.

In 2018, Rodriguez heard from a friend that the environment in Dongfang is conducive to growing high-quality black tobacco plants. After consideration, he took his wife Laura along and went to the city at the invitation of Yonder Oriental, a local tobacco material provider, in late 2018.

Rodriguez became a field manager for the company, and the couple's planting career began taking roots in China.

Though far away from Nicaragua, the couple found a sense of home when they arrived in Tian'an Village under Dongfang.

"The climate, plants and even the air here are so similar to Nicaragua," said Rodriguez. "When we arrived, I just hopped out of the car and smelled the earth."

In the beginning, local villagers knew little about cigars or tobacco, as they were used to planting local vegetables. Rodriguez began teaching the locals hired by the company how to grow black tobacco leaves.

They could not understand each other at first, but Rodriguez, with the help of the company's translator and more of the translation application on his mobile phone, taught them disinsection, picking, fertilizing and weeding the fields.

The couple get along quite well with the locals. They often sit together after work while Rodriguez enjoys a drink of fresh coconut water his Chinese friends send him.

"We had a good harvest in the first season. Now, after more than two years of fermentation, the cigar leaves have very good quality," said Rodriguez. "We plan to expand about 133 hectares of tobacco plant fields next year."

On weekends, Rodriguez and Laura would take high-speed trains to a church in Haikou, the provincial capital. They often travel around Hainan when they are off work to shop or watch surfing competitions.

"It has been three years since we came to Hainan, and we want to stay here and grow the best cigar leaves," Rodriguez said.