Young man in SW China’s Yunnan leverages e-commerce to sell quality orah mandarins

A young man in southwest China’s Yunnan Province has leveraged e-commerce to sell high-quality orah mandarins, a thick-skinned citrus fruit, to more consumers across the country.

Workers clean orah mandarins at a processing plant in Xinping county, Yuxi city, southwest China’s Yunnan Province. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Born in the 1990s, Rao Yuanheng, who worked as the chief technology officer of an e-commerce grocery platform after he graduated from college in 2014, became the head of an orah mandarin processing plant in Xinping county, Yuxi city, Yunnan at the end of 2017. Since then, he has been engaged in the commercial development of local seasonal fruits, including orah mandarins, oranges, and avocados.

As orah mandarins have entered the harvest season in Xinping lately, Rao has been busy checking the operation of the processing plant’s production line, which sorts out the fruits according to their size, sugar content, shape, and appearance. After these orah mandarins are packaged, they will be sold through Rao’s cooperative partner Yu Xianwei, also born in the 1990s, who runs a store on Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.

Orah mandarins in Yunnan have a longer growth cycle and taste juicy thanks to the province’s unique climate conditions. Xinping county is particularly known for the fruits in the province.

However, it was not easy to sell the fruits to the rest of China. Rao said that Yunnan’s orah mandarins are not at an advantage because of relatively high labor costs as local farmers have to depend on manual labor to harvest the fruits on steep slopes. It’s difficult to apply pesticides to fruit trees planted on steeper slopes, which leads to some flaws in the fruits’ physical appearance due to plant diseases and insect pests.

Rao Yuanheng works at a processing plant in Xinping county, Yuxi city, southwest China’s Yunnan Province. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Rao began cooperating with Yu in 2020. Rao is reliable, which does him credit. He has won the trust of Yu and orah mandarin planting bases in Xinping county.

Rao revealed that the e-commerce platform has helped the processing plant bring orah mandarins from Yunnan to more consumers.

Yu said Rao’s orah mandarins sell well and have a good reputation on the e-commerce platform.

Consumers’ recognition and reputation of the fruit come from the two men’s great importance attached to the quality of the fruits. Yu only sells high-quality orah mandarins on the e-commerce platform and never lowers quality-control standards. Yu’s views are echoed by Rao. “Consumers’ recognition of Yu’s online store means that our orah mandarins are well received. This way, Yunnan’s orah mandarins can be increasingly recognized by customers,” Rao said.

The processing plant also supplies quality orah mandarins to some other leading e-commerce grocery platforms.

In the long run, Rao aims to establish standards for the orah mandarin industry and make Yunnan’s orah mandarins a household name in China.

Photo shows Yu Xianwei (left) and Rao Yuanheng (right). (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Fresh progress has been made in industry standardization and brand building in this regard. Rao said a cold chain logistics park initiated by the government of Xinping county will be put into use this year. The logistics park, about 5 to 6 kilometers away from the processing plant, will set an example for enhancing industrial standards and the industrial supporting system and promoting the county’s orah mandarin industry.

“We hope to work together with the government and industry associations for the standardization of the orah mandarin industry and brand building,” Rao said.

He acknowledged that engaging in agriculture is hard work. During the busiest period, Rao received over 10,000 orders from Yu’s online store in a day. But he has never regretted his decision, as he has brought fruits from his hometown to more customers across the country. The processing plant has also offered jobs to residents from nearby villages.

“I will continue to strive to promote the high-quality development of agriculture,” said Rao.