Charting new waters

As a child, Yu Qiaoxian spent her days helping her mother to sell preserved eggs at a humble market stall in Jiangmutang Village, Chengxi Town of Yiwu. At the time, she would never have imagined that the modest stall where she learned the basics of trade would mark the beginning of an extraordinary entrepreneurial journey, one that would eventually lead her to the forefront of China's health industry. 

Yu belongs to the first generation of Yiwu traders who transformed modest market businesses into thriving enterprises. Like many of Zhejiang Province's pioneering entrepreneurs, she started with almost nothing, relying on determination, business acumen and an instinct for spotting new opportunities. 

Growing with the market 

By 1987, Yiwu's wholesale market had entered a new phase of expansion. A newly built market complex with more than 5,000 stalls had opened, giving thousands of small traders a permanent place to do business. That same year, Yu rented a booth in the agricultural and sideline products section, where she began specialising in preserved eggs. 

"Before renting the stall, I had already started experimenting at home," she recalled. She collected duck eggs from local households, processed them overnight and gradually increased production from just one or two jars a day to more than 20. 

Once she secured a permanent stall, demand for her century eggs quickly outstripped supply. 

"Back then, I slept only a few hours a day, but I was full of energy. I felt like a captain sailing across the ocean. I could choose my own direction and steer my own course. Yiwu's small commodity market was my ocean." 

Yiwu was not just Yu's ocean. The same was true for countless others. As the market expanded, farmers became vendors, small traders became entrepreneurs and local merchants built businesses that reached customers around the world. Yiwu's rise from a county market to the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities was powered by thousands of people like Yu. 

As living standards improved, consumer demand for health and wellness products grew. Sensing the opportunity, Yu moved into health products. Drawing on the reputation and business network she had built in the preserved egg trade, she quickly became one of Yiwu's largest health product distributors, representing more than 800 brands at the height of her business. 

"In the very first year, annual sales of the products I represented exceeded 100 million yuan ($14.76 million)," she said. 

For Yu, Yiwu's market was more than the foundation of her success. It was where she learned to seize opportunities, adapt to change and keep expanding her horizons. 

The city was also entering a new stage of development. It was evolving beyond a simple wholesale marketplace into a centre for brand representation, trade services and business innovation. At every stage of that transformation were merchants making their own decisions, testing new ideas and pursuing new opportunities, reflecting Yiwu's long-held belief in respecting and encouraging the pioneering spirit of its people. 

Moving into manufacturing 

Although Yu's distribution business was flourishing, she knew there were limits to selling other people's products. If she wanted to build something lasting, she needed a brand of her own. 

In 1997, she made a bold decision, investing heavily in the artificial cultivation of Dendrobium officinale, a rare medicinal orchid prized in traditional Chinese medicine. 

She converted an abandoned brick factory in Yiwu into a research institute and brought in scientists to help to develop cultivation techniques. After investing nearly 5 million yuan ($738,000), however, the results were discouraging. More than a year later, the plants had grown only a few centimetres. 

Then came an unexpected breakthrough. The seedlings achieved a 98-percent survival rate, astonishing experts and far exceeding expectations. The success was the product of years of painstaking research. Yu and her team travelled extensively, often trekking through remote mountain terrain in search of superior wild varieties that could support cultivation. 

Her move into medicinal plants coincided with another turning point in Yiwu's development. During the mid-to-late 1990s, the city was evolving beyond its role as a trading centre, encouraging commercial entrepreneurs to invest in manufacturing and develop industries of their own. 

For Yu, the venture was more than a business expansion. It was another journey into uncharted waters. 

Over the following years, Yu and her team overcame major technical barriers in seedling propagation and artificial cultivation. Their achievements not only helped to transform China's Dendrobium officinale industry, but also contributed valuable knowledge to the conservation and sustainable use of endangered medicinal plants. 

Yu's transformation mirrored a broader evolution among Yiwu entrepreneurs. Many were moving beyond the traditional trading model of selling successful products towards building specialised industries, developing proprietary technologies and creating brands of their own. 

Thriving in health industry 

In 2017, responding to Zhejiang's initiative to develop characteristic towns centred on specialised industries, Yu launched another ambitious project: Sen Shan Health Town, a large-scale wellness and health industry complex. 

By then, she had established more than 10,000 mu (about 667 hectares) of Dendrobium officinale cultivation bases across China. Through a model that combined enterprise leadership, standardised management, technological support and agricultural production bases, she helped more than 30,000 farmers to increase their incomes, transforming the once rare "immortal herb" into a source of sustainable prosperity for rural communities. 

For Yu, the journey from cultivating a medicinal orchid to building an entire health-focused industrial ecosystem reflected the same philosophy that had guided her career from the beginning: turning opportunities into industries and individual success into shared prosperity. 

Even after decades in business, she continues to advocate for the industry's future. At the 2025 session of the Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress, she proposed accelerating the development of the Dendrobium officinale industry. In 2026, she submitted proposals on expanding the silver economy and promoting the commercialisation of digital innovations in traditional Chinese medicine. 

That same year, Yu was also named one of Jinhua's leading science and technology entrepreneurs and became Yiwu's first national forestry and grassland expert specialising in native plant species. 

As chairwoman of both the Yiwu Women Entrepreneurs Association and the Jinhua Women Entrepreneurs Association, she has established mentorship programmes to help to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

A popular saying in Yiwu goes, "Nine out of 10 people are bosses." Behind the phrase lies the story of countless entrepreneurs like Yu, whose ambition and resilience have helped to transform the city into one of China's most dynamic centres of private enterprise. 

Looking back, Yu's journey from a market stall to the helm of a health industry enterprise has closely mirrored Yiwu's own transformation. As she puts it, "Yiwu's development is a road its people built from nothing, step by step, with their own feet."