Chapter 3 "Withdraw your outstretched hand to make a fist!"

Why was the Holland Village set up in Shenyang?
Since 1997, Yang Bin started to make large-scale investments in the modern agriculture in China. Later on, he focused on building large greenhouses and refrigeration companies in northern China such as the Shouguang of Shandong province, Changchun of Jilin province, and Dalian of Liaoning province. He also had a joint venture in Beijing, successfully establishing Laitai Flower Market, the largest flower market in China.
During the summer and autumn of 1997, Yang Xinhua together with his staff attended the National Flower Show in Beijing. Yang Xinhua was the vice governor of Liaoning province at that time, promoted from his original position as head of Liaoning Agriculture Bureau. Yang Bin invited them to visit the Laitai Flower Center which was still under construction at that time. He briefly reported to them his current status of investing in the modern agriculture business all over the country. Yang Bin also seized this opportunity to promote his plan of establishing the “Holland agriculture model” in China.
Yang Xinhua then invited Yang Bin to investigate the business opportunities in Shenyang and suggested him to invest in the agriculture projects there. Yang Xinhua promised that Liaoning government would offer many preferential policies to foreign investors. Vice governor Yang said, “We wish that Yang Bin withdraw your outstretched hand to make it a fist, then concentrate on setting the Thames on fire.”
Yang Bin was touched deeply by his words.
In the early March of 1998, Yuhong District People’s Government held a modern agriculture investment opportunities conference in Liaoning Mansion. Vice governor Yang Xinhua attended that conference. In the meeting, Yu Bo, the director general of Shenyang Rural Economics Development Bureau as well as the Secretary of the Communist Party Leadership Group, put forward that the Yuhong District would like to attract investments in modern agriculture. Vice governor Yang Xinhua, said that the Liaoning government was about to bring in a large-scale modern agriculture project to the province. Yu Bo asked, “Is it possible to invite this investment project to Yuhong District?” Yang Xinhua answered, “It depends on that foreign investor.”
On April 18, 1998, Beijing Laitai Flower Market was opened. Dealers, wholesalers, and government officials in charge of agriculture developments in various provinces and cities showed up. They came to visit, investigate and hold trade talks in Beijing. Friends from Liaoning province once again invited Yang Bin to visit and evaluate the business potential in Liaoning.
In May 1998, Yang Bin was invited to visit Shenyang. Vice governor of Liaoning Province Yang Xinhua, vice mayor of Shenyang Li Baoning, and vice director general of the Rural Agricultural Economic Development Bureau Yu Bo all arrived to accompany Yang Bin to make a survey on the land at Xiaohan village, located in Beiling county in Yuhong district of Shenyang. Yang Bin decided to invest here. Under the instructions from the leadership of the province and of the city, Yu Bo demanded that district government officials provide best support to Holland Village project and facilitate all the related procedures and paperwork, to create a friendly environment for the development of Holland Village.
Shi Jun, a current vice president of the Euro-Asia Group also a senior staff who joined Yang Bin’s company in Beijing in early days, told me in May 2002 that, “In 1998, our company in Beijing was the largest company in China for the distribution of Dutch flowers and glass greenhouses. We had 95% market share in the greenhouse equipment business in China. Our business was doing very well. Yang Xinhua, the vice governor of Liaoning province, and Xu Wencai, the secretary of Shenyang Municipal Communist Party Committee, had visited Yang Bin in Beijing many times to invite him to invest in Shenyang. They promised him of many preferential policies. It was until May 1998 did Yang Bin decide to invest in the Holland Village in Shenyang.” ②
Li Gang, vice president of Euro-Asia Group, said the following words in May 2002, “The driver for Yang Bin to come to Shenyang was Yang Xinhua, the vice governor of the Liaoning province. Yang Xinhua invited Yang Bin again and again to invest there and suggest Yang Bin to withdraw his outstretched hand to make a fist , to set the Thames on fire in Shenyang. Later, Yang Bin brought us to Shenyang many times to investigate business opportunities and finally decided to establish Holland Village there.”
“I remember the crucial visit we made was in May or June of 1998, when I accompanied Yang Bin to investigate the environment around Xiaohan village in the Yuhong district of Shenyang. On Sep 1 of that year, Yang Bin sent me to Shenyang to prepare the establishment of Shenyang branch office of Holland Euro-Asia Group. This marked the beginning of our real investment there.”
“Initially there were three parties in the joint venture. One party was Liangma Group, a limited company in Xiaohan village. Liangma contributed their land to receive 25% shares free of cash capital. Another party was China Real Estate Company Northeast Branch. It had 30% shares, providing real estate construction work. We had 45% shares. Later, China Real Estate Company Northeast Branch exit from the joint venture. So we cooperated with Liangma Group afterwards.”
“The land requisition started in November 1998. Yang Bin decided to requisition 1,800 acres of land, primarily in Xiaohan village. Local governments from the township, Yuhong district, Shenyang city and Liaoning province all greatly supported his project. At the beginning of 1999, construction of Holland Village started. In the first half of that year, glass greenhouse construction covering 4 hectares in total was completed.” ③
At that time, the construction of Shenyang Holland Village was still biased to the model of “industrialized production base”, rather than the Holland Village complex with “five major functions” we have seen right now.

[Photo: Yang Bin accompanied his clients to visit glass greenhouse in Holland Village. Photo was taken by Guan Shan.]
At the beginning of 1999, Liaoning government demanded that the Holland Village should have “five functions”, i.e., industrialized production, export-oriented, high value-added, tourist attraction and high modernization features. This meant that Yang Bin could not simply sit on his original plan of “building an industrialized production base” or “introducing Holland agriculture model to China”. It was fair to say that Liaoning government requested that Holland Village to combine all the characters of landscape building, industrialized production, tourist attraction, food processing, and transition into high value-added sector over time.
That was higher demand for Yang Bin and that also meant that he had to invest more investments here.
Was this what vice governor Yang Xinhua meant by “wish that Mr. Yang Bin withdraw his outstretched hand to make a fist and concentrate on setting the Thames on fire” and through this measure to put more pressure on Yang Bin? I don’t want to make a wild guess here. What I had was a related photo. The answers were still rested in the mind of related parties.
The fact was that in the first half of 1999, in order to realize “five functions” in Holland Village, Yang Bin had to invest more money and started the second stage of land acquisition of additional 1,500 acres. Up to now, Holland Village covered 3,300 acres in total.
Needless to say, an industrialized production base and a complex with five functions were of quite different business nature. This new idea had involved an issue of business transformation. Even though both business had modern agriculture components, the former was production-oriented, relatively simple, while the latter needed simultaneous developments of various projects, which was a totally different business strategy. Business transformation was more important than the accumulation of core competencies of a business and it was much more difficult to achieve.
Therefore, Yang Bin withdrew his hands which stretched out all over China and then made fists. But in Shenyang, he opened his fists and stretched out his fingers to five different directions. He changed his original goal of targeting Japan vegetable market. This was a change in business strategy. Corporate strategy was the root of a business. What business to do, when to do, its scale, capital, human talents, all these have to be taken into consideration. Apparently, Yang Bin didn’t have enough preparation mentally and physically. He didn’t complete the transition from a family business to a modern professionally-run enterprise. On this, I had discussed with him more than once when I stayed in Holland Village.
On Sep 20, 1999, China (Shenyang) Modern Agriculture Fair was held in the Holland Village. The main conference room was located in The Hague Hotel and the Menqian Square. According to a senior manager in Holland Village, the location of this fair was decided in the first half of 1999. So the staff in Holland Village had to hurry up the construction of The Hague Hotel for the fair. It took only 20 days in August to finish the construction of The Hague Hotel. Several days later, it could be used to receive guests already.
We could see that Yang Bin started with investing in the “industrialized production base”. Later under the request from Liaoning government, he changed his business direction to establish a Holland Village complex imbedded with “five functions”. While the China (Shenyang) Modern Agriculture Fair was no more than a “temporary task” for the Holland Village. Since at that moment, Yang didn’t “withdraw his outstretched hands” but kept driving his “Euro-Asia Chariot” to reach out in China. But very soon he started to withdraw.
Yang Bin invested in China, starting from agriculture industry. This move originated from his amazingly deep understanding and analysis of the agriculture modernization of China.
Yang Bin commented: “70% of the township enterprises in the agriculture sector of China were not that successful. That was due to the lack of technology and experience. It’s impossible to encourage Chinese peasants to do electronic business. WTO would bring harsh impact on Chinese township enterprises. China’s plan in countryside development would face with a tough test. We had to establish Chinese own countryside development model as soon as possible.
On Mar 6, 2002 when I first visited Yang Bin, he illustrated to me in details the progress of agricultural modernization in China and his opinions on this aspect:
“At present, there are three major agriculture models. The first is the American model. 3% of American people own more than 80% of American farmland, featuring in the high mechanization of the agriculture production. After Nixon visited China, this model became so popular in China that we had a slogan of “the future of China’s agriculture lies on mechanization”. This model was then carried out in Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, the Production and Construction Corps of Xinjiang and the state farm. However, in 1978, the household contract responsibility system was introduced to China’s countryside. Since then, farmland was rented to individual farmers, who then tried to harvest more by using more cattle working in field, which fundamentally conflicted with the spirit of division of labor under mass production system. As a result, agricultural modernization in China was set aside and that marked the end of copying the American agriculture model in China.”

[Photo: on the morning of Mar 6, 2002 when I first interviewed with Yang Bin, Lei Shude took this photo for us on the fourth floor of the palace in Holland Village. Photo was taken by Lei Shude.]
“The second model is Israeli agriculture model, which became popular in China since Israel and China established formal diplomatic relations in 1992. Maybe since then Chinese farmers really started to understand the concept of “modern agriculture” - greenhouse agriculture, facility agriculture, irrigation agriculture, water-saving agriculture and order-based agriculture. But the farmland in China is not as barren as that in Israel. China is abundant with plains and rivers, especially in the south. The climate there is fair. The soil is rich. Rivers are everywhere. Those are like a natural irrigation system. Even though in the northern part of China, it might be necessary to build irrigation system, we still don’t need that high degree of investments as in Israel on this regard. Therefore, the Israeli model couldn’t fundamentally help China pave its road to modern agricultural development.”
“The third model is the Dutch model, which is also the classic model of modern agriculture – facility agriculture and high efficiency agriculture, featuring in the function science plays in agricultural production and industrialized production. In other words, the Dutch agriculture can be regarded as greenhouse agriculture or order-based agriculture. Modern agriculture depends less on natural climate. It depends on people who control the weather factors applied to their agricultural production. Currently most of Chinese farmers still rely on the Nature for their production. The Nature cannot guarantee crop quality, harvest time or orders. Our tomato could be sold for US$2 per 0.5 kg. But our production cost was only RMB 0.2 yuan. You can calculate how much profit is there. Why? Because it’s a product of soil-less cultivation with plant growing from the mixture of flower soil and nutrient solution. It completely reached international standard.”
“Relatively speaking, the Dutch classical agriculture model is more suitable to the countryside of China, because it stresses on the role technology plays in production, which is exactly the direction Chinese agriculture needs to insist on. But this model still can’t be carried out fully and quickly in China at this moment, because the personal assets of Chinese farmers are not too low. They don’t have channels for financing. As soon as I came back to China, I found out that Chinese farmers were the poorest. They cannot gain access to capital market at all. For an industry to grow up rapidly, access to capital is indispensable. For example, real estate usually can get 70% financing. But by what means can Chinese farmers get financing? They don’t have assets good for collateral. Even their farmland was rented. They don’t own the farmland. Even if they understand the market and the order-based agriculture, since they don’t own the farmland and therefore don’t have financing power, they simply cannot compete with the high-tech agriculture of foreign countries.”
Yang Bin wanted to carry out his project of “Dutch classical agriculture model” by introduction of high-tech agriculture, modern management system and capital. He wanted to help farmers combine the farmland with the agriculture industry. In this way, the farmers could have their industry. That was the first step to realize the modern agriculture. Shareholding structure in agriculture industry could provide foundation for the reform of Chinese agriculture.
“However, they are only shareholders, not managers, because they know neither the high-tech we are going to apply to agriculture nor the upcoming competition we are going to face in international market. Competition in the future is mainly the industry chain competition. Division of labor results in the specialization on processing and distribution of the end products, forming an industry chain. I plan to introduce from Holland four major processing factories for agricultural products, using the order-based agriculture to prevent our farmers from producing products blindly and losing money afterwards as a result.”

[Photo: Some members of Yang’s delegates visited the agricultural greenhouse base in Huacheng Cave, Pyongyang. From left to right, on the first row were Ma Ning, Wang Huidong and Yang Dayong. Qiao Shengli was on the second row. Photo was taken by Guan Shan.]
The four major processing factories that Yang Bin planned to introduce from Holland to China were flower processing factory, vegetable and strawberry processing factory, potato processing factory, and dairy products processing factory. The flower processing factory would be a joint effort with Dutch companies. The vegetable and strawberry processing factory would deal with the cleaning, packaging, transportation of unpolluted vegetables, the storage of fresh strawberries, and the processing of strawberry jam. The potato processing factory would introduce foreign breeds to China and plant, produce and process these breeds into potato slices or potato chips. The dairy products processing factory would cooperate with a famous Dutch dairy company to introduce three main production lines to China, producing European-flavored food such as fresh milk, yogurt, baby milk powder and hot dog. After these factories are set up, many farmers will be hired to become workers under the modern industrialized agriculture. They will also contribute to the development of the surrounding areas. To take the hot dog processing factory as an example, we will need 1 million pigs per year for that factory, which definitely will boost the industry of cultivating pigs in Liaoning province.
Yang Bin thought that a leading enterprise in modern agriculture should provide Chinese farmers with the food processing facility and new technology guidance. “We use food processing to boost our surrounding enterprises. Processing to make the end products of agriculture will become the engine to drive local economic development, which in turn will boost the development of other industries in that area.”
Besides the persistent invitation from government officials of Liaoning and Shenyang and the various preferential policies these officials promised, there were two more reasons why Yang Bin chose Shenyang to establish his agriculture business.
Firstly, Shenyang was geographically advantageous.
“Greenhouse cannot be built in the torrid zone because the equipment cost of the cooling system is 6 times that of the heating system.” Yang Bin said, “Besides, the production cost of decreasing 1 degree is 3 times that of increasing 1 degree.”
He made very clear calculation on choosing Shenyang for investment.
“In Shenyang, the cost of producing 1 kg tomatoes was 1/7 of that in Holland and 1/20 of that in Japan. Furthermore, Shenyang was close to Japan and could be used as the Japan’s ‘vegetable basket” or “flower basket’. Japan’s GDP was the sum of the GDP in the rest of Asia. Annual consumption of vegetables and flowers in Japan reached RMB 1 trillion yuans. Annual consumption of supplemental food even reached RMB 1.5 trillion yuans. That’s approximately 1/3 of the annual consumption in China. That’s our largest market.”
Of course, Yang Bin could choose Shandong or Hebei province. During my short-term stay in Holland Village, I accompanied Yang Bin to receive the vice mayor of Shijiazhuang city, Hebei province and the vice mayor of Shouguang city, Shandong province. Both of them offered very preferential policies to attract Yang’s attention.
The other reason fro Yang Bin to choose Shenyang was that Yang Bin got in touch with Gu Zhuping in 1997 when Yang was growing orchids. Gu Zhuping was a visiting professor from the cellular and developmental biology department in the University of California, also an expert on orchids himself. He invented fast propagation method which allowed him to grow 25 new seedlings from one single seedling within one month. This technique became Yang’s crucial “secret weapon”. Yet success of this technique required an environment similar to that climate and geographic parameters of Shenyang.
There were 54 hectares of planned greenhouse and 4 hectares of planned demonstration zone in Holland Village, of which 10 hectares had been completed and put into production in March 2002. The other 30 hectares of greenhouse had finished installation. Total investment was over RMB500 million yuans.
His calculation of the investment return is quite startling: “annual production of moth orchids in 1-hectare greenhouse is worth RMB100 million yuans; annual production of tomatoes in 1-hectare greenhouse is worth of RMB10 million yuans. Both of their output values are ten times higher than that of an ordinary farmland, because they are mainly exported to the foreign countries.”
I know this gentle professor Gu Zhuping. I have also visited his sporophyte greenhouses where the beautiful, elegant orchids made me feel so joyful that I practically forget to go back home.

Listing in Hong Kong
Although Yang Bin drove the “Euro-Asia Chariot” to expand businesses all over China, he didn’t make as much profit as he expected from the dozen of companies he invested. Their profit growth didn’t match his original goal, and therefore the return couldn’t keep up with his needs in development.
Yang Bin thought of what Yang Xinhua told him in 1997: “withdraw your outstretched hand to make a fist and concentrate on setting the Thames on fire.”
Since early 1997, Yang Bin had planned to list his company by buying a shell company in Chinese A share market. He was interested in the stock of “ Guanghua Huaxian”（600672.CH）. At the same time, he met Chen Zhonglian, the founder of the Yinghao School in Guangzhou. Since then, Yang began to transition from an industrialist to a capitalist. At the end of September 2002, I met Chen Zhonglian in Shenyang Holland Village and asked him about the story of how he and Yang Bin listed their business in the stock market by borrowing money.
Chen Zhonglian and Yang Bin both were interests in “Guanghua Huaxian”, which was established in Guanghan city of Sichuan province in March, 1987. In 1989, it completed the reform of shareholding structure. In 1993, as a company with “remaining issues for historical reasons”, it was listed in Shanghai Stock Exchange. Due to industry slowdown and poor management, this company made much less profits than before, leaving huge low-quality assets on the balance sheet.
Yang Bin was persuaded by Chen Zhonglian to buy the “shell” of a listing company. At first, Guanghua Huaxian took over Dalian Euro-Asia Flower Co., Ltd. and Gu An Euro-Asia Tianhui Flower Co., Ltd. (both being subsidiary under Yang Bin’s flagship company). Then Guanghua Huaxian established a new company “Conghua Yinghao Weisi Bide Co., Ltd.” with Chen Zhonglian and established a new company “Guanghan Euro-Asia Flower Co., Ltd.” with Yang Bin. At last, “Conghua Bo Da” and “Yingmai’er Enterprise”, which were jointly invested by Chen Zhonglian and Yang Bin, purchased Guanghua Huaxian stock from Sichuan Province National Assets Investment Management Company and another two companies for a total of 52,034,870,000 shares of Guanghua Huaxian at RMB 2 yuans per share. The total amount was RMB 10.4 billion yuans.
On Oct 17, 1998, Guanghua Huaxian was renamed to “Sichuan Euro-Asia Agriculture Company Ltd”.
According to the Securities Law in China, foreign citizens were not allowed to act as chairman of a listed company. So Yang Bin could only take the role of a director in the renamed company. In fact, Yang was already the largest shareholder of previous “Guanghua Huaxian”. Chen Zhonglian took the role of chairman and general manager in the company.
Right after the restructuring, its subsidiary company “Guanghan Euro-Asia” made investments to introduce into China a high-tech agriculture project involving Dutch flowers and vegetables. The subsidiary company built up the largest modern whole-glass greenhouse in Asia, covering an area of 5 hectares, attached with a huge macrophyte tissue cultivation base. Both greenhouse and the cultivation base were completed and put into production in April 1999.
Soon, the company exported peonies to Holland from its peony production base in Heze, Shandong. For the first time its products were available in the Dutch Flower Auction Center, the most international trading center for flowers. On May 19, 1999, on the World Horticultural Exposition in Kunming, “Euro-Asia Agriculture” contracted with Jin Lanyuan, a Korean businessman, to cooperate on the project of establishing a seedling tissue-culture base for Cymbidium hybridum and moth orchids, with a total area of 90,000 square meters. This base could produce 30 million seedlings a year. It would be the largest seedling tissue-culture base in the world. “Guanghan Euro-Asia” also signed a US$14 million worth of contract with this Korean businessman on the import and export of flowers.
“Guanghua Huaxian”, which used to lose money badly with the EPS of only RMB0.02 yuan in 1997, benefited a lot from flower projects after the merger. In 1998, this company reported a handsome EPS of RMB0.65 yuan. In 1999, from sales in flowers and greenhouse equipments alone, this company realized net profits of RMB 228 million yuan, EPS$ 0.88 yuan, and NAV$2.02 yuan per share. ROE of this company was 27.65% and 41.73% respectively over the two years following the merger. It became a top blue-chip stock of that year in China. It had the highest overall ranking in terms of business performance amongst all listed companies in China in 1999. Consequently, it was regarded as a model in merger and reorganization.
On Oct 12, 1999, “Euro-Asia Agriculture” announced its name change to “Yinghao Technology”. It also changed its business nature from agriculture/flowers to education industry. On Nov 23, the board of directors accepted Yang Bin’s resignation from his directorship.
Regarding Yang’s resignation, it was said that the board of directors didn’t vote for the major flower and vegetable investment project Yang Bin brought up. And it didn’t pass the proposal of investing in Holland Village.
But according to Yang Bin himself, his exit in the shares generated RMB 200 million assets value for him. Accounting-wise, his return was more than 200% from here.
While Yang Bin withdrew from A share market, he closed down his business coverage in many cities all over China. He sold out companies one by one and took back his cash. Then he focused on the business development of the Holland Village in Shenyang.
In order to “withdraw his outstretched hand to make a fist and concentrate on putting Thames on fire”, Yang Bin expanded the “industrialized production base” into a big Holland Village complex with the businesses of agriculture, tourism, and real estate, with the total investment budget estimated to reach RMB1.8 billion yuan.
During the restructuring of his companies, Yang still kept seven agricultural production bases in China. But the profits he made from there couldn’t satisfy the financial needs from Holland Village. In addition, he also had not received any good news from the local banks in Shenyang on his loan application.
At this time, CFO of the Euro-Asia Group Yan Chuang, together with a manager from Shenyang branch of the ICBC Bank suggested that Yang Bin isolate the agriculture and greenhouse business from Holland Village assets first, then increase the agriculture production base, and then list “Euro-Asia Agriculture” in Hong Kong. This idea of getting financing from international capital market won Yang Bin’s consent and appreciation.
Yan Chuang, this CFO of only 35 years old, graduated from Jiling College of Finance and Economics with major in accounting. He had been an accountant working in an accounting firm, with not only 6 years of experience in accounting and auditing but also a professional title as a securities accountant. Yang Bin was his client before and appreciated him very much. In 1998, Yan Chuang became the CFO of the Euro-Asia Group and the vice president and vice chairman of the Euro-Asia Agriculture. He was also the main brain and corporate executive in charge of the listing of the Euro-Asia Agriculture.
In Jun 2002, Yan Chuang went to the U.S. to treat his illness and never came back even until today. But on Oct 4, 2002, the day when Yang Bin was arrested, Yan Chuang resigned for “personal health reasons”.
Before listing in Hong Kong, Yang Bin, with the help of ICEA Securities, restructured his business. He registered a holding company in Mauritius, Wise Capital Investment Limited (Wise Capital for short), holding 100% shares. He then registered a holding company in Bermuda, Euro-Asia Agriculture (Holding) Co. Ltd, which was the to-be-listed vehicle. Yang Bin owned 72.06% shares of Euro-Asia Agriculture through Wise Capital. Meanwhile, Euro-Asia Agriculture holds 100% shares of Success Honour Limited (Mauritius), which then holds 100% shares of Asia-Pacific International Investment Group Limited (registered in Hong Kong) and two other companies in Shenyang city, i.e. Shenyang Euro-Asia Agriculture Development Co., Ltd and Shenyang Green Field Agriculture Development Co., Ltd.
Through series of complicated shareholding restructuring, Yang Bin indirectly injected his agriculture business into the to-be-listed Euro-Asia Agriculture (Bermuda). However, for investors and regulatory bodies, this shareholding structure was too complicated, and the transparency of business transactions between related companies was very low. Therefore, they could only rely on auditors and accountants for the accuracy of the financial reports of the listed company to evaluate its performance.
Yan Chuang was in charge of the preparation of financial statements for the past 3 years and for the listing of the company as soon as possible. It’s fair to say that here was some listing regulations got violated. On July 19, 2001, Euro-Asia Agriculture was listed in the main board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange, sponsored by 8 securities houses including ICEA (Hong Kong), CLSA, and so on. Its IPO subscription price was HK$1.48 per share, with primary offering of 460 million shares. This IPO was 78 times oversubscribed. On Aug 1 of that year, Euro-Asia Agriculture placed additional 60 million new shares to get financing from capital market again. The IPO together with the new share placement brought Euro-Asia Agriculture HK$700 million cash. The value of the 1.2 billion shares still held by Yang Bin was close to HK$1.8 billion. With the surge of stock price in the following months, shares held by Yang Bin were worth close to HK$3.36 billion at the peak (when the stock was traded at HK$2.8 per share).
The headquarters and the modern agriculture production base of Euro-Asia Agriculture were based in the Holland Village of Shenyang, Liaoning Province.

What’s the Holland Village?
I first visited the Holland Village on Mar 6, 2002.
The Holland Village was truly beautiful during daytime. The buildings and gardens here were of exactly the classic European style. The buildings shared the same outlook of those famous, historic buildings in Holland. Coordination of the outlay of these buildings formed a Holland Park which fully reflected the history, culture, and footprints of Holland.
The Corsair and windmills were typical architecture products of the Holland kingdom. They stood elegantly at the entrance of the Village, in contrast with the city square and the Dutch Queen Palace inside the Village. We first came to the well—known International Convention and Exhibition Center of Holland Village. It cost Yang over RMB 200 million yuans, with exactly the same outlook and same size of the original Amsterdam Train Station. Passing through the lobby, we arrived at the second floor where a miniature model of the whole Holland Village was there. We could take a full look at Yang Bin’s artistic masterpiece --- a good example of the combination of modern urban agriculture and European-style theme park.
Holland Village was divided into two zones, the east zone and the west zone. In the east zone there were country villas, garden-surrounded apartments and a three-star hotel. Besides, projects under construction here included a five-star international hotel, a financial skyscraper, a gymnasium, a sauna shop, a KTV shop, a shopping plaza, a post office and a school.
“I would like to help people live in a beautiful environment!” Yang Bin said when we first met.
“Our best villas here are not for sale. I plan to reserve these villas for foreign experts to stay, even to give these to them for free, including the ownership of the property. Can you buy a Dutch expert with 45 years of experience in planting? I have to be able to produce same flowers as those in Holland. Otherwise my products won’t be recognized in the international market. In this case, how can I compete in the international market?” Yang Bin also reserved some other country villas for his VIPs from China and from abroad.
In the west zone it was designed for hi-tech industrial park, agricultural exhibition, and tourist attraction. “Amsterdam Train Station” - the International Convention and Exhibition Center was right there in the tourist attraction zone. The “Foreign Merchant Club” was built in exactly the same design and same size of the Hague International Tribunal. The interior of the ground floor was in the same design as the court in the Tribunal which was used to put the Nazis on trial after World War II. On the first and second floor there were the most modern entertainment facilities, superior guestrooms, and most popular cuisines from all over the world. These facilities would provide foreign guests with an excellent environment for making investments and make here an international business center, no matter these guests came here for market research, sightseeing, or investments. world-famous Culinary Culture center on the second and third floor. With the international business center, this club offered the foreign customers a good environment for foreign investment attraction. The Mega Flower Exhibition Center would be covered by glass wall with grid structures inside. If people watched it from afar while the sun was shining brightly on it, they would know how splendid it would be.
The projects which Yang Bin had designed and planned for the theme park but were still under construction would be described below. First, there would a mega indoor beach with the total length of 740 meters. Its framework had been completed. In the future, it would have artificial ocean, simulative waves, deep water zone, shallow water zone, aquarium, underwater restaurant, and so on. It would be the largest indoor playground in China if completed.
Also there would be a tropical rain forest, with a total area of 16 hectares and the height of 15 meters. It would be built with our advanced greenhouse technology in Holland Village. And this would be the world’s largest manmade indoor tropical rain forest. With rare plants growing and rare animals such as elephants, gorillas, and crocodiles moving through the forest, visitors would hate to leave here once they were inside. In the center of the forest would be a “Dutch Lilliput”, an imitation of the original Dutch Lilliput in Holland but was scaled down to 1/25 of its original size. It would be a paradise for children to have fun and play at will.
Yang Bin cooperated with a French entrepreneur to set up a large Moulin Rouge theater in the Holland Village where the French artists would perform exotic dances and songs for visitors, bringing Paris’ vanity world to life on the lift stage.
On the night of March 6, Yang Bin hosted a banquet to receive his guests, among whom the president and senior management of MGM Asia, whose parent company MGM was the second largest entertainment company in the world. They were here to seek opportunities to cooperate with Yang Bin. The banquet was held in the Tropical Rain Forest Restaurant. It was a restaurant featuring rain forests, with big trees, plants, small bridges, waving paths and a small lake for fishing. Brocade carps imported from Japan were swimming freely in the lake. The scenery under the neon lights added an exotic flavor to the environment there.
I remembered what Zhou Xiang, the director of the Reception Office, had told me the story of the theme park during the day time. So I asked Yang Bin with a suppressed voice, “Are these all your original ideas?”
Yang Bin answered with a smile, “Yes! I have borrowed the ideas from the Disneyland, the Universal Studio and the Sea World. Then I mixed it with tropical rain forest, ocean shore, playground, and many other entertainment facilities. So how do you think about it, my old brother?”
“Great!” I said, “It’s fantastic!”
Yang Bin laughed and said, “We Chinese are very clever. That’s why the management of MGM, USA proactively came to see me, looking for opportunities to cooperate with me. I move “Windows of the World – Shenzhen” into a greenhouse. Isn’t that my innovation?”
He looked at several American guests on his table then laughed again complacently.
Our last visit for the daytime was the glass greenhouse, which was the main business of the Holland Village. The completed demonstration zone of flowers and vegetables covered an area of 4 hectares. The glass greenhouses under construction covered 50 hectares, which would exceed the area of the “Glass City” in the Westland of Holland, currently the No. 1 in the world.
What’s the modern agriculture model of Holland Village? One can find his answer here.
First we visited the largest cell division base of plants in China. There were hundreds of employees here, busy with their work in the greenhouses which were connected to one another. In the breeding house, the ladies in white sat down there, boosting cell division of the spores carefully. Yang Bin had once told me that they were cloning Dutch flowers. For example, they drew hundreds of spores from the scape of the Dutch moth orchid and then put them into the culture bottle. These spores would then develop root and sprout, growing to be little Dutch moth orchids. In this way, the ladies in the breeding house could generate a profit of RMB 4,500 yuans a day by boosting cell division of spores.
[Photo: Yang Bin told me that by way of boosting cell division of spores, they “cloned” Holland flowers. Photo was taken by Guan Shan.]
Here was the industrialized agriculture production system. I saw these ladies put the culture bottles on the shelves after the cell division process was completed. Looking around, I could see the shelves in an area of several hundred square meters full of these culture bottles. Going forward in this area, I could see many plant spores in the bottles with tiny roots and sprouts, with a primitive form of plant. Going further inside, that was another area of several hundred square meters where the plants on the shelves had completely developed their roots, scapes and leaves. Zhou Xiang told me, “One bottle of divided plant spores could grow into several hundred flower seedlings of this kind. Now there were only a few larger seedlings in each of this kind of culture bottle. We exported them to Holland for several U.S. dollars per bottle. This was the modern industrialized flower production.”
Zhou Xiang took us to visit the flower planting and appreciation area where we saw all the high-class flowers such as moth orchid, carnation, African daisy, Anthrium andraeanum and Cymbidium hybridium. All these flowers were cultivated by the flower soil and the nutrient solution, without earth at all.
The vegetable greenhouse was the next door. One greenhouse covered an area of 1 hectare. The output of tomato from each hectare was half a million kilograms per year. Four such greenhouses had been put into production while there were still 40 others under construction. So in total there would be 40 hectares of industrialized production zone of this kind, right across from the “Amsterdam Train Station”. I noticed that the ground here was all made of cement concrete. On each long terrace made of cement, there were rows of plastic vases with the size of a cup. Within each vase, there were two bunches of tomatoes. These tomatoes matured from bottom up. Tomatoes in the bottom looked very delicious, bright red and as big as a boy’s fist. But those tomatoes one foot above the lower ones in the same bunch were still green.
I was so confused and asked, “Why do these tomatoes mature from bottom up like grapes?”
“We have introduced this high-quality variety from abroad. Peasants plant tomatoes in the ground.” (If I hadn’t visited this greenhouse, I would have answered ‘Nonsense, otherwise where can they plant?’ I would be laughed as a fool.)
“Firstly, they would sow the tomato seeds on the earth. Then they cultivate and transplant the seedlings. It would take two and half months for a tomato to grow up from a seed to a mature plant. Each tomato plant could produce 2.5 kilograms of tomatoes. However, we don’t sow seeds on the earth here. We produce by boosting the cell division of plant spores, as you just have seen here. We apply high technology in agriculture to breed the seedlings. The growth period of each seedling is 10- 12 months. Each bunch produces 50 kilograms of tomatoes. There are two bunches in each vase. So each vase produces 100 kilograms of tomatoes. The output of each greenhouse is 500,000 kilograms of tomatoes. Almost all of these tomatoes were with contracts to be exported to Japan or Korea. We could only sell a small quantity to the local people in Shenyang, at RMB 6 yuans per kilogram. This limited supply issold in a snap every day.”
Lei Shude, the vice director of the Agriculture Bureau of Liaoning Province picked up a pink tomato, mopped it by hand then passed it to me, “It is green food, without any chemical on it at all. Come on, taste it!”
I was sent to Changbai Mountain suffering a lot since I was young. Since then I had stomach illness. I was afraid of cold food very much and I was never fond of vegetables or fruit, including tomatoes. But the vice director Lei passed that tomato to me already. So I just had to give it a try. That tomato had a very attractive shape and color. It tasted crisp, with the right mixture of sweetness and sourness. Very delicious it was indeed. No wonder Japanese love these tomatoes so much. Several presidents of the supermarkets in Japan had joined trip to visit Holland Village to negotiate and place orders.
Mr. Lei said, “The Holland Village has brought a good beginning to the modern agriculture development of Liaoning Province. It also served to be the demonstration of tourist agriculture, sightseeing agriculture, and modern biological agriculture.”
In the company of Bo Xilai, the governor of Liaoning province, Li Lanqing, the vice prime minister, visited the Holland Village. Li said after visiting, “Some people said that the future flower center of China would be in Shenyang. Why not in Kunming? After seeing this, now I understand why.”
After listening to Yang Bin’s report, Yang Ludai, the vice-chairman of the CPPCC said, “If you succeed, this would be the second agriculture revolution in China. The first agriculture revolution was the household contract responsibility system which was initiated in Xiaogang village, Fengyang city of the Anhui province. The second one probably would be the agriculture modernization started from here.”
What’s the Holland Village?
“The Holland Village is the clone of Holland’s classic agriculture as well as a large-scale demonstration base of Holland’s high-tech agriculture in China. With advanced, high-tech agriculture equipments along with beautiful exotic scenery, the Holland Village was reputed as the modern urban agriculture model and the best potential tourist attraction in the northeastern China. Holland Village – that’s the high-tech industrial production and demonstration zone of modern agriculture of China in the 21st century.” Yang Bin noted.
The visit, survey and conversations during my first stay at the Holland Village impressed me deeply. I thought that the Holland Village was the integrated demonstration of the world’s advanced agriculture technology, industrialized production, modern managerial experience, and civilized way of living. As Yang Bin well put it, “let the plants live in a beautiful environment. Then plants will satisfy our profits. Likewise, let people live in a beautiful environment. Then these people will create enormous value.”
This reminded me of Guo Hao of the Chaoda Modern Agriculture in Fujian province. “Guo in the South and Yang in the North” – both people had served in the army, were doing agriculture business now, and listed their companies in Hong Kong. They both raised HK$600 million in Hong Kong stock market, marking the connection of two agriculture enterprises with international capital market. Both people were on the Forbes China Top 100 billionaire list, with Yang being ranked No. 2 and Guo being ranked No. 22. They shared the same dream and both unflaggingly explored opportunities in China’s agriculture modernization, shaping the future of agriculture in China.
When talking about Yang Bin, Guo Hao said passionately, “Yang Bin of Euro-Asia Group is an agriculture entrepreneur whom I admired very much. He brought to China the most advanced agriculture production model and techniques in the world, finding out the most suitable agriculture production model for China. That was amazing achievement. Furthermore, all his success came from struggles on his own.”
Notes:
① On May 13, 2002, Li Gang, vice-president of the Euro-Asia Group, talked with me.
② On May 16, 2002, I visited Shi Jun in the Holland Village.
③ On May 13, 2002, I visited Li Gang in the Holland Village.
④ The same as above.