Shuitou is the largest stone processing base in China. Now more than 60% of China’s stone is exported from here to all over the world every year. However, in the stone kingdom, there is no stone mountain that can produce stones, even the most common granite and marble. No, so how did they evolve into the number one town in China’s stone industry? Today, let’s learn about Shuitou Town Nanan City in Fujian.
Shuitou Town Nanan City is located on the southeast coast of Fujian and is the southern gate of Quanzhou City. In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Shuitou Town was still under the unified jurisdiction of Shijing Town next door. It was called Shuitou Commune in the past. At that time, Shuitou Commune was mainly engaged in collective agricultural production. , without any basic industry, it is relatively backward in Quanzhou area. It was not until 1985 that Shuitou Commune was changed to Shuitou Town.
In the 1980s, my country just opened up the self-employed business, and mines were also allowed to be mined by private contractors. In the past, there were no heavy machinery, and all the excavated stones needed to be carried to the truck by manpower. In addition, they faced the hazards of blasting and dust. , is a very hard industry, Shuitou people started to enter the stone industry from mining, and then gradually developed and expanded.
There is a saying in Fujian folk that more than half of the wealthy businessmen in Fujian are from Quanzhou. Since the Song Dynasty, Quanzhou has been the most prosperous place for business in Fujian. The spirit of fighting hard to win, coupled with the fact that Quanzhou Port opened its foreign trade more than 1,200 years ago, allows the people of southern Fujian to get in touch with the outside world earlier, so their horizons are also very broad.
The self-employed business in the 1980s was really good, and the stone industry was even more prosperous. At that time, all parts of the country were engaged in development and construction. Basically, as long as the merchants produced it, they would not worry about not being able to sell it. The buyers were all running with cash. to the place of origin to pick up the goods.
At that time, Shijing Town, next to Shuitou, was rich in granite, which attracted many buyers to look at the goods. However, from Quanzhou to Shijing, Shuitou was the only place to go, so hundreds of people opened on the side of the national highway in Shuitou Town. In the past, only two cutting machines were installed in the store, and two workers were required to become a factory. Then, according to customer requirements, the blocks were cut into corresponding sizes. In the 1990s, the annual turnover of a family workshop was Four or five million can be done.
However, any business that grows too fast will enter a recession period. The money is too profitable, and more and more people follow the trend. In the past, Shuitou Town lacked leading companies and did not have its own brand. We can only fight price wars with each other, and Shuitou has no ore resources in the local area, and has no advantages in cost and technology, so it entered a recession period after a few years of fire.
In 1993, Shuitou Town established the Shuitou Chamber of Commerce and implemented a group development to find business opportunities. Because Shuitou is located in the center of the Golden Triangle of southern Fujian, it is less than an hour’s drive to Xiamen Port and only 30 kilometers away from Quanzhou Port. High-quality stone is imported back to China.
For example, Italy is rich in white marble, and they go to Italy to buy it. Not only is the price cheap, but the cost of cross-border shipping is even several times cheaper than land transportation from Fujian to Jiangxi. Gradually, from Italy to Turkey to India, almost all stone-rich countries, They are all covered with the footprints of Shuitou people, as long as there are stones, there must be Shuitou people.
In 1998, Shuitou Town established the first building materials market in Fujian. Since then, those family workshops originally opened on the street have been integrated into the stone industry park. The overall image has been improved, and foreigners gradually like to come to Shuitou to purchase. For Chinese stone, some fast-growing companies have begun to purchase mines in foreign places with rich resources, which greatly reduces the cost of mining and enables Shuitou to form a stone kingdom with a complete industrial chain.
There are now more than 2,000 stone enterprises registered in Shuitou Town. On the 117 square kilometers of land in the town, more than half of the industries come from the stone processing industry, or the ports and warehouses used to stack stones. The resident population in the town It has reached 210,000, of which more than 100,000 are engaged in stone processing. With the spirit of the people in southern Fujian who dare to be the first in the world, they have turned a town that never produced stones into a world-famous stone distribution center. Today’s Shuitou Town ranks 39th among China’s top 1000 towns and 3rd on the list of Fujian towns.