#长文创作激励计划##头条创作挑战赛##记录我的2024##头等旺事#
Author: 11
Source: Zhenghe Island (ID: zhenghedao)
How should a person live this life? More and more people are asking this question.
There is such an old man on Douyin, he is in his 70s, and he often shares his daily routine of learning and exercising with netizens, and he also goes skydiving, and he also climbs Mount Everest.
He has two broken fingers on his left hand, but in the video, he always has a sunny smile on his face.
He is Chen Keming, the king of noodles. There are many people who have eaten Chen Keming's noodles for half their lives, and only saw me on Douyin.
From a severed finger carpenter with primary school culture to the chairman of a listed company with an annual income of 5 billion (PS: according to the 2023 financial report, Keming Food's actual revenue is 5.18 billion), Chen Keming, who is known as a "noodle idiot", has a wonderful and extraordinary life.
But when he was in his prime, he was still trying to "toss": resign to become an Internet celebrity, and he has to be a listed company again!
On the Internet, Chen Keming mingles with young people, sincere and down-to-earth, and "please advise" at every turn. At the beginning, he always sent some very positive chicken soup for the soul, and after being complained by netizens, he was very persuaded to share his daily life.
As he said, he is a 70-year-old body, a 27-year-old mentality, and dreams to make friends with young people.
Chen Keming told us that the thickness of life does not lie in the amount of wealth, but in what you have experienced and created in a long life.
This story is about dreams, about perseverance, about courage, about life.
From a carpenter with a severed finger to the chairman of a 5 billion listed company
Chen Keming was born in 1952 in a rural village in Nanxian County, Hunan Province, with primary school education. At the age of 15, he followed the masters to learn the carpenter's trade, and with hard work, he soon also started a family in Nanxian County, took root, and ran his life plainly and happily.
But the turning point of fate always comes inadvertently. Once, while working as a carpenter, he accidentally cut off two fingers when he was in his 30s. The carpenter's work was no longer available, and for a while, the whole family was in trouble.
In order to make a living, he sold fish, set up stalls, collected rags, did a building materials business, ran around for life, and his family was in a state of not having enough to eat for 8 years.
Fortunately, when Chen Keming was wandering in front of the grain store one day, he saw many customers buying noodles and asked, are there noodles from Shanghai or Wuhan?
The boss said that there were none, only local noodles in Nanxian County. As a result, the customer turned around and left.
Chen Keming had a flash of inspiration, isn't the business opportunity coming? If everyone can eat the noodles they make, it will be considered a livelihood occupation.
In 1984, relying on a hand-cranked noodle machine and a small board car, Chen Keming started his own noodle business.
Image source: Chen Keming Food official WeChat
At that time, the production technology, equipment conditions, and technology of other noodle manufacturers in Nanxian County were relatively backward, but no one was striving for excellence. With an old-fashioned hand-cranked dough sheeter, making 100 kilograms a day is very labor-intensive.
Chen Keming has a flexible brain, he switched to a motor, added a belt to the disc, and can make 400 kilograms of noodles in a day, which not only improves efficiency, but also saves manpower.
Image source: Chen Keming Food official WeChat
In addition to efficiency, he is also trying his best to improve his noodle making skills. In order to make the noodles well, he went to consult a professional master and asked someone to buy professional books from Changsha, because he had only read books for a few years, and he didn't know some words, so he checked the dictionary and recognized them one by one.
One day, he dug out a dusty copy of the "Code of Conduct for Warehouse Keepers" in a corner, and according to the method of testing flour inside, he found good flour and made the noodle making technology ahead of his peers.
However, even if you find good flour, the noodles are still the same as other local noodles, with uneven thickness and easy soup. He went around to learn the art and finally solved the problem of noodle soup.
In this way, he pushed his small cart and sold it along the streets. Because of his shy personality, Chen Keming was embarrassed to speak at first, but then slowly found a place to practice alone, so he put out the advertisement of "selling noodles, selling noodles, returning and replacement, quality and quantity".
Because of the delicious taste and honesty, Chen Keming's noodle reputation grew in the local area, so he rented a stall and built a processing factory. When the factory was first built, there was a lot of rainy season in the spring of that year in Hunan, so in order not to stop the noodle factory, Chen Keming tossed it himself, built a coal stove, found a few pipes, and built a soil drying room.
Image source: Chen Keming Food official WeChat
In order to find the most suitable temperature for noodle making in the drying room, he always observed inside, staying for four or five hours, the temperature inside was more than 40 degrees, and once he fainted in the heat and almost lost his life. Fortunately, the quality of the baked noodles is also very good.
Just when everything seemed to be getting better, a natural disaster struck. In 1987, a tornado destroyed Chen Keming's equipment and raw materials, and the roof of his house smashed other people's houses, bankrupting his family overnight.
But at this moment, a regular customer reached out to him and sent him a loan of 10,000 yuan from relatives and friends, which was a large amount of money at the time. Neighbor Says:
"Chen Keming is a person who does things, he is a good person, he has a good heart, he doesn't care if he suffers a disaster, and he repairs other people's houses first. If there is a quality problem with the noodles he makes, you can exchange them with him or return them. This kind of person will not be repaid, we have to believe in him to help him".
The 10,000 yuan made Chen Keming turn around, and his career has become more and more smooth since then, which also made him realize that he must insist on being an honest and good person.
And there are too many difficulties and problems encountered in the process of starting a business. And Chen Keming always has only one belief, that is, his noodles are better than others, so he continues to ponder and improve.
Seeing that the quality of Chen Keming's noodles was so good, the villagers in Nanxian County spontaneously organized a sales team and gradually sold it to Yueyang and Changsha...... and other foreign markets, the sales volume increased year by year, and in 1997 it was sold to 1,800 tons.
As the scale of the business grows larger, Chen Keming has set his sights on the national market. In order to sell noodles, he carried a backpack and traveled to various cities and villages in Hunan, and then to all corners of the country, shuttling through different supermarkets, food stores, grain and oil stores, and talking with people about entry fees and barcode fees......
At the same time, Chen Keming noodles have become a popular noodle brother through the three-one project - "a slogan, an advertising film, and a round of CCTV delivery".
I believe that many friends are very familiar with this advertising slogan: a one-sided friend, unforgettable for a lifetime.
This was the advertisement that Chen Keming tailored for his noodles at that time, and later this sentence spread all over the walls of the countryside and became popular all over the country. When asked why he wanted to use his name to make a brand, Chen Keming only said one sentence: dare to take responsibility.
In March 2012, Keming Food (formerly known as Keming Noodle Industry) was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and became the "No. 1 stock of dried noodles in China". According to the 2023 financial report, its revenue has reached 5.18 billion yuan.
A young man once asked Chen Keming that he was 32 years old, but it was difficult, and he was afraid that he would not be able to persevere.
Chen Keming used his own experience to tell him that at the age of 30, he lost two fingers and lost the technology to make a living, but even if it was difficult, he always held the dream of living a good life and insisted on moving forward, from starting a business to listing the company.
Poverty and suffering sharpened his will, as long as he identified one thing, he would do it firmly and diligently, and do simple things well for a long time, it would not be simple.
The secret of the success of the noodle king
Chen Keming has the title of "noodle idiot", just because in the matter of noodles, he can be said to be infatuated. "Sexual idiots are their ambitions, so bookworms must work, and art idiots must have good skills."
It is precisely because of this focus and seriousness that Chen Keming noodles have become the collective memory of a generation, and he has been sitting firmly in the position of the "overlord" of noodles for a long time.
The secret of his success may be traced back to the following three points.
Image source: Chen Keming Food official WeChat
1. The ultimate "idiot"
For a long time after starting his business, whenever he went on a business trip, Chen Keming would take a bag to the local noodle shop to collect noodles and bring them back for research.
When he saw the flour, he only had to touch it with his hands, smell it with his nose, and chew it with his tongue, and he basically knew that the flour was ugly.
Until now, Chen Keming still insists on cooking a bowl of somen noodles without any condiments for breakfast every day, just to try the taste and try how to make better somen noodles.
He doesn't play cards himself, and he doesn't allow the company's employees to play cards, and the ban on gambling has become a high-voltage line for the company. He even wrote the prohibition of gambling into the cooperation contract with others, believing that once the operator of the flour mill likes to gamble, the flour produced is not pure.
The supplier's production procedures, formulas, and workshops have to be inspected, and in the factory, when a copy is found to be dusty on the eaves of the production workshop, the factory is included in the "blacklist" of procurement.
He explained the meaning of "idiot" in this way: the mind wanders, the things and I forget, the love is warm, and the heart has no distractions.
Over the years, the tide of the business world has been wave after wave, and huge profits and temptations have always followed, but Chen Keming has always been "unable to get by". He said:
"There are a lot of people who come to me in real estate, and I don't do it. Real estate is very profitable, but I can't make that money. To be honest, I don't have that ability.
Real estate is a relationship network, to get the land, to do the real estate, to sort out the relationship between various departments, that is not my strength. If you want me to give someone a gift or do something, I can't do it. ”
"I have not been deceived in thirty years, because I have no greed."
In his opinion, his goal is not to make some money, but to do one thing well. He always wonders when Chinese noodles will occupy a place on the world stage when he sees that Italian noodles are being eaten all over the country.
This thought drove him to spend 40 years making noodles.
2. Pondering selflessly
Chen Keming is not so much an entrepreneur as an inventor and a master problem solver. From the small cart back then to today's somen empire, he is always thinking about how to make somen better.
So the improved electric dough sheeter came out, the flour inspection method came out, and the soil drying room also came out......
With continuous research, Chen Keming also solved the problem of easy breakage of noodles caused by the tremor of the noodle cutting machine, so that the dried noodles can be more convenient to transport.
He also continuously improved the equipment, improved the blades, and improved the production efficiency and product quality; The mixer has been improved successively, and the secondary curing process has been created, which has more than doubled the production efficiency......
In order to find a wrapper that would not cause secondary pollution to the noodles, I searched all over the country at that time, but I couldn't find it. So Chen Keming repeatedly discussed with the manufacturer, and he paid for the joint research, and finally produced a qualified wrapping paper.
Chen Keming, who only has a primary school education, has more than 50 patents for making noodles. It is precisely because of this spirit of continuous pondering and continuous study that Keming noodles have achieved results.
In his own words: as an entrepreneur, you must have a belief and a spirit that is not afraid of difficulties. With spirit, all problems will be solved, and as long as the mind does not slip, there are always more solutions than problems.
Source: "One Shot and Three Words" Chinese Entrepreneurial Figures Video Chronicle 72-year-old Chen Keming still often carries a backpack on his back
3. Altruism is the best self-interest
In Chen Keming's view, suffering losses is blessings, and only altruism is the best self-interest. Socialize with people and give the profits to others, he is comfortable, and he will continue to give you business next time.
And his principle of being a person and doing business is: I would rather be burdened by others than by others.
Once the company had some difficulties in operation, Chen Keming could not pay bonuses, so he went to Changsha to borrow 800,000 usury, and paid the employees' wages and bonuses on time. When the employees heard about it, they returned the money to the company, but they couldn't persuade them.
They said that they were not in a hurry to use it, and that the difficulties of the enterprise were only temporary, and that they would use the money to tide over the difficulties first, and some employees used various relationships to bring coal, raw and auxiliary materials to the enterprise on credit. There are even employees who take out their own real estate certificates to guarantee the company's mortgage and obtain bank loan qualifications.
As early as the beginning of Nanxian County's business, the local people saw that Chen Keming made money making noodles, and Zhang San, Li Si, and Wang Wu saw that dozens of noodle factories were set up in a hurry. Some people who lack talents, lack of technology, and lack of market find Chen Keming every once in a while, and he will do his best to help the villagers solve these problems.
Chen Keming only said that "enterprises can only have vitality if they compete", which also makes Nanxian a famous production area of dried noodles.
He likes to ponder machines, and whenever he hears that there is a new noodle production equipment on the market, he will not hesitate to buy it back. Even if he buys a machine that doesn't work well, he won't feel that the money is wasted:
"There are not many manufacturers of noodles machinery and equipment in our country, the scale is not large, and the financial strength is not strong. They have worked hard to develop products from generation to generation. If noodle companies don't buy their products, what's the point of their research? Their capital chain is broken, and they don't study it, when will the modernization of China's noodle equipment be realized?
Therefore, knowing that buying these products may suffer a loss, this loss should also be suffered. Spending money to buy immature equipment is to support equipment research and development in a small way, and to promote China's noodle equipment to the future. ”
Many things, starting from altruism, and finally returning to the origin of self-interest.
There is also a story that in the 80s, there was a "little gangster" who saw that Chen Keming's noodle business was doing well, so he came to blackmail him, and often dug up the road in and out of Chen Keming's door to collect protection money.
Chen Keming analyzed that he had no financial resources, and the distress in his heart should be the main reason. So they recruited him into the company and gave him a job. Later, this employee worked for decades, and became a "gold medal employee".
In the headquarters of Changsha Keming noodle industry, there are kindergartens, canteens, and staff dormitories, which is Chen Keming's wish - to be a happy enterprise. There are hundreds of pairs of dual-income workers in the company, and he hopes that employees can have a place to live, no left-behind children in their families, and no worries about work.
There is also a unique phenomenon in the Keming noodle industry, which is called "return culture" by employees. As the name suggests, it is those employees who go out from Keming Food that will choose to return to Keming again. Many people will think that employees leaving are disloyal and untrustworthy, but Chen Keming advocates good entry and exit.
When you treat others with altruistic thinking, you will get different results.
"I, at the age of 72, decided to quit my job and become an Internet celebrity"
On October 17 last year, the news of the resignation of the 72-year-old noodle king Chen Keming as an Internet celebrity broke out.
On Douyin, Chen Keming really started to be an "Internet celebrity" seriously, and also said that he wanted to be a listed company again.
Some people were afraid that he would smash the signboard of the noodle king, but he said:
"It doesn't matter, I had nothing in the first place, and my original dream was to have a full stomach, and now I have far exceeded that expectation. Why do you want to be a second listed company, after the first company is listed, I will take out 10% of the equity to everyone, everyone buys a house and a car, everyone is happy I am even happier, only think about others first, my income will definitely be more generous. ”
In him, we can still see the shadow of the former noodle king: doing one thing has nothing to do with personal wealth, but with the well-being of others, the meaning of life, and the joy of learning; Doing this, I am fascinated, immersed in self-forgetfulness, and overcome all difficulties.
From this point of view, apart from his body, he is indeed no different from a 27-year-old - time has never been his opponent, and aging will not be his shackles.
Director Wang Chaoge said in a speech:
"After 12 years of reincarnation, by the age of 36, family, work, and life tend to be stable. Someone burns out at the age of 36 and does the same things, eats the same food, and walks the same road every day. 36 years old, is divided into two kinds of people: one is repeated 36 years old; The other is to start looking for a new life."
Some people are already "dead" at the age of 35; Some people are just starting out at the age of 35. Chen Keming, who has an ageless heart, no matter when, no matter what the situation, he is on the way to set off.
Some time ago, when Dong Yuhui was live broadcasting, he talked about the darkest moment in December last year.
He said that on the plane to Xi'an, he encountered strong turbulence, and he was so nervous that he was holding the armrest. He wondered, if anything happened, would there still be any point in the things I struggled with and suffered every day?
Perhaps we can also ask ourselves, there is only one life, what way do we choose to live our lives? Do you want to choose to live for yourself? (xi)
(Excerpted from the WeChat public account Zhenghe Island)