Event spurs national success in wickwork

By  Yuan Shenggao 

Pan Tongchun, a villager in Huoqiu county, Anhui province, never thought he could become an industry leader and win the title of “national model worker”. “All of this can be attributed to the Canton Fair,” Pan said. 

Born in Xiaodian village, Pan spent most his childhood in hunger and poverty. For hundreds of years, local people relied on wickerwork crafts to make a living. 

As the wicker industry grew rapidly in surrounding areas, Pan quit his job in 1985 and teamed up with 16 partners to start their own business. 

Two years later, Pan began his first trip to the Canton Fair. 

The Canton Fair then saw huge crowds of visitors, yet few of them were drawn to Pan’s products. He was getting anxious when the fair came to an end. 

Having learned that a buyer from the United States needed some wickerwork products, Pan walked for nearly one hour to the Baiyun Hotel to present his company’s product samples. 

Pan’s persistence brought him his first foreign trade order. Satisfied with the quality of the samples, the buyer ordered two kinds of products at once, which totaled more than $10,000. This deal earned Pan 30,000 yuan (about $8,060 at the time). 

Thanks to the Canton Fair, Pan’s business continued to thrive. 

In 1991, Anhui Huaanda Manufacturing Group was founded by Pan and a Hong Kong-based company. His experience at the Canton Fair made him realize that the group need to upgrade technologies and products to cater to the market. 

In the second year after the group was established, Pan hired a bamboo dyeing technician from Fujian province and began studying the dyeing process of wickerwork products. Since then, Pan’s team has pioneered wickwork dyeing in China.  

“Without the Canton Fair, there would be no Huaanda and what we have accomplished today,” Pan said.