Lianqiao, Shaoyang: the rough road of "medicine capital of southern China"

Shaoyang, known as the traffic fortress of "controlling Yunnan and Guizhou on the top, controlling Changheng on the bottom", is just located in the "throat" on the map of Hunan in the shape of the head portrait This characteristic of Shaoyang's geographical location has made Lianqiao a success Lianqiao is famous for its traditional Chinese medicine distribution center The local people call this town the "medicine capital of southern China" It can be verified that, in 1995, Lianqiao became one of the eight major markets of Chinese herbal medicine that passed the first batch of national acceptance But I feel that in reality, Lianqiao is not so important for Shaoyang There is no bus from Shaoyang downtown to Lianqiao It is not only a transfer from Shaodong county, but also a narrow and bumpy road to Lianqiao This traffic situation is not what a "drug city" should have Lianqiao's "history of making a fortune" has been bumped for hours Finally, there is a long-awaited smell of Chinese herbal medicine in the air Lianqiao should be coming soon According to the guidance of the local people, I walked up the slope road, and a well-organized building complex gradually emerged, with various business departments, medicine companies, and signs and banners to fight against fake medicine filled in This should be the newly built Lianqiao pharmaceutical capital science and Technology Industrial Park, but it really does not look like the imagined pharmaceutical capital It's nearly 11 a.m., but there are few customers Several sleeping workers are even more languid and dull here I found the owner of a shop and asked him why it was a bit cold here The boss's explanation is that most of the customers here are professional wholesalers of medicinal materials, who are engaged in large-scale trading and will not be bustling like the ordinary market It sounds reasonable, but it still can't eliminate my doubts: is Lianqiao really the legendary medicine capital? How did Lian Qiao become the capital of medicine? An official who once worked in the market management committee of Lianqiao made some explanation to me He said that the first reason why Lianqiao can become a distribution center of traditional Chinese medicine is that it is a good place of origin of traditional Chinese medicine Lianqiao is a typical hilly terrain in the south of the Yangtze River, with fertile land and abundant rainfall, which is suitable for the cultivation of traditional Chinese medicine Among them, the price of Danpi, Yuzhu, Lily and Platycodon are of high quality Lianqiao's traditional Chinese medicine business can be traced back at least to the Ming and Qing Dynasties According to the local records of Shaoyang County in the reign of Guangxu, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the East Baoqing Road crossed the Lianqiao bridge and opened dozens of shops along it However, the production of medicine itself is not enough to make Lianqiao become the capital of medicine, and the traffic factor can not be ignored In addition to the traffic thoroughfare mentioned before, the special transit function in a certain period can not be ignored "The production of traditional Chinese medicine has a lot to do with the region The medicine in the North needs to be transported to the south through a transit place, and Lianqiao played this role in ancient times." The former official explained that Lianqiao has gradually become an important distribution center of traditional Chinese medicine in the south However, history is only the world on paper after all, and Lianqiao's position as the pharmaceutical capital has faced a huge crisis In October 2002, when the State Food and drug administration came to Lianqiao for inspection, it was made clear that Lianqiao would not change the current situation of "road market" quickly and would be banned resolutely From "road market" to the so-called road market in the industrial park, it means "taking the road as the city and the street as the city" It should be said that there are two historical periods in the road market, mainly around the Tanbao road Tanbao highway (now national highway 320) was opened to traffic in 1928 Since then, the medicine business of Lianqiao has been booming, forming a medicine market town with dozens of stores, such as sanyizhuang, longfengzhuang, etc However, shortly after the founding of the people's Republic of China, due to various reasons, the market of Lianqiao medicinal materials once disappeared It wasn't until around 1980 that dozens of medicine stores were reopened along the Tanbao road Although the market of traditional Chinese medicine quickly recovered the clamor of the past, the problems quickly exposed, including the storage equipment, fire-fighting facilities and other non-compliance with national regulations; the market order was chaotic, and the non-conforming traditional Chinese medicine was rampant; the characteristics of the road market, such as road occupation and stall arrangement, also seriously affected the traffic flow It is in this case that the State Food and Drug Administration issued an ultimatum, which also pushed the Lianqiao to the edge of the cliff The change began in the second half of 2003 Shaoyang City decided to build a new medicinal material market, and signed a contract with Hong Kong enterprises through investment attraction to invest in the construction of China Lianqiao pharmaceutical City Industrial Park But the stage was set up, but no one sang The former officials told me that in the following three years, Lianqiao has experienced tremendous transformation pains At the beginning of the construction of the new market, the old market house renters thought that the government's new market would smash their "golden rice bowl" and strongly opposed the new market; some local people thought that the "road market" was convenient for transportation and the new market was a repeated construction; some resettlement households were dissatisfied with the demolition compensation and refused to cooperate with the government's demolition After the completion of the new market, due to the failure of the government to close the old market on time, the new market is not popular and business is clear; a large number of new market faces are vacant, so the developers cannot pay the construction funds on time In this way, business owners and migrant workers have embarked on the road of petition From the end of 2003 to the first half of 2006, there were several mass incidents in Lianqiao due to the new and old contradictions in the drug market, even in Changsha, the provincial capital At one time, local cadres talked more about "incorruptibility" From the second half of 2006, Shaodong county started to solve the problem from three aspects: the closure of the old market, the construction of the new market and the resettlement of the relocated households After two years, the main contradictions of entanglement in the market of medicinal materials have basically subsided The road market along the national highway 320 has been completely closed, and the newly built pharmaceutical City Industrial Park also has a preliminary scale As of 2012, the number of operators in the pharmaceutical industrial park has grown to more than 1200 But is Lianqiao medicine market a smooth road because it moves into the park from the road? Shaodong county's plan for the future of Lianqiao is generally industrialization, corporatization and promotion of the brand of "drug capital" On the one hand, Shaodong clearly realizes that there is no experience to learn from in the management of Chinese herbal medicine market, and it must rely on its own exploration, but it does increase the uncertainty about the future.