Recently, the Li Shizhen Qiai Industrial Park has settled in Hexi New District of Qichun County, Hubei Province——the hometown of Li Shizhen, the world-renowned cultural figure and Sage of Medicine. The project is a high-efficiency circular characteristic agricultural industrial park that was a key investment attraction of the Qichun County Government, invested in and constructed by Hubei Yihui Li Shizhen Capital Operation Co., Ltd., and under its full management, with a total investment of 2.05 billion RMB.

The Compendium of Materia Medica is renowned worldwide, and the hometown of the Sage of Medicine is famous at home and abroad. Qichun County is a well-known “county of professors” and also the place where the Compendium of Materia Medica and Journey to the West were completed. Qichun's greatest characteristic is medicine. The county is located on the north bank of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, at the southern foot of the Dabie Mountains. Its territory features interlacing low mountains and hills, a climate with cold winters and hot summers, and abundant rainfall, making it suitable for the growth of Chinese medicinal materials. Of the 1,892 medicinal substances recorded in the Compendium of Materia Medica, more than 700 are found in Qichun. Qichun is rich in medicinal material resources. Qizhou was already a nationally famous port and commercial town for the import and export of Chinese herbal medicines in the mid-Ming Dynasty, and its medicinal materials “ranked first in throughput among the Jianghuai region.” In 1996, the state designated Qizhou's specialized Chinese medicinal materials market as one of the 17 specialized medicinal materials markets nationwide. Qichun County has been listed as a production base county for Qiai, Eucommia ulmoides, and Magnolia officinalis. It currently has nearly 200 medicinal material plantations, with a planting area of 200,000 mu. The pharmaceutical and chemical industrial cluster, with Chinese medicinal materials and their processed products as its main resources, has been listed as a key industrial cluster supported by Hubei Province. Among them, the Li Shizhen Medicinal Plantation is a national key medicinal material planting base, especially famous for producing Qiai of the highest quality in the country.   

Qiai, which has successfully been declared a National Geographical Indication Protected Product, together with Qizhu bamboo, Qigui turtle, and Qishe snake, are known as the “Four Treasures of Qichun.” With a long history and fame at home and abroad, it is a famous, high-quality, authentic Chinese medicinal material, and both its stems and leaves can be used as medicine. Li Shizhen recorded in the Compendium of Materia Medica that “among mugwort leaves, those from Qizhou are the best; used as local tribute, they are valued by the world.” There is a folk proverb in Qichun: “If a family has three-year-old mugwort, the doctor need not come.” Modern medicine has proven that “Qiai” contains 17 known compounds and can treat many diseases.

To help make the “Qiai” industry bigger and stronger and build a famous county of medicine, in recent years the quality supervision department of Qichun County, with strong support from the county Party committee, county government, and relevant units, has taken the lead in launching the work of applying for National Geographical Indication Protection Product status for “Qiai.” It has established a standardized Qiai planting demonstration base of more than 5,000 hectares, with 9 townships, 120 administrative villages, and more than 40,000 farming households across the county participating in the demonstration. The county has also engaged researchers from South-Central Minzu University and the China Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Association to successfully carry out authenticity research on Qiai, and has popularized and promoted the “Local Standard and Operating Procedures for Qiai Planting Technology” throughout the county. After standardized planting, the yield per unit area of Qiai under natural conditions increased from 200 kilograms to 300 kilograms, and the county's total output exceeded 24,000 tons. The Qiai production and processing industrial cluster has developed into a pillar industry of Qichun County's pharmaceutical economy. “Qiai” series products sell well in more than 30 large and medium-sized cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, and are exported to countries and regions such as Japan and South Korea. With the national agricultural structural adjustment of the 12th Five-Year Plan and the proposal of long-term agriculture, ecological agriculture, and characteristic agriculture, good opportunities have been provided for the development of the Li Shizhen Qiai Industrial Park project.

According to Zhang Yingfeng, chairman of Hubei Yihui Li Shizhen Capital Operation Co., Ltd., the Li Shizhen Qiai Industrial Park project is located in Hexi New District of Qichun County, with convenient transportation, and covers a total area of about 2,000 mu. The park will be built in a “one zone, four centers” model——the main industrial zone will be supported by an e-commerce center, a health training and experience center, a small and micro enterprise incubation center, and a vocational education center. The park features Grade-A office building design, first-class property management, advanced industrial supporting facilities, complete basic infrastructure, and a superior working and living environment. Yihui Capital, as the park's operating institution, can provide enterprises entering the park with development ideas and operational support from multiple perspectives. Relying on an industrial chain design that conforms to industry development, the park implements four major development directions: closely following new economic models, expanding new agricultural ideas, actively raising the level of agricultural value, and vigorously improving agricultural livelihoods; it focuses on developing brand medicinal material manufacturing represented by Qiai production and processing; the new e-commerce industry represented by the Internet; the health preservation service industry represented by health technology; and the cultural media industry represented by Li Shizhen cultural operations.

It is reported that Yihui Capital Group was established in 2007 and is one of China's top ten private equity institutions with the greatest development potential. It has now established 13 branches and cooperative enterprises nationwide. Its core members come from first-class domestic asset management companies, securities firms, and financial research institutes, and it possesses high-end government and enterprise resources, extensive domestic and international capital networks and strategic resources, and rich experience in domestic and overseas capital market operations.

It is also reported that Zhang Yingfeng, chairman of Hubei Yihui Li Shizhen Capital Operation Co., Ltd., is a native of Qizhou Town, Qichun County, Hubei Province. Born on February 10, 1977, he graduated from the Medical School of Wuhan University in 2001. He is currently chairman of Beijing Yihui Yingfeng Technology Development Co., Ltd., chairman of China Yihui Trading Theory Research and Training Center Co., Ltd., general manager of China Hongfeng Capital Management Co., Ltd., and founder of Yihui Trading Theory. He is the formulator of the industry standard and compiler of the textbook for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology financial training project “Precious Metals Online Trader,” a specially appointed lecturer for MIIT financial training, and a specially appointed lecturer for the “Professional Financial Trader” training program of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is committed to professional financial education and financial intelligence education in China and is an advocate of financial strength for the nation.

Qichun is located in the central zone of China's “Central Triangle” and, together with large and medium-sized cities such as Wuhan, Nanchang, and Hefei, belongs to the “one-hour city circle.” The Beijing-Kowloon Railway, Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway, the Yangtze River golden waterway, and the Dabie Mountain hinterland highway run across its entire territory, providing transportation extending in all directions and making travel very convenient.

The Li Shizhen Qiai Industrial Park is a win-win project of strong-strong alliance, complementary advantages, and the pursuit of common development. The construction of the park will create a distinctive calling card for Qichun, Hubei, push the development of the Qiai industry to a new level, and open up a wealth-creating platform for high-efficiency circular characteristic agriculture.