Seizing the moral high ground, LI Mingyan has yielded unusually brilliant results. On the morning of 8 December, the Fifth Moral Model of Jinhua Award Ceremony sponsored by Jinhua Municipal Party Committee and Jinhua Municipal Government, and organized by Publicity Department of Jinhua Municipal Party Committee, Jinhua Municipal Civilization Office, and Jinhua Broadcasting System was held in Jinhua. Jinhua Municipal Party Secretary ZHAO Guangjun, Mayor YIN Xuequn and other leaders attended the meeting and awarded prizes to moral models.

 At the award ceremony, President of Zhejiang ShouXianGu Institute of Rare Medicinal Plants and ShouXianGu’s Chairman and Researcher LI Mingyan won the title of “Moral Model of Jinhua”. 

 In the presentation of the title, it is said: Benefiting the people is to improve people’s livelihood with wisdom and efforts. LI Mingyan, the “Spark Leader of Chinese Youth”, has devoted himself to the research on the cultivation of rare edible mushrooms and traditional Chinese medicinal materials as well as its industrial development. 

He serves agriculture, rural areas and farmers with science and technology, and keeps forging ahead with his focus on health, beauty and longevity. When one drinks water, one must never forget where it comes from. Every step forward of the society is saturated with the sweat of countless cultivators. 

LI Mingyan, born in 1960 in Wuyi, is a leading talent in the Ten-Thousand Talents Program: National High-Level Talent Special Support Plan who enjoys the special government allowances issued by the State Council, researcher, senior agronomist, Chairman of ShouXianGu Botanical Co., Ltd. and Director of Wuyi Research Institute of Fungi. He holds the concurrent posts as the Vice Chairman of China Medicine Education Association, Vice President of China Edible Fungi Association and Chairman of Zhejiang TCM Industry Association. 

While developing his main cause, LI Mingyan seeks to serve agriculture, rural areas and farmers with science and technology to promote the development of agricultural and increase the farmers’ incomes, thus contributing to the construction of new countryside. He has won dozens of awards and titles such as National Model Worker, Pacesetter of National Spark Leaders, National May 1st Labor Medal, China’s Outstanding Builders of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, Zhejiang Young and Middle-Aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions and Influential Zhejiang Businessmen. 

In 1979, he began to take over the family’s business after graduating from school and started his research on wild-imitated TCM cultivation and processing techniques. In 1982, he won initial success for the tremella cultivation with substitutes. In the spring of 1985, major breakthroughs were made in the wild mushroom cultivation with substitutes, the project of which was listed as the National Spark Program in 1986. Soon afterward, LI Mingyan was transferred to Wuyi Science and Technology Committee, responsible for technology research and promotion of the project. In 1989, he was successively awarded the “Pacesetter of National Spark Leaders” and “Spark Leader of Chinese Youth”.

In 1990, he was selected by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research for further studies in Japan. After returning to China, LI Mingyan continued to carry out high temperature mushroom test and succeeded in breeding a new variety of lentinus edodes – “Wuxiang 1”, which can be easily cultivated in the environment of low altitude, mid-levels and high temperature seasons. On this basis, the “four-season cultivation and year-round supply” of Chinese mushroom was realized. Till present, “Wuxiang 1” is also main lentinus edodes cultivar in China. 

According to incomplete statistics, more than 70 billion bags of lentinus edodes are planted every year, with the output value exceeding RMB 50 billion Yuan. For this achievement, LI Mingyan was awarded the Second Prize of the National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology, and was even hailed by the media and mushroom farmers as the “Father of High-Temperature Lentinus Edodes” and “Yuan Longping in the Fungi World”.

The trip to Japan made LI Mingyan realize that as people’s living standard improves, “organic TCM” is bound to be the future of modern agriculture and modern TCM. For this reason, he founded Jinxing Edible Fungi Co., Ltd. in 1993, hoping to introduce Japan’s modern agricultural concept to China. 1997 witnessed the establishment of another company of his - ShouXianGu Botanical Co., Ltd. In 2003, the ancestral brand -“Longevity Valley” was officially restored, and the slogan of “building No.1 organic TCM brand” was put forward.

 “People are supposed to do something useful for the society”. Despite the growing business, researcher LI has never forgotten his original intention, successively bringing the domestically first new variety of ganoderma lucidum – “Xianzhi 1”, “Xianzhi 2” which is cultivated after space mutation and comprehensive seed selection, “Xianhu 1”, “Xianhu 2” and sporoderm-broken or sporoderm-removal technologies for ganoderma lucidum spore powder to the world. Till present, LI Mingyan has been granted ten innovation patents. 

These innovative technologies made him a leading figure and the company he has founded a benchmark in the industry. The promotion and application of the research results also greatly promotes the positive development of health industry. 

  LI Mingyan always says that as a pharmaceutical company, it is ShouXianGu’s eternal pursuit to serve the public for their health, beauty and longevity with sincere heart and good medicine. 

For this purpose, LI Mingyan had started researching and developing the “wild-imitated organic cultivation techniques” for rare traditional Chinese medicinal materials before the country issued the Administrative Measures on Organic Product Certification.

 After that, it took him more than 20 years to establish a large-scale standardized base for cultivation of such rare traditional Chinese medicinal materials as dendrobium officinale, log-cultivated ganoderma lucidum and Crocus Sativus. The base has passed the national GAP certification for TCM as well as Chinese and EU organic certifications for TCM base, ensuring the safety, efficacy, reliability and controllability of the traditional Chinese medicinal materials and organic products.

  For better efficacy of TCM, both safe and fine traditional Chinese medicinal materials and breakthroughs in processing techniques are required. After more than a decade of research by LI Mingyan and his research team, ShouXianGu’s ganoderma lucidum spore powder processing techniques have been updated to the third-generation “sporoderm-removal technique” from the first-generation “sporoderm-broken” technique. It means that the international leading sporoderm-removal technology has been created on the basis of sporoderm-broken technology. 

With this technology, non-medical parts such as shells of sporoderm can removed, greatly improving the purity of ganoderma lucidum spore powder, and solving the problem of low efficacy of conventional spore powder. 

LI Mingyan further said, “We will persist in making safe, effective, stable and controllable products. Food and drugs are two products concerning people’s life and health. Their safety is the greatest issue in the world and cannot be slightly neglected. Our company will keep adhering to the concept of the harmony between heaven, earth and mankind, and abiding by the rule that only products with superior quality can be introduced to the market. In the future, we will concentrate on researching and producing genuine, safe and effective drugs to contribute to the health, beauty and longevity of the people.