This year, Huaihua's agricultural products have gone global at an unprecedented pace. In January, Zhijiang's "Sunshine No.1" citrus made its debut in Canada; in July, a shipment of drinking water, sweet oranges, and selenium-enriched fresh eggs produced in Mayang was exported to Nauru, opening up a new market in Oceania for Huaihua's local agricultural products.
What enables landlocked Huaihua, far from the sea and borders, to get its mountain produce out into the world?
Quality as a Passport
Quality is a passport to international markets. Every Huaihua agricultural product destined for export is synonymous with high quality.
Sweet oranges are grown across 285,000 mu (approx. 19,000 ha) in Mayang County. Thanks to the selenium-rich sandy loam and the high-mountain climate, they offer a high sugar content and a rich fragrance, earning a golden reputation in the ASEAN market.
Selenium-enriched fresh eggs have become a common sight in overseas markets. After their debut in Hong Kong in 2023, they entered the Djibouti market, backed by stringent quality standards. "Mayang selenium-enriched eggs are of superior quality, green, healthy, and often in short supply in our country," said Sahal, a Djiboutian buyer. He noted that so far this year, he has purchased 11 containers—or 5 million eggs. At a rate of one egg per person per day, these eggs would feed his country's entire population for four days.
Huaihua's agricultural products made their debut in Nauru this year. As one of only 18 countries in the world with no rivers, Nauru faces severe freshwater shortages. Drinking water sourced from Xihuang Mountain at an altitude of 1,405 meters—crystal clear and naturally sweet—meets a critical need for this island country.
To address challenges in inspection, quarantine, and customs clearance for agricultural exports, the Huaihua Customs Authority has rolled out a three-pronged approach—guiding enterprises through registration, providing free testing, and facilitating exports—to ensure product quality while offering proactive support.
Customs officers deliver on-site services to enterprises, guiding them to establish a full-chain quality and safety management system "from field to table." Leveraging agricultural and food laboratories, they offer free testing for pesticide residues, heavy metals, and other contaminants, ensuring that products comply with international market access requirements from the very source.
Huaihua International Land Port: the Wings
If quality is the foundation for mountain produce to go global, Huaihua International Land Port gives them the wings to cross the oceans.
In the past, fresh agricultural exports were constrained by logistics efficiency and cold chain costs, which limited their reach. Today, with Huaihua International Land Port, the situation has reversed.
For perishable products like peaches and sweet oranges, Huaihua International Land Port has introduced a "fast-track customs and dedicated cold-chain transport" model, ensuring end-to-end cold chain from orchard to overseas tables. Recently, Huaihua peaches have been exported to Malaysia via this efficient route, delivering a taste of the fresh sweetness from the Wuling Mountains to Southeast Asian consumers.
Since the beginning of this year, good news has been pouring in from Huaihua International Land Port. Its Multimodal Transport Center and the Domestic and Foreign Trade Service Center have successively gone into operation, providing strong backing for Huaihua to expand its agricultural products to international markets.
As the "smart brain" of the land port, the Multimodal Transport Center integrates multiple functions including operational dispatching, warehousing and logistics, and customs supervision. Through the comprehensive integration of road, rail, and sea transport, goods can be transshipped seamlessly. The operation of the Domestic and Foreign Trade Comprehensive Service Center has further filled service gaps. The center brings together full-chain service resources—spanning policy, legal, tax, and financial expertise, allowing enterprises to handle the procedures from customs declaration and inspection to tax rebates and financing without leaving the port.
Data shows that enterprises can save up to 20% in logistics costs through Huaihua International Land Port.
A Hinterland Embraces the Ripple Effects of Opening-up
The overseas journey of Huaihua's agricultural products is a vivid example of an inland region achieving high-quality development and high-level opening-up.
"In the past, we always felt that the procedures for going global were so complicated and the journey was so long that we had little confidence. Now, Huaihua International Land Port has brought the seaport right to our doorstep, and the services from various departments are so attentive that we have the confidence to think big and do business worldwide." Lei Huaying echoed the common sentiment of many Huaihua-based businesses.
Today, the ripple effects of Huaihua International Land Port continue to expand. In addition to agricultural products, local bamboo and wood products are also riding the wave to global markets. Hunan Rongjing Bamboo Industry Development Co., Ltd. first shipped through the port in 2023, and now regularly dispatches dozens of containers every month, with its products exported to Thailand, Vietnam, among others. In the first half of this year, Huaihua's bamboo product exports reached nearly 20 million CNY.
From being "hidden in the mountains, unknown to the world" to now reaching across the world via international freight trains, Huaihua's mountain produce have gone global, forging a distinctive path for an inland city, with quality as the passport and the land port as the wings.
This article is from Hunan Provincial Government. www.enghunan.gov.cn.
Translator: Pang Yuehui
Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn
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