Food tycoon goes back to his roots

Businessman Chen Yu has never been one to go with the flow. When his alcohol retail business made him a centimillionaire (a millionaire 100 times over) in early 2002, instead of taking the usual path and investing in real estate - which could have made him a billionaire - Chen returned to Zurong, his home village in Leizhou, a city in Guangdong province, and set up Guangdong Modocom Food Group to produce and sell local culinary specialties.

Having achieved success with Modocom brand chili sauce, Chen slowed the development of other potentially profitable products, such as dried turnips, and invested tens of millions of yuan in the renovation of the Leizu Shrine in Leizhou and the construction of a five-star hotel and a scenic spot featuring ancient-style architecture to boost local tourism.

He explained his unusual approach with a simple sentence: "I'm from the countryside." Chilis and turnips are two of the main crops in Zurong, and every year Chen's chili sauce factory buys the year's last batch of chilies - which are usually unsaleable because chilis grown in the north are ripe by then - so they don't rot in the fields.