Deep in the mountains at the junction of Hubei and Chongqing, a local traditional Chinese medicine company called “Youyoucao Eyu” is quietly staging a digital “counterattack.” While the outside world is still debating how internet giants are expanding into lower-tier markets, this traditional pharmaceutical enterprise rooted in the Eyu border region has proven in its own way that high-quality medicinal herbs from remote mountains can also take flight with the help of the internet.
The story begins last autumn. Old Zhou, the founder of Youyoucao Eyu, held his first live-streaming session in front of his phone camera at a medicinal herb base at the foot of the Shennongjia Mountains, digging for Polygonatum. There was no professional lighting, no beauty filters—only hands covered in soil and the rolling green mountains behind him. Unexpectedly, this “rustic” live stream broke the previous month’s total order volume in a single day. Old Zhou still remembers the moment vividly: “Someone in the chat asked if this was a special effect. I shoved the phone right up to the freshly dug Polygonatum and said, ‘Smell the medicinal aroma yourself.’”
This accidental success ignited Youyoucao Eyu’s determination to undergo an internet transformation. But what truly put the company on the fast track was the subsequent launch of the “Eyu Herbal Digital Traceability Project.” At the medicinal herb planting base in Enshi Prefecture, every plant from Youyoucao Eyu was tagged with a QR code. By scanning the code, consumers can view the entire process from sowing and fertilizing to harvesting, and even watch real-time footage of local farmers at work. This “visible trust” has become a unique trump card in the chaotic traditional Chinese medicine e-commerce market.
“Before, we relied on distributors, and profits were squeezed layer by layer, leaving very little money for the farmers,” admitted Wang Min, the operations director of Youyoucao Eyu, in an interview. “The biggest direct benefit of the internet is cutting out the middlemen. Now, our fresh gastrodia can go from the field to the consumer in as little as 36 hours.” Data shows that over the past year, Youyoucao Eyu, through its self-built e-commerce platform and live-streaming sales, has seen its online sales share leap from less than 5% to 37%, driving an average income increase of over 20,000 yuan for more than 300 local farming households.
However, the transformation has not been smooth sailing. The weak network infrastructure in the Eyu border area and persistently high logistics costs once brought the company’s internet push to a bottleneck. Late last year, the company partnered with the local government and China Mobile to build a 5G base station at a medicinal herb base at an altitude of 1,800 meters. The day the base station was activated, Old Zhou held a “first 5G live stream” on the mountain. The signal was full, and the picture was so clear that even the dewdrops on the leaf veins were visible. That live stream attracted over 80,000 concurrent viewers, setting a record for local agricultural product live streams.
Youyoucao Eyu’s internet journey has also caught the attention of industry observers. An expert from the China Traditional Chinese Medicine Association commented, “It represents a kind of ‘grassroots’ digital transformation—no flashy concepts, no burning cash on traffic, but using the simplest methods to maximize the authenticity and quality of the herbs.” For the vast number of small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises, this path may offer more practical reference value than those lofty “industrial internet” stories.
Today, Youyoucao Eyu’s e-commerce team has expanded to 40 people, half of whom are young returnees. Xiao Chen, born in 1995, is one of them. He manages the company’s Douyin account, and a short video about “herb collectors in the deep mountains of Eyu” garnered over 2 million likes. Xiao Chen said, “I used to think my hometown was backward, but now I realize that what we lack most isn’t resources—it’s the ability to make those resources visible.”
As night falls, scattered lights begin to twinkle in the mountains along the Eyu border. They come from Youyoucao Eyu’s newly built e-commerce warehouse, where workers are packing medicinal herb parcels to be shipped nationwide. Old Zhou stands at the warehouse entrance, the glow of his phone screen illuminating his face. He is checking the evening’s live-stream data, a slight smile curling at the corners of his mouth. For this enterprise born in the deep mountains and growing in the internet age, the true story of “Youyoucao” may have only just begun.