Zhu Fushun, who sells organic green-shelled eggs, came out on top of the China’s Got Entrepreneurship Talent Awards. The competition began with nearly 600 students from across the country. Zhu wins RMB 50,000 in cash and the opportunities to sit face-to-face with VCs and angels.

As a featured event of 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Week / China hosted by the Entrepreneurship Foundation for Graduates and the Entrepreneur magazine, China’s Got Entrepreneurship Talents had 20 finalists making presentations to and being challenged by judges at the Shanghai International Convention Center.

Many people sell chicken eggs--Zhu sells green-shelled eggs laid by chickens reared in the open wild instead of enclosed chicken farms. Many people sell eggs in markets and grocery stores--Zhu sells them in fruit stores. More amazingly, Zhu’s chickens are fed with herbs instead of grains and Zhu walks chickens while others walk their dogs. That’s how his nickname “Chicken Walker” came by.

In December 2010, a photo of a Zhu walking a chicken on a leash through the streets of Chengdu went viral on the Chinese internet and the nickname was born. 

In 1979, Zhu Fushun was born in a peasant's family in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province. After graduating from a technical school in 1999, Zhu found a job in a logistics company in Chengdu. Through years of hard work, he gradually climbed up the corporate ladder and was appointed a leader in charge of the company' South China region. At the end of 2003, he started his first business, a freight company. Only a year later, Zhu had to give up his burgeoning business in Guangzhou because his son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and he returned to Chengdu to seek medical treatment. To pay off the large medical bills, Zhu started his second business, a chicken farm. Development of the farm wasn't always smooth, but five years later it’s a stable success, bringing in about 10,000 RMB in revenue per day according to reports.

In March 2011, China's top television station (CCTV) broadcast his story. During filming, Liu Yonghao, billionaire chairman of the New Hope Group, one of China's top 500 enterprises, decided to make Zhu his official apprentice. Liu had originally offered money to help expand the business, but Zhu told the billionaire that what he needed was not money but accesss to more sales channels. Those channels appear to be opening up to the young man as Zhu was invited to participate in the 2011 Summer Davos, a business gathering affiliated with the World Economic Forum.

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Blog post contributed by Cathy Niu with the Entrepreneurship Foundation for Graduates, the official host of GEW/China

tags: CCTV, chicken walker, EFG, Entrepreneur magazine, Liu Yonghao, Zhu Fushun