But in that season, looking down across the snow-covered scenes from the top of Liuchunhu Mountain, Tong Jinquan saw a piece of raw jade: the whole southwestern Zhejiang lacked good products and one-stop tourist destinations, and his Longemont had the sky for the next stop.
太湖古镇烟花大会。几凡/摄
Tong Jinquan has this temper. He gets excited when he sees an opportunity, and moves forward bravely when he sees it. He said that he had only five years of schooling, so he did not believe in set rules. When others were afraid, he would dare to be the first. The same scene happened in 2015. Shortly after finalizing the investment intention of Longemont, Tong suddenly proposed that “10,000 rooms are not enough, but 20,000 rooms are needed”. Even the main leaders of Changxing county government were afraid of the risks that they went to Shanghai overnight to dissuade him. Faced with a series of questions such as “Where do tourists come from?”, “How long does it take to build it?” and “When will it be profitable?” Tong Jinquan took out a calculator to sum up the cost and benefit before the Changxing officials. “How many people are there in China, and how big is this market!” Excitedly, he patted the people around him on the arms, “This is the first time I have invested in tourism, but I am confident and will be successful!” Clutching the key to the market, he fulfilled his promise.
In the past three years, Tong Jinquan never faltered from the goal of “attracting 30 million tourists a year”, nor has he stopped investing. He said that he would invest here as much as his industries in Shanghai earned. According to the original plan, projects such as Circus City and Water World opened one by one, and performances such as Drunken and Beautiful Taihu Lake and Journey to the Magic Land were staged one by one. Taihu Longemont Paradise stands out for its diverse gameplay and splendid performance. Longemont has achieved surprisingly positive growth: In the past two months alone, it has attracted more than three million tourists, and the revenue in 2022 has exceeded 700 million yuan.
In October 2018, he recruited about 70 foreign actors for the rehearsal of the Fantasy Diamond show. However, the hotel could not open until the eve of the Spring Festival. Tickets for the performance could not be sold, but the daily salary of more than 200,000 yuan had to be paid. What should he do? Tong Jinquan persuaded Huzhou Federation of Trade Unions and the Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs to give free tickets to the employees first, and invite local villagers to watch the show for 90 consecutive days until the opening of the hotel. Longemont became a hit. He is a person who truly believes that “there are many paths in life”.
Before coming to Zhejiang to start a new business, Tong Jinquan was best known as the owner of Shanghai Longemont commercial real estate. His 55-year entrepreneurial life is a vivid portrayal of China’s reform and opening-up. At the age of 13, he learned making bamboo baskets and saved 50 yuan in 500 days. With the money, he bought a box of bees. After three years, one box became ten boxes, and he earned 360 yuan from the sale. He earned a total of 50,000 yuan in seven years. In the 1980s, he set up a factory, whose sporting goods accounted for five percent of the whole country. In 1992, he entered Shanghai’s real estate market and founded Changfeng Group. In 2015, when the entire real estate market was advancing by leaps and bounds, Tong Jinquan chose to retreat bravely, and invested in the growing tourism industry, which was still faced with insufficient product supply.
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, Longemont had officially operated for less than a year. It still required a steady stream of large investment. The half-finished projects, the livelihood of 4,000 employees and the government’s expectation to stimulate the development of the surrounding area ... all the pressures were heaped together on him.
Tong Jinquan “locked” himself up in a room on the 28th floor of the hotel. A few days later, he gave an order to the surprise of all employees — to transform several buildings in the scenic area with independent ventilation design as a quarantine hotel. Later events proved that Tong’s response brought the first opportunity. Since the second half of 2021, with its scale and facilities, Longemont has become the only extra-large quarantine hotel in the Yangtze River Delta region. So far, it has accommodated 50,000 people returning from overseas, Shanghai and other places in 458,000 room-night quarantine tasks.
