Another option

Meanwhile, in a related development, Zhang Zhaoyun, a former officer with the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences who now owns a company dealing in pesticides, has found that the land can also be used to grow chonglou (rhizoma paridis).

The herb is another key ingredient used by Yunnan Baiyao.

"I had heard people saying that it is very difficult to grow the herb, so I thought I would give it a shot."

He achieved success when he discovered that wrong seed selection was the cause of the problem.

"Some kinds of chonglou love warm weather and lower altitudes like 1,300 meters, while others favor chilly weather and altitudes of more than 2,000 meters above sea level," says Zhang.

"So, if you plant the wrong seeds in the wrong place, of course they will not survive."

Maoshan town is 1,800 meters above sea level, which makes it perfect for a wide range of varieties.

Before Zhang set up his business, the locals earned only a few hundred yuan annually from their land

Zhang first rented 349 mu of land in Maoshan to grow the herb, paying 1,350 yuan for each mu.

And locals were hired, mostly for weeding.

"If they work 100 days a year, they can earn 7,000 yuan," says Zhang.

Now, 1 mu of land can earn you more than 300,000 yuan, he says.

Zhang recently developed another 400 mu land to grow the herb, in an area that is 1.5 km away from the earlier plot.

Separately, the rosy prospects for chonglou have also spurred a growing number of villagers to work with Zhang, and he has agreed to offer seedlings and technical management to locals in exchange for roughly 30 percent of their output.

In a related development, Zhang has reached an agreement with Yunnan Baiyao, and all the herbs from the village will be procured by it.

"They (the villagers) do not have to worry about their produce being bought."

Further down the road, Zhang has plans to make inroads downstream by developing health products containing chonglou.

He hopes his business will be worth 400 million yuan by 2019.