On December 27, 2007, Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank (hereinafter referred to as "Chouzhou Bank"), originating from the heartland of the Yiwu business community, opened its first branch outside of Lishui. Over the past eighteen years, Chouzhou Bank has traversed every corner of Lishui's 17,300 square kilometers of mountainous and rural areas, from the Yunhe Terraces to the Suichang Gold Mine, from the She ethnic villages of Jingning to the overseas Chinese hometown of Qingtian. Its roots are closely intertwined with the growth of every distinctive industry in Lishui, deeply integrated into the pulse of Lishui's integrated development of "red, green, and gold" industries.
Runxiangye: Sinking to the last hundred meters
The countryside of Lishui is breathtakingly beautiful, yet also remarkably scattered. Nearly two thousand administrative villages are dotted among the mountains. Traditional financial services here often face the "last mile" bottleneck. When Chouzhou Bank first entered Lishui, it clearly recognized the need to launch a profound "service outreach" revolution.
To win this revolution, account managers shed their suits and leather shoes for hiking boots, shouldered their mobile terminals, and packed their "bank counters" into their backpacks. Their service routes outline a unique financial map: In spring, they are in the tea gardens of Damushan in Songyang, their fingertips gliding across business computers, the air filled with the aroma of roasted tea; in summer, they are by the mushroom sheds at the foot of Baishanzu Mountain in Qingyuan, understanding the cost of mushroom sticks while submitting online credit applications; during the autumn harvest, they appear in the fields of Bihuzhen in Liandu, calculating the harvest and storage funding gaps for farmers; in the depths of winter, they bring grain, oil, and other supplies, driving dozens of miles of winding mountain roads to ancient villages deep in the Yunhe Terraces, bringing warmth and greetings to the elderly and children left behind in the mountains.
In Hushan Township, Suichang County, villager Lao Zhou's plan to expand his fishpond had been repeatedly stalled for years due to a lack of collateral. The bank, through its "Rural Revitalization Loan," delivered the expansion funds to him within 24 hours. Now, Lao Zhou's ecological fishpond has become a highlight of local rural tourism.
In Songyang County, known as "China's No. 1 Green Tea City," financial services have deepened alongside industrial upgrading. The development story of Songyang Hengchao Tea is like the growth of a tea plant. Initially, he was just a small business owner tending a few acres of tea gardens. When he needed funds to expand, he received 900,000 yuan in "start-up capital" from the bank, like spring rain stimulating new buds. When he moved towards integrated development of "planting, processing, and trade," the bank proactively added another 800,000 yuan in support. In this way, accompanied by the lifeblood of finance, this "tea seedling" gradually sprouted branches and leaves, eventually becoming a lush tea mountain with its own brand.
As of the end of November 2025, the bank's systematic "whole village credit granting" project has covered 1,365 administrative villages in Lishui City, with a total credit line of 4.6 billion yuan, benefiting 30,000 households.
Zewenmai: Revitalizing Millennia-Old Crafts
Lishui boasts a rich intangible cultural heritage. Here, the ancient charm of the She ethnic group's colorful ribbons sways, the praise of Longquan celadon "capturing the verdant beauty of a thousand peaks" echoes, and the exquisite craftsmanship of Qingtian stone carving is etched in history. However, these skills, carrying the genes of civilization, mostly face a survival crisis due to the potential for discontinuity in their transmission and a shrinking market. Chouzhou Bank astutely recognized that supporting intangible cultural heritage is not only fulfilling its social responsibility but also a crucial path to tapping into the economic potential of local specialties and increasing people's income.
In Jingning She Autonomous County, Xu Liyuan, the inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project "She Ethnic Costume Making Techniques," wanted to develop new products and markets but lacked funds. Chouzhou Bank's Lishui Jingning branch conducted in-depth research on the cultural value, craftsmanship, and market potential of She embroidery, and, with "intangible cultural heritage inheritor credit" as its core, provided her with a 500,000 yuan "Reassuring Loan." This funding revitalized her studio and created home-based employment for over 200 skilled She women in the surrounding area. The ethnic costumes and handmade embroidered shoes they meticulously embroidered have transformed this ancient craft into a tangible tool for shared prosperity.
In Longquan, in response to the characteristic that "works are valuable but difficult to liquidate," the bank has made artworks that embody the hard work of artisans a "passport" to obtain working capital, helping celadon enterprises overcome technical difficulties and expand their creative space. In Qingtian, they provide special credit support for all aspects of the stone carving industry chain, including stone procurement, carving and processing, sales and display, so that "art on stone" can reach more collectors.
Financial support extends far beyond loans. The bank created the "Exploring Intangible Cultural Heritage, Tracing Footprints in Zhejiang" micro-documentary series, using financial support for intangible cultural heritage as a starting point to bring projects like Jingning She ethnic minority ribbons, Suichang long rice dumplings, Lishui refreshing noodles, Longquan celadon, and swords to the public eye in a more vivid way. Simultaneously, the bank also created the "Little C Explores Shops" segment, promoting local Lishui delicacies such as Jinyun sesame cakes and She ethnic minority mugwort cakes to a wider market, effectively boosting traffic and empowering small and micro-sized businesses. By combining online promotion to "break the circle" with offline financial initiatives, the bank has broadened the practical scenarios for inclusive finance in the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage. Furthermore, the bank has established intangible cultural heritage display corners in its branches and held customer salons… Here, finance acts as a bridge, connecting ancient craftsmanship on one end and a vast market on the other, allowing cultural value to continue.
Protecting the ecosystem: Empowering green mountains and clear waters
The concept that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" is vividly embodied in Lishui. As the first pilot city in China for the mechanism of realizing the value of ecological products, Lishui has steadfastly implemented a green development strategy for 20 years. Chouzhou Bank has elevated green finance to a strategic level, precisely focusing on three major green sectors to fully support Lishui in transforming its ecological advantages into industrial advantages.
In the field of eco-industry, an environmental technology company located in the Lishui Economic and Technological Development Zone is a typical beneficiary. This company has developed a unique technology that can "turn waste into treasure," producing new types of green wall materials. In early 2025, when the company was struggling with working capital, Chouzhou Bank took the lead in intervening, providing a 3 million yuan working capital loan to support the company's green development. Several months later, when the company decided to launch a new round of technological upgrading, the bank decisively provided an additional 2 million yuan in technological upgrading project loans, specifically to support the company in purchasing new environmental protection equipment. Today, the production line of this "green factory" has been completely transformed, continuously outputting its green value of "consuming waste and producing new products," leading a new trend in regional industrial recycling.
In the field of ecological agriculture, Chouzhou Bank's empowerment is more refined. In Jingning, relying on the "government-bank-guarantee" collaborative mechanism, it supports Jingning Runsen Ecological Forest Company in carrying out forest transformation and cultivation, which not only revitalizes forest resource assets, but also promotes a win-win situation of "ecological beauty" and "economic vitality" in the She ethnic minority's mountain forests. In Qingyuan, focusing on the needs of shiitake mushroom growers, it innovatively launched the "Common Prosperity Loan" to support 120 mushroom farmers in expanding standardized greenhouses, purchasing high-quality mushroom sticks and intelligent temperature control equipment, allowing small shiitake mushrooms to grow into a major industry for rural prosperity. In Qingtian, it supports farmers in building a digital "fish-vegetable symbiosis" system, helping to achieve a circular model of "raising fish without changing water and growing vegetables without fertilizing," enabling ecological agriculture projects to expand in scale and increase in efficiency. In Jinyun, it provides full-chain credit support for the local alpine water bamboo industry, from planting and cold storage to brand marketing, promoting alpine water bamboo as a "white jade bamboo shoot" for villagers to get rich.
In the ecotourism sector, Chouzhou Bank has focused on upgrading homestays, supporting the transformation of a number of old houses into boutique homestays, which not only preserves the village's appearance but also enhances the quality of tourism. In the past year, the bank has helped more than 120 households renovate and build homestays, providing over 60 million yuan in credit funds, turning rural cottages into "treasure troves" and promoting the coordinated development of rural tourism and ecological construction.
To systematically promote green finance, the bank has established a mechanism of "prioritizing green loan approvals, implementing preferential interest rates, and providing special scale guarantees," and is actively exploring the application of ecological product valuation results in credit review. In Lishui, protecting the environment is developing productivity, and finance is the key to activating this productivity.
Eighteen years: Growing and prospering alongside the city
Looking back on the 18-year history of Chouzhou Bank's Lishui branch, its value lies far beyond its performance of serving over 350,000 customers and disbursing over 100 billion yuan in loans; it lies in exploring a distinctive path for the deep integration of finance and regional development.
Deep within the mountains and valleys of Lishui, serving even the smallest economic units, Chouzhou Bank not only fulfills its responsibility of inclusive finance but also builds a solid and vibrant business foundation through professional risk control and a deep understanding of its customer base. In Lishui's transformation from an "ecological foundation" to "green development" and from "cultural resources" to "capital for shared prosperity," Chouzhou Bank's financial resources have consistently been a key driving force.
In the future, Chouzhou Bank will continue to uphold its original aspiration of "rooting itself in the grassroots, providing precise support, and coexisting with the city," empowering this land to write a new chapter in the realization that "green mountains and clear waters are invaluable assets."
