Because of its geographical advantages, breeding, and extraordinary good taste, one rice in Heilongjiang province enjoys great popularity across China and even abroad, so much so that a delegation of Internet media representatives visited its home, the city of Wuchang, to get a look at this famous agricultural product, as people.cn reports on Oct 30.

Harvester hard at work at a farm in Wuchang, Heilongjiang. [Photo by Jiao Yang/people.cn]

Wuchang rice, which has been cultivated for more than 170 years, is so special that it has a Chinese geographical indicator. The city had more than 1,393 square kilometers of land planted in the stuff, with an annual output of 1.19 million tons, including 714,000 tons of top quality rice. It also has 293 rice companies that can process 5.60 million tons annually, as well as 426 special shops, chain stores, franchises, and distribution centers, and goes to 2,150 supermarkets across the country and to neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Local authorities report that they have production, management, environmental monitoring, product test and traceability standards for the rice, to ensure quality. And, they have software and hardware services using cloud computing and big data for efficient communications and digital management and more accurate decision-making on the product as well as an information portal for rice branding and to crack down on counterfeit rice using the Wuchang name.