Harvesting the rewards of a plum job

With an interest in both photography and handicraft, he opened his first social media account and posted videos about woodcarving, but upon returning home, he decided to make a living by supporting the family orchard.

"The sales of the produce had always been a headache for my family. In previous years, we would sell at very low prices to wholesalers. I thought I could try marketing our fruit by posting videos on social media," he says.

His first attempt in 2019 adopted the traditional method of going through wholesalers. The next year, because of the reduced fruit yield, he decided to sell the produce by himself.

However, because his videos had not yet gained traction online, sales were slow to materialize and the apricots were close to rotting on the trees. He posted about his predicament on Xiaohongshu, and managed to sell the remaining several thousand kilograms worth of apricots within a day.

He is now able to sell the fruit from his family orchard online, as well as produce from neighbors, at a 50 percent higher price than that offered by the wholesalers.

"It's easy to sell apricots to wholesalers, but they require underripe fruits that are picked while still green. The artificially ripened apricots lack flavor, so they have a bad reputation on the market. I want more people to know about the taste of naturally ripened apricots," Zhang says.

He will continue to help more of his neighbors sell their produce, and he hopes that more fruit farmers will adopt similar sales methods and increase their income by improving the quality of their product.

This May, Zhang posted a short documentary that focuses on his care of the orchard over the past three years.

"Farming, just as any other occupation, requires hard work. It's just that most people don't often get to see what farming is really like. If this video can give people outside this field of work some understanding of agriculture, then what I do is meaningful," he wrote in the video's description.

A top comment under his Xiaohongshu post says: "The documentary is very well shot. Fruit trees growing in the open air depend heavily on the weather. Farming is not something that can be hurried, but if you persevere with a down-to-earth attitude, the soil will reward you."