Like millions of rural Chinese people before her, when Xing Jianli was younger she left her village and went to a big city, finding work in a clothes factory. But now the 38-year-old is back on the farm and making more money than she ever did at a sewing machine. She grows peonies—bright flouncy flowers that flourish in the countryside around the city of Heze, in her home province of Shandong in eastern China. To sell them, she live-streams from her fields to a virtual audience who pay for bouquets by tapping on their mobile phone. On a good day she can make 3,000 yuan ($400), about a month’s wages in a factory and an “impossible” sum in the days before e-commerce, she says.
The Economist
