Guan Xuedong's recent short video on Spring Festival shopping generated hundreds of thousands of views on social media platforms.

Hailing from Gaotaizi village in the city of Ji'an in northeast China's Jilin Province, Guan launched a social media account after participating in a livestreaming e-commerce training program in his village in 2022.

This training program encouraged Guan to return to his hometown after studying and working in cities for years. By capturing rural life through his videos that evoke a sense of nostalgia from the 1980s, his social media handle has garnered over 600,000 followers.

Following in Guan's footsteps, an increasing number of young people have returned home to engage in livestreaming e-commerce in this remote mountainous village. Since 2022, six such returnees have launched their own businesses.

To support such endeavors, the village committee has designated four rooms for livestreaming, with three for livestreaming e-commerce.

"Two rooms are used for selling corn noodles and spicy cabbage produced in our village, and one room is used for selling local specialties from Ji'an," said Luo Yuwei, Party chief of Gaotaizi village.

"In the run-up to the Lunar New Year, our livestreaming e-commerce teams often work till midnight every day to cope with surging orders," Luo said.

The village has built two workshops to produce corn noodles and spicy cabbage using traditional techniques, selling these products to customers across the country through livestreaming e-commerce.

Luo said that the hand-made spicy cabbage is particularly popular among online customers and sometimes it is so difficult to deal with surging sales that some orders need to be canceled.

Luo was among the earliest group of young people who returned to the village to start their own business. After graduating from university in 2005, he returned to set up an agricultural cooperative, helping fellow villagers sell high-quality agricultural products like ginseng, black fungus and grapes.

After serving as the village's Party chief in 2022, he worked to create local farm produce brands from high-quality agriculture and, subsequently, launched livestreaming e-commerce to expand the sales of the products.

The e-commerce boom has revitalized more villages in Ji'an, bringing additional income to locals as more highly educated young people have returned to take up livestreaming e-commerce.

Jia Yanjia, hailing from Qinghe village and formerly a tour guide, has been involved in selling local ginseng through e-commerce livestreaming for two years.

"My father's generation has been planting ginseng for decades, but the ginseng used to be sold through traditional channels," Jia said.

"Now, I engage in e-commerce livestreaming, bringing netizens along to witness my father digging ginseng in the mountains. This not only boosts sales but also helps more people understand the intriguing culture of ginseng harvesting," Jia added. 

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