Feature: A graduate's farming dream

It is early morning and Qi Xiaojing is driving her van to deliver vegetables freshly picked from her farm to the doors of residents in Ulanhot.

Qi, 34, a Mongolian and university graduate, manages her farm in Ping'an Village in Ulanhot city, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

She now has 27 hothouses and seven cold frames, covering 1.36 hectares.

"Vegetables and fruit can grow in cold frames in summer, and in hothouses every season, so I am able to produce them for the whole year," she says.

This May Day holiday, she held the second annual strawberry festival on her farm, drawing more than 5,000 people to pick strawberries, have local food and enjoy ethnic dance performances.

Last year, her farm had a net income of 160,000 yuan (23,200 U.S. dollars). With the financial support of the local government, she now has a new van and six delivery carts.

But it was not easy when she started her business in 2013, four years after graduating from Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology.

She borrowed about 10,000 yuan from relatives and was only able to rent one greenhouse, growing mushrooms at the beginning.

With her husband, Shan Chunpeng, she would finish picking mushrooms around midnight, and Shan would pack and deliver them around 2 a.m. with a second-hand truck that often broke down.

"He only slept three hours a day as he had another job at 6 a.m., as a construction worker," she says.

In 2014, she decided to grow melons, but they all died as a result of her rush to pick them.

"My relatives were no longer willing to lend me money, seeing my failure. Those were really tough days," she says.

In 2015, she came up with the idea of opening an online store via the social networking app WeChat, selling fruit and vegetables from her farm and other villagers.

"The villagers were growing good quality vegetables but did not have an effective channel to sell them, so I though that maybe I could help them," she says. "To my surprise, they sold really well in my online store."

So far, Qi has helped over 200 local households sell and deliver vegetables to customers in Ulanhot, as well as local range-free chickens to other cities in China, such as Beijing. Each family's income has increased by about 6,000 yuan a year on average.

"With Qi taking charge of delivery and sales, I no longer have to take a bus to the city and be a street vendor," says Xing Changqing, 54, a villagers who sells Qi cucumbers.

Guo Shihuai, the village's Communist Party chief, says that unlike local villagers who tend to be conservative and afraid of risks, university graduates like Qi are brave enough to try new things.

Growing up in a rural area, Qi's father expected her to stay in the city after graduation, but she insisted on returning to the countryside.

"There is a sense of achievement when I can share the benefits with the villagers. Sharing is important for an entrepreneur," she says.

With Qi taking the lead, 20 households in the village have started greenhouse planting businesses.

Qi visited several agricultural expos, and took training courses in Beijing last year, bringing more fresh ideas to her village.

She plans to open a delivery station in June, the first in Ulanhot, delivering fresh agricultural products.

"I hope that I will be able to understand market demand better to realize my dream of selling products from my farm and villagers to more cities in the country," she says. Endi