Planter blossoms into a trader

Last year, Jinning county produced 2.4 billion fresh flowers on about 2,700 hectares of land for one yield, the Jinning Office of Flowers and Vegetables says. Yet 15 years ago, flower growing was a novelty for most villagers in Kunyang township, in Yunnan province.

It was then that Zhang Liang became a trailblazer. As the first to grow flowers commercially, many of his neighbors were at first skeptical about his prospects.

To learn about flower growing, Zhang, then 19, had read books and spoken to old farmers in other places in the provincial capital, Kunming. Over five years, many local farmers joined him in building greenhouses, and they eventually made a lot of money from it.