Looking to land a new future

Urbanization, tourism, pollution and stricter rules on environmental protection are creating new challenges for the traditional fishing industry in one of China's largest freshwater lakes. Zhu Lixin reports from Hefei.

Chaohu Lake has provided a living for generations of fishermen, but now China's fifth-largest freshwater body, in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, is being deserted as a growing number of fishermen take advantage of a wider range of employment options and turn their backs on the traditional occupation.

Last year, Xu Xiaogang decided to hang up his nets and take a job at a tourism development company in the Baohe district of Hefei. The change has provided the 38-year-old, who worked on the 760 square-kilometer lake for more than two decades, with greater job security in the face of a range of factors that are making it difficult to survive solely by fishing.