Farm gives mentally disabled chance to thrive

For years after graduating from a school for the disabled, Zhang Jianxin struggled to find a purpose in life, let alone a job, and his parents had begun to fear for his future.

The 21-year-old is intellectually disabled, putting him in the group that faces the most difficulty in landing work in China. Their employment rate is less than 10 percent, compared with 43 percent for the disabled population as a whole.

Yet things changed last year when Zhang's father took him to a job fair targeted at the disabled in their native Lingwu, Ningxia Hui autonomous region. It was there he met Ma Changxing.