On a Friday evening in Wuhan, Hubei province, warm yellow lights begin to flicker on under the plane trees along Lihuangpi Road in Jiang'an district, lighting a stretch of market stalls.
The air is filled with the aroma of coffee. A street musician sends soft, rippling notes through the crowd. Visitors gather before the century-old Bagong House (Banov's House), creating the perfect scene for a photograph. A young couple crouches in front of a stall, carefully opening a bright yellow blind box. Inside lies a piece of turquoise sourced from Shiyan, in northwestern Hubei.
"It feels like you've dug it up yourself!" says Ma Tianyu, the 24-year-old vendor, smiling at her customers.
This is the Youth Market on Lihuangpi Road, a 604-meter-long stretch built in 1900 that was once part of the Russian residential area and is now a national-level tourism and leisure district. And the most vibrant scenery here is no longer just the 17 European-style buildings or the red-brick walls, but the dreams of a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Ma was nervous when she first set up her stall in September 2023. A junior at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), she had tried cross-border livestreaming and run a campus photography team.
When her teacher suggested trying the newly launched Youth Market on Lihuangpi, she gave it a shot, with just half a stall.
That day, she sold crystals, rough stones and mineral specimens. From morning till dusk, there was barely a moment to sit.
"I went home with a hoarse throat," she recalls. When she counted the day's earnings — over 4,000 yuan ($588) — Ma was stunned.
"I'd tried many markets in Wuhan, but Lihuangpi Road felt different," she says.
"It's an ecosystem. The Soong Ching Ling Memorial Hall, Bagong House, the site of the August 7 Meeting of 1927, a pivotal moment in China's modern revolutionary history, are nearby. Many tourists come specifically to see this place," she explains.
The crowd, mostly young people in their 20s and 30s, is a perfect match for her products. "It felt like I'd left a world of children and entered a world of adults," Ma laughs.
In August 2024, with help from the local Youth League Committee, Ma and her partner, Han Yue, moved into a second-floor studio in the neighborhood. The window faces the iconic Bagong House.
"When I get tired, I stand up and look out. The street is bustling, and the weather is nice. It refreshes me, and then I go back to work."
The two young women sell mineral blind boxes, crystal bracelets and custom jewelry — most priced between 69 yuan and several hundred yuan. Their breakout product came from an unexpected source: a 10-year-old boy.
"We used to sell 'see-through' mineral boxes — transparent, everything visible. People would pick them up, look, and put them down," Ma says. One day, the boy stared at the box for a long time and said, "If it were a blind box, I might actually buy one."
When Ma asked why, he told her that blind boxes are exciting because it's like "digging it out yourself".
She and Han took his advice. Within two weeks, the "see-through" box became a bright yellow blind box, printed with the words, "A letter from the earth". On its first day, all the boxes sold out.
Now, since her first half-stall, Ma's products have expanded from mineral blind boxes to custom jewelry and crystal accessories. Her average daily transaction value has grown to hundreds or even thousands yuan.
Ma is one of hundreds of young entrepreneurs who have found success in the Youth Market on this historical street.
Officially launched in September 2023, the market now runs every Friday through Sunday, hosting about 100 stalls along a 100-meter stretch of Lihuangpi Road. By late 2025, it had held 200 sessions involving more than 500 students from over 20 colleges.
"The market isn't just a place to sell," says Yang Peidi, who oversees the market.
"It's a launchpad. Many of these vendors have their studios right upstairs — it's a 'workshop upstairs, market downstairs' model. We keep entry costs low and control the mix of products: no more than two woodcarvers at a time, for example, to avoid unhealthy competition," he adds.
For promising vendors, further support is available at the Chuangjian Jiang'an youth innovation center, located about 800 meters from Lihuangpi Road. The center offers a year of rent-free workspace, free intellectual property legal advice, and low-interest loans. Since 2025,50.85 million yuan in such loans have supported 210 small businesses.
Zhang Jinfeng, 33, is one of those who found her footing here.
She has been making leather goods for 11 years since she moved from southwestern Sichuan to Wuhan in 2015 as a fresh graduate, after stumbling upon a video of an overseas craftsman.
"I thought, 'If he can do it, so can I'," she recalls. She then bought tools and leather and taught herself.
For the first three years, she mostly took orders through her social media feed. But growth was slow. She began trying out markets across the city. In 2022, she joined the Youth Market (on trial then) on Lihuangpi Road for the first time. It poured that day. As she scrambled to cover her leather goods — rain is leather's enemy — a customer told her not to worry and she would wait in a nearby coffee shop.
When the rain stopped, the customer returned and bought a bag.
That moment stayed with Zhang, as in most markets she had tried, customers came and went in a rush.
"There's a rhythm to commercial markets — fast in, fast out. No one has time to listen to your story," she says. "But Lihuangpi Road is different. People slow down."
That day, Zhang decided that these were the customers she wanted to build her business around.
"My leatherwork takes hours, sometimes days, to complete. It is a slow business, and I have found many customers here appreciate that," she says.
In April 2025, she moved her studio from Huangpi, a suburban district of Wuhan, to a second-floor space right above her Lihuangpi Road market stall.
Now, she sells at a ground-floor stall and cuts, stitches, and assembles leather in a second-floor studio directly above it.
"My bags cost several thousand yuan," she explains. "If a customer sees them for the first time at a stall, they might hesitate. The stall could be gone next week. But if I bring them upstairs to see my workspace, choose the leather, and watch me work, I build trust."
The model has paid off. More than 60 percent of her repeat customers come from market encounters. "If someone thinks of a leather item they can't find anywhere else, they probably think of me."
In her spare time, Zhang stands by her second-floor window, looking down at the street below. The tall plane trees forming a green tunnel, the sunlight falling on red-brick walls, and the outdoor cafe tables have a way of soothing one's mind, she says.
"This is a street that makes you, almost without realizing it, slow down," Zhang says. "And when you look around, everyone is smiling."
Ma Tianyu also likes to glance out the window when work gets tiring."The street is lively, the weather is good, and the old building across the way is beautiful to look at," she says.
"Lihuangpi Road is where my dream started, and it will be where my dream continues."
