China youths head for countryside living as job crisis mounts

BEIJING: Gong Chengqiang used to make 200,000 yuan a year in Hangzhou in a tech company before it closed down during Covid. He now grows strawberries in rural Zhejiang province and is expecting to lose at least the same amount after 40% of his harvest was destroyed by disease.

The 30-year-old decided to move to the countryside after an attempt at finance blogging failed, and he developed an interest in fruit.