Fruit growers in southern Xinjiang boost incomes through online sales

"My walnuts have been to the docks of Tianjin, 4000 kilometers away!" Jiang Shiming's eyes lit up with excitement as he talked about the "travels" of his walnuts.

Tuopuluke Township in Aksu City is an oasis on the northwestern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, with abundant water and ample sunshine. In 2005, under the government's leadership, the area vigorously developed its distinctive forest fruit industry, and farming families switched one after another to growing walnuts, which offer relatively stable economic returns and also windbreak and soil-stabilizing benefits. Jiang Shiming followed suit, replacing the 47 mu of cotton fields his family had farmed for years with a walnut grove.

In the blink of an eye, more than a decade passed. The gnarled, sprawling branches of the walnut trees had become a landscape all too familiar to Jiang Shiming, and the nuts they bore also brought comfort to his son Jiang Fei, who was far away in Yunnan studying and working.

"Compared with the interior, information and transportation here at home are still relatively closed off. At harvest time, everyone still picks the walnuts and anxiously waits for buyers to come purchase them. Sales channels are too limited, prices are always in the buyers' hands, and farming families are always on edge," Jiang Fei said.

Knowing that walnuts were always on his father's mind, Jiang Fei, now approaching thirty, began to learn to take responsibility and resolved to be a competent "second-generation fruit farmer." In 2014, leveraging Zhejiang Province's paired assistance to the Aksu region, Jiang Fei went to Hangzhou to take part in a rural e-commerce talent development and upgrading program. After returning from his studies, in April 2015 he founded his own agricultural products e-commerce company and moved into the Aksu City E-commerce Industrial Park.

"In the past I only saw e-commerce this and e-commerce that on TV, but I had no idea what it was really like." When it came time for their own walnuts to "go online," Jiang Shiming, who previously had little contact with the internet, began to worry a little and could not quite adapt. "That's normal. The internet is something you can't see or touch, but it can change your life and take you to see the world beyond the oasis," Jiang Fei said, comforting his father while plunging into the fields to sharpen his farming skills.

What Jiang Shiming never expected was that the family's walnuts were not only ordered out online before they even ripened, selling at a good price, but also attracted quite a few buyers from the interior to come and cooperate. "It's great to have timely information. People from far away can taste our ** big walnuts." Watching fresh walnuts being neatly packed into boxes and shipped out of the grove, Jiang Shiming's brow relaxed and his worries were resolved. He not only began learning to check agricultural information on his phone, but also got his own electronic account.

Jiang Fei, meanwhile, began mobilizing dozens of nearby farming households to "go online" together and increase their incomes. He runs 4 Taobao shops and handles more than 30,000 orders every year. "Now farmers are no longer just about farming the land well. This era requires them to take the initiative on the road of producing and selling their own goods, and to go further and further."

With a "crack," the tender white walnut kernel poked its head out of the crisp shell. Jiang Shiming chewed it carefully and shrugged his shoulders. "Spring has already begun, and every day I have to prune branches in the grove with the children's mother. These past two years, neighbors and fellow villagers have all been asking me about e-commerce, and everyone's ideas and habits are starting to change step by step," Jiang Shiming said with a smile.