Chen Zifang, a native and resident of Xujiawan Village, Shuibuya Township, Badong County, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province, who was born without arms, herds goats in the hamlet. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)

Chen Zifang was born in Xujiawan, a small village nestled in the vast stretches of mountains that run through western Hubei Province under the administration of Shuibuya Township, Badong County, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, on March 2, 1989, without arms. His parents worried about his future, and his father died from cerebral apoplexy when Chen was only nine months old, leaving his mother, a woman named Lu Dongyue, to tend the family's one-third hectare of farmland from early in the morning until late at night and raise him and his 12-year-old brother by herself.

Chen was aware of the effort that his mother was putting in to support their family when he was a child. Her tenacity inspired him as he embarked on the long and painful process of learning to stand up at the age of four and later master various tasks that he needed to perform in order to take care of himself, such as dressing, face washing, teeth brushing, chopstick usage, and writing, with his feet.

In the second half of 2004, the Xujiawan native began boarding at a middle school because it was located much farther from his home than the primary school that he attended. He enjoyed learning, but the numerous inconveniences he experienced in daily life began to burden him and create obstacles as he got older. Shortly after he started his second year of middle school, Chen decided to drop out and return home in order to help his mom around the house and assist with the family's farm work. He eventually found ways to solve the problems he experienced and, having regained his confidence, began to think about what he could do to sustain himself a little more than a year after he returned.

In 2007, prices for live pigs rose 71.3% in April compared with the same month a year earlier, pork prices climbed 29.3% from March to April, and a whole hog could sell for RMB3,000 in China due to an acute pork shortage that the country was experiencing at the time. In the spring of 2008, a sow that Chen's family owned gave birth to 13 piglets. His mother initially wanted to sell them, but he convinced her not to because he thought he would be able to raise them and profit from them. Chen began taking care of the animals and harvesting grass in the mountains for use as part of their feed in order to reduce costs. The market soon became sluggish, however; and Chen failed to make any profit. He ultimately logged a net loss of over RMB4,000 after a year of hard work – a sum equivalent to the family's annual income at the time.

In 2009, Chen had the good fortune of receiving an ewe from a neighbour. The budding farmer took good care of the animal and eventually bred it until he developed a flock that gradually multiplied. He had an inventory of 35 head of sheep by September 2015 and sold 30 of them for a net profit of more than RMB10,000 that October.

Chen communicates with a customer via the WeChat social media and mobile payment platform on his smartphone using his feet. [Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu]

In early 2016, Chen attended an e-business training course organised by the Badong County government. Not long after, he opened a store online and began selling organic and speciality agricultural products that his fellow villagers produced.

Chen's lack of experience impacted sales in the store's early days, however; and he frequently received negative reviews from his customers at the time as well. In response, the budding merchant apologised, provided refunds, and paid careful attention to what was going wrong. He realised that the packaging and transportation process was too lengthy and, therefore, was often causing products to spoil by the time they reached customers and that the simple packaging that the villagers he worked with were used to using was insufficient for products like corn wine and free-range eggs and led to them breaking easily.

Chen began carefully selecting agricultural products before mailing them and improving packaging and accelerating delivery times in order to ensure quality and address the problems that had been occurring. He gradually began to cultivate repeat customers, and more suppliers became interested in selling their products through his store. In 2017, it achieved  nearly RMB1.2 million in sales, and Chen obtained around RMB60,000 in net profit.

Chen (right) picks oranges with two volunteers in 2020 after COVID-19 began to spread.

On April 28, 2020, the e-retailer began promoting his products on livestreaming platforms, presenting oranges that had previously been unsalable due to complications associated with the COVID-19 outbreak that had emerged to viewers, which added a new dimension to his sales and marketing efforts. Chen sat on the ground, grasped a knife between his toes, skilfully peeled an orange, and tasted it on camera in order to promote the fruit and provided various information about it and the cultivation process. His livestream was a big success and made it possible for him to sell six tonnes of oranges in just three hours.

The enterprising man records video using a smartphone mounted on a stand and also uses a drone to take pictures and capture video footage of his orchard and its progress. He also records himself engaging in activities that are part of his daily life, such as cooking, farming, and fishing, on Douyin, the Chinese version of the TikTok short-form video platform, as well as scenes from the lives of his fellow villagers, such as fruit farmers joyfully carrying baskets of oranges down from the mountains.

His efforts have led to more people becoming aware of the quality produce grown in the rolling mountains in the region he lives in, becoming interested in it, and purchasing some. In the past, high-quality, glutinous potatoes grown in the area often went to waste because the farmers who produced them did not always know of good ways to sell them. They ended up consuming potatoes that were not sold themselves and feeding them to their pigs, and some were not used at all. It was common for hundreds of thousands of kilograms of potatoes to go to waste in a given year.

Chen helped 147 impoverished households in Badong generate over RMB9 million in total revenue and provided 123 households that are located in the county but were not poverty-stricken with sales assistance from 2017 to 2021 and continues to assist people who live in the area.

His spirit of self-reliance in the face of adversity and the contributions he has made to poverty alleviation have inspired many people and resulted in him receiving an abundance of media coverage as well as several awards at the provincial and national levels.

Chen has accumulated 1.97 million followers on Douyin as of late December 2023. He has also been working on forming a complete operations team and achieving a greater level of professionalism and has been cooperating with well-known domestic bloggers in order to expand the reach of the high-quality agricultural products produced by the villagers he works with and make a greater contribution to rural vitalisation.