Livestreams put Hubei farmers back in business

Rowing a small boat loaded with a basket of crawfish, Wang Wenjuan started her online livestream in a fish pond in Hubei province on Wednesday.

She showed the baby crawfish one by one to the camera, and then released them into the water. "Look at the aqua-plant in the pond, the water is clear," she said.

"Now, I am going to feed the crawfish for you," she said and threw in a handful of soy beans.

"If you click the link and buy the crawfish, you become a supporter of us Hubei farmers," she said to the livestream room of more than 1,000 people on Taobao.

Wang is among the hundreds of thousands of farmers struggling out of the plight caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak in Hubei, which stranded agricultural products and delayed farming schedules.

It was Wang's first livestream after two months of staying at home due to the outbreak, which infected more than 67,800 people in Hubei and forced local governments to order lockdowns across the province.

Wang's family has a 4-hectare fish pond in Honghu city. Because people were not allowed to move around, farmers couldn't work from late January to March.

Wang said many of the crawfish died when she couldn't feed them in the past two months, so she had to buy baby crawfish to replenish the population.

In addition to Wang, many farmers and businesspeople in Hubei have used livestreams to sell products that were held back because of impeded logistics.

Yao Honghua, vice-mayor of Enshi in Hubei, joined a livestream on March 28 to help local tea companies sell their spring tea.

"I hope the livestream can help farmers' sales and boost the confidence of people in developing the rural area," Yao said.

People across the country have showed great enthusiasm in buying Hubei produce.

Taobao announced that it will make Hubei a marketing priority and aims to sell 1.2 million metric tons of made-in-Hubei agricultural produce this year.

Online retailer JD initiated a "Buy Up Hubei Products" campaign to market Hubei sellers on its various online platforms, and launched a "Spring Rain" subsidy plan to send coupons to buyers from April 1 to 7.

Zhu Wenjuan, a Shanghai resident, recently bought a lot of snacks on Bestore, an online food retailer based in Wuhan, Hubei.

"I like to eat snacks and I'll buy them anyway, so why not buy it from Hubei?" she said.

As for Wang, in the two days after her livestream she sold more than 1,000 units of her 1-kilogram packages of crawfish, which will be harvested and sent to the buyers in May.

"With the money collected in advance, I can buy more baby crawfish and feed them," she said.

"I am so glad to receive support from people all around the country, and I named these baby crawfish the 'seed of hope'."