He Quit Corporate Life, Now Makes ￥1 Million Selling Watermelons

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Zhou Ya, a young man from Gongmi Village, in the vicinity of Zunyi City in Guizhou Province, gave up his full-time city job to return to his hometown and grow… watermelons.

Who could have thought that the next big chapter of his life was to be found farming?

Zhou Ya did. Or at least felt that it would.  

29 years old today, the young man told reporters that he used to work for a company in Beihai, Guangxi province, earning more than RMB 10,000 a month while living a subjectively good life. 

As her grew older, Zhou Ya began to feel like an outsider, increasingly insecure. His parents had already been growing watermelons in the region, and through that continuous process, mastered its cultivation techniques. 

While his decision may have many of us scratching our heads over – after all, the agriculture field is not only exhaustive and somewhat tedious, but also a career “of the past” for the younger generations – Zhou Ya felt otherwise.

“I looked at it as an opportunity to learn new skills, including self-discipline and consistency, while contributing to society,” he shared in an interview. 

After long hours of training and studying, he was able to bring a variety of high-quality watermelons from outside his province, and at the same time, improve planting technology to go from traditionally open-air watermelons to greenhouse watermelons. This improved the yield and quality of the watermelon, and filled the gap between the spring and autumn seasons with ongoing production.

Watermelon planting has grown from 10 mu in the first year to 120 mu today.

At first, Zhou Ya was afraid that the watermelons he grew would not sell, which led him to start selling in small quantities. To his surprise, his produce gained popularity and quickly became a profitable venture. This year, Zhou Ya planted more than 120 acres of watermelon, totaling nearly RMB 1 million in income. And yet, despite such an impressive financial outcome for a young man his age, he did not feel satisfied. 

Driven by his passion to continuously solve problems, he began thinking about ways to mechanize the transportation process of his watermelons to get them off people’s backs – literally. 

“It’s harder to find people to pick up watermelons nowadays,” he says. “It’s really hard, physical labor.”

His vision is to transform his watermelon base into a modern agricultural network that requires less labor-intensive work through a high-degree of automated tasks to improve efficiency while maintaining the high quality that his produce is known and enjoyed for.

What do you think of Zhou Ya’s decision to leave his job and go into agriculture? What do you make of his vision for the future?

Share your thoughts with our community in the comments section below!

Editor: Crystal H

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