By William Wan Washington Post Foreign Service
IN CHONGMING ISLAND, CHINA The small-scale farmer is a dying breed in China, made up mostly of the elderly left behind in the mass exodus of migrant workers to much higher-paying jobs in industrial cities.
But on an island called Chongming, a two-hour drive east of Shanghai, a group of young urban professionals has begun to buck the trend. They are giving up high-paying salaries in the city and applying their business and Internet savvy to once-abandoned properties. They are trying to teach customers concepts such as eating local and sustainability. And they are spearheading a fledgling movement that has long existed in the Western world but is only beginning to emerge in modern China: green living.
“What we are trying to create is like a dream for us,” said Chen Shuaijun, a young banker who, with his wife, has rented eight acres on Chongming.
“But it is simply bizarre to everyone else,” he added, with a sigh.