"Besides our family members, we only have a handful of staff members who are all elderly men. It will be difficult to hire experienced workers because nobody is inheriting the skills," Fang Jianwei says.
Last year, Li Yan, 26, and her family opened a store selling zongzi (rice dumplings), a popular local delicacy in Fengjing, a town of waterways in Jinshan district of Shanghai.
With its ancient architecture and beautiful scenery, the town is a popular destination for Shanghai residents and tourists from nearby provinces such as Zhejiang.
Li hires experienced elderly women in the town to make traditional southern-style zongzi, which are stuffed with salty meat fillings.
Festive dumplings
At the beginning of this year, she started to post videos about her employees making zongzi to Kuaishou.
Much to her surprise, these short videos helped her family business find new fame and scale new heights by moving to online sales. Her Kuaishou account has more than 21,000 followers, and her most popular video garnered 1.3 million hits.
Some fans visit their store just to shoot videos or livestream the process of making zongzi.
"Our offline business is always good because there is a constant flow of tourists in the scenic area. And since I started to sell zongzi on Kuaishou in April, our turnover has increased greatly. We have to work extra hours because there are so many online orders," Li says.
"Many people are regular customers, who believe our zongzi are attractive in price and quality."
Prices for zongzi range from 4 to 10 yuan for each one. The store's monthly turnover is around 40,000 yuan, and she estimates that the figure in May is about seven or eight times of that, including online and offline sales.
Li says it's essential to carry on the old tradition of making zongzi. They built a kitchen range made of bricks, covered with tiles bearing traditional auspicious patterns. The stove can heat four large iron pots at the same time.
"Nowadays, many people use a pressure cooker to boil zongzi, for convenience and timesaving. But we stick to the traditional way to cook zongzi over a slow fire for three hours - that's why they are so tasty and full of fragrance," Li says.
Indeed, it seems that short videos are spreading the festive atmosphere online and getting more people involved in Dragon Boat Festival.
