A view of a tea garden in Yuhuan, a county-level city in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/WeChat account: tzfb001]

The campaign launched by Yuhuan, a county-level city in Taizhou to attract youth to start businesses in rural areas has been bearing dividends.

An increasing number of young people who used to work outside have since returned to their hometown to tap business opportunities in the thriving rural tourism and agriculture sectors, thus driving rural vitalization efforts.

Among these young entrepreneurs are Chu Liming and her elder brother Chu Jianbo, who opened a 300-mu (20 hectares) pomelo orchard in their hometown of Zhang'ao village, Qinggang town.

The pomelo grown by them have been selling well online. Last year, the siblings even hired an online celebrity to promote the fruit through livestreams, which generated 1.48 million yuan ($227,692) in sales.

The duo has also set aside a zone in the orchard to pilot a program in which visitors are allowed to plant pomelo trees themselves.

Chen Qiyu, another young man from Yuhuan, has achieved success by running homestays.

Due to the rising popularity of his hometown as a tourism destination, Chen returned to Jishan Island in Yuhuan county and opened two homestays which have received more than 5,000 guests since it was opened in 2019. Chen is planning to launch another homestay later this year.

Meanwhile, Lin Zhaoshui has reclaimed a wasteland near a volcanic vent on Shifeng Mountain on Damaiyu Island in Yuhuan to build a tea garden.

The tea garden receives about 5,000 tourists every year. Its tea output value in the first half of this year grew by over 30 percent year-on-year, according to Lin.