Residents from Lijia town in Jiande, Zhejiang province busy peeling camellia seeds on Nov 23. [Photo by Xu Yu/Xinhua]

In our last episode about Jiande city, in East China's Zhejiang province, we introduced how rural start-ups have revived the local agricultural economy (check here). Today, we will focus on another humble corner of the city – Lijia town, where its time-honored camellia industry, which has just celebrated Minor Snow, the second solar term of winter, enters its seed-pressing season, its busiest part of the year. 

Zhang Zhiqiang, an inheritor of the township's traditional camellia oil-pressing techniques, is now leader of the local industry. He gathered together some 1,000 local families in 2010 and scaled up the industry with technology and efficiency. 

There are over 20,000-mu (1,333 hectares) of camellia fields in Lijia town, producing an annual value of 60 million yuan ($9.1 million). This has brought the profound industry back to glory. 

Lijia town also set up a specialized oil-pressing mill, which was renovated from an ancient workshop and is aimed at promoting and preserving the precious local techniques.