Guo Juan (Front) sells shoes by doing live broadcast at her factory in Gangu County, northwest China's Gansu Province, Jan. 10, 2020. Niu Junjun, born in 1987 in Gangu, started the shoe business together with his wife Guo Juan as a result of a love story. Niu and Guo were college mates whose love story started with a pair of Gangu hemp shoes, a provincial intangible heritage of Niu's hometown. "The comfortable and cool hemp summer shoes Niu brought to me increased my affection for him and then we fell in love," as Guo recalled. This special gift inspired the couple to start a shoe business and they soon opened an online shop selling Gangu hemp shoes. Now they have their own factory in Gangu. In 2019, they sold more than 80,000 pairs of shoes with the value at over 8 million yuan (or about 1.16 million U.S. dollars). Moreover, they collaborated with local women's union to encourage nearly 2,000 local female villagers to produce shoe parts for their factory. (Xinhua/Fan Peishen)
