If we could rewind time to a factory floor over a decade ago, 19-year-old Ma Jie would be standing beside roaring machinery for endless hours, enduring harsh odors while repeating the monotonous routine of packaging bag production day after day. Back then, confined to his small station on the assembly line, he never imagined that years later he would return to his roots, build a thriving e-commerce business, and become a well-known fruit seller on the PDD Holdings Inc platform. Today, armed with just a smartphone and an online storefront, he ships premium local produce like Yuncheng apples and Xia County watermelons from his county to tables across the nation.

Born in 1995, Ma Jie is a native rural youth from Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, where his parents have always worked the land as farmers. After graduating from high school without a diploma or connections, he landed a job at a local packaging bag factory in 2014 at age 19. The assembly line work was mechanical, repetitive, and grueling — machines rumbled around the clock as cutting, sealing, and packing cycles repeated endlessly. The labor was intense, the pay was meager, and there was virtually no room for advancement. Stuck in this monotonous grind, the young man began to question his future: "Is this all life has to offer?"

A seasoned veteran worker at the factory noticed Ma Jie's restlessness and determination, offering him some timely advice: at 19, why waste his youth on an assembly line? Yuncheng is a major agricultural city in Shanxi Province, renowned as the "Hometown of Northern Fruits." Blessed with favorable natural conditions, the region produces abundant high-quality fruits and vegetables — apples, persimmons, watermelons, and more — supported by a mature fruit industry and solid market foundation.

Venturing into fruit procurement, Ma Jie began working from dawn to dusk, traveling between village orchards to carefully select premium produce, handling sorting, grading, and packaging while rigorously controlling quality at every step. Leveraging Yuncheng's rich fruit resources, his procurement business quickly gained traction with stable supply sources and reliable quality control.

In the early days, Ma Jie primarily supplied fruits to local and surrounding WeChat-based micro-reseller teams, but problems soon emerged. The micro-reseller industry has low entry barriers and lacks effective oversight — most operators have no formal credentials, no stable customer bases, and inconsistent reputations. In practice, he frequently encountered last-minute price cuts, delayed payments, broken contracts, and even resellers who disappeared entirely. Many times, Ma Jie delivered his fruit only to wait endlessly for payment, or worse, watch customers vanish with his goods.

"During that period, my emotions were like a roller coaster — I'd be thrilled after a good sale, but the next customer might just run off with the money," Ma Jie recalled. With unstable sales channels and mounting losses, his business was on the brink. Unwilling to give up easily, he began actively seeking new paths forward.

In 2016, while exchanging ideas with industry peers, Ma Jie first gained an in-depth understanding of the online e-commerce track. Watching numerous brick-and-mortar merchants leverage the internet to break geographical barriers and expand into national markets, he developed the idea of selling local agricultural products online to broaden his income channels. However, starting from scratch in traditional e-commerce proved to be a series of setbacks.

At that time, some mainstream e-commerce platforms had complex operating systems and obscure rules — a dizzying array of paid promotions, layered marketing requirements, and countless promotional activities left the novice completely overwhelmed. Joining these promotions meant bearing costs that squeezed the already thin profit margins of agricultural products; not joining meant zero exposure, zero visitors, and zero orders, leaving quality produce to pile up unsold. The cumbersome operating models and high startup costs put his first e-commerce attempt in a difficult bind.

Just as Ma Jie hit a wall and felt stuck, a critical turning point arrived. In 2017, a fellow villager introduced him to PDD Holdings Inc, explaining: "The platform's operating logic is simple, transparent, and fair — as long as your quality and after-sales service are good, you'll get traffic support and steady orders." Taking a leap of faith, Ma Jie officially opened a store on the platform, primarily selling seasonal local fruits like Yuncheng apples and persimmons.

Once onboard, he genuinely experienced the platform's inclusiveness and support for grassroots entrepreneurs. There were no complicated paid schemes or stringent entry barriers — quality products could earn natural traffic based on their own merits, steadily accumulating orders without heavy investment, completely freeing him from the operational struggles of traditional e-commerce.

In Ma Jie's entrepreneurial journey, the platform's support system was key to his rapid growth and market foothold. As a complete novice, whenever he encountered problems, platform operations staff would provide one-on-one guidance — from store setup, product listing, page optimization, and traffic matching to order processing, after-sales support, and promotion applications. Every step came with professional answers and detailed guidance, thoroughly solving the core challenges of inexperience and unfamiliarity with platform rules.

Moreover, the platform offers strong support to honest, quality-focused merchants — stores with good reputations and stable sales can receive special subsidies through its billion-subsidy program, significantly boosting product exposure and sales volume. Ma Jie's store initially focused on apples and persimmons, but in 2020, Xia County enjoyed a bumper watermelon harvest with abundant yields across thousands of acres. However, due to external market shocks, very few buyers showed up, and watermelons were left unsold on a massive scale. Farm-gate prices plunged to as low as 0.2 yuan per jin, and even at that price, many watermelons remained uncollected.

Ma Jie's father-in-law was also a watermelon grower, losing sleep every night over unsold produce. Unlike apples and persimmons, which are durable and easy to transport, watermelons are large, heavy, and have delicate rinds — prone to crushing, bruising, and spoilage during long-distance shipping. They are widely recognized as one of the most challenging products in fresh food logistics.

At a loss, Ma Jie immediately contacted platform operations staff for professional solutions. Drawing on years of experience in agricultural product e-commerce and a mature logistics support system, the platform team quickly customized a standardized protective shipping solution for long-distance watermelon transport. The approach used multiple layers of protection: thickened air-column columns individually wrapping each melon, custom foam boxes for structural reinforcement, and food-grade ice packs for temperature control — maintaining constant temperature with layered safeguards to prevent crushing, impact damage, and heat-related spoilage during transit.

With scientifically standardized packaging procedures and stable, mature logistics solutions, the industry's pain point of long-distance watermelon shipping was effectively conquered. Large quantities of Xia County watermelons began reaching consumers nationwide through this new e-commerce channel, alleviating the local growers' sales crisis. Thanks to excellent taste and outstanding value, Xia County watermelons quickly won recognition and praise from consumers across the country, with both sales and reputation climbing in tandem.

Recognizing the superior quality and broad market potential of Xia County watermelons, and following the advice of platform operations staff, Ma Jie decided to focus deeply on a single product line — concentrating resources on selling Xia County watermelons while continuously improving product quality, refining packaging techniques, and upgrading service experiences. After years of dedicated cultivation, he successfully built a strong online brand for Xia County watermelons, becoming a well-known watermelon seller on the platform with average daily sales approaching 100,000 jin.

Once word spread that a son-in-law of Xia County was selling watermelons online, growers came knocking on his door. Not only did they no longer worry about sales, but they also received better prices. Ma Jie's e-commerce venture not only solved the sales problem for Xia County watermelons but also raised local procurement prices, freeing growers from the pressure of middlemen squeezing their profits and enabling them to genuinely increase their incomes. Farmers enjoy stable sales channels while entrepreneurs access quality supply sources — a mutually beneficial, win-win model that has charted a distinctive e-commerce path for agricultural development with Yuncheng characteristics.