‘Strawberries are my hope’: woman runs fruit farm to pay for her leukaemia treatment and inspires social media in China
- When Zhang Meihua was diagnosed with leukaemia 13 years ago, she says she was close to having a breakdown
- Today she credits her thriving strawberry farm and online order business with helping her survive financially and emotionally
A Chinese woman fighting leukaemia who says she has kept the disease at bay for the last 13 years by running a strawberry farm has inspired millions on mainland social media.
Shanghai resident Zhang Meihua, a member of the Miao ethnic group from Hunan province in central China, has trended online after posting her story about how running a strawberry farm and living with a strong will helped her overcome the challenges of her leukaemia diagnosis, eastday.com reported.
When Zhang was diagnosed with leukaemia 13 years ago, she was close to having a breakdown. But despite the exhausting struggle of living with the disease, she said she was determined to keep running her farm as she knew it could pay for the treatment she needed.
She said when she first started the farm her business team didn’t know how to market fresh strawberries online as the fruit had a short shelf life once picked.
“We are farmers so we didn’t know much about e-commerce. We were facing huge challenges,” Zhang recalled.
“There was one occasion where I confused customers’ personal information with order numbers.”