Chinese farmers turn to e-commerce to sell medicinal herbs

Farmers in Guanyeping village, in China's Henan province, are using e-commerce via Taobao to sell herbs for Chinese medicine, significantly improving their standard of living.

Du Qianli is the founder and owner of Gift of the Mountain Products Company, the first Taobao shop selling organic herbs gathered from Taihang mountain.

It is an isolated mountain where about 100 poor farmers scratch out a living growing wheat and corn -- just as their families have done for generations.

As the video shows, villagers now supplement their meagre income by foraging in the surrounding forests for medicinal herbs and plants such as forsythia and hawthorn, which are used in Chinese medicine.