Migrants find better opportunities back home in Anhui

HEFEI — In their five-story photo studio, Shen Xiaolei and his wife start their day early in the morning, setting up cameras and preparing photo props for clients.

The couple worked in coastal cities before returning to their rural hometown of Yingshang county in Fuyang, Anhui province, in 2015. That year, they opened their first photo studio.

“It is the county’s growing demand for photography services and the promising market prospect that made us choose to return to open the photo studio,” said Shen, noting that the rural consumer market is expanding. Influenced by social media, many people from rural areas are eager to take personalized and fashionable photos, he added.

Approximately three years later, they opened another studio — the five-story one — in the county. The studio has become a soughtafter destination for eager customers, with its average monthly turnover exceeding 180,000 yuan ($25,400).

“I used to earn 8,000 yuan a month at most while working in the coastal cities, but now my monthly income is 10 times as much,” Shen said.

Formerly the hometown of over 2.6 million migrant workers, Fuyang has seen 63,500 migrants return to run businesses since 2008, thanks to the improvement of the business environment and the increasing job opportunities in the city.

Fuyang is not alone. Data shows that the population in Anhui has seen net inflows for four consecutive years since 2020, with a total net inflow of 266,000 people in 2022 and 2023.

With a growing number of returned migrants, institutions engaged in entrepreneurship training in rural areas have gone into overdrive.

At a media company in Fuyang, there are thousands of returned migrants receiving photography and new media skills training every year.

“The number of returned migrant trainees in our company has been skyrocketing over the past few years, and many of them plan to run franchised photo studios of our company,” said Yan Hongyu, founder of the company.

According to Yan, his company currently has nearly 400 franchised photo studios in rural areas in Anhui, and about half are run by returned migrants.

With younger and more educated migrants returning to Fuyang, the city has become a more attractive place for those seeking entrepreneurship, Yan noted.

Yang Guangshuo, 37, is one such entrepreneur.

In 2011, he quit his job at a game company in the eastern financial hub of Shanghai and returned to Fuyang. He told Xinhua that the local government helped him reduce the rental cost of land he sought so he could start an agricultural goods company in 2014.

Drawing on the experience he gained working in Shanghai, Yang leveraged internet platforms to expand sales channels for his products. By the end of last year, the annual sales revenue of his company had reached 170 million yuan, providing some 400 jobs for local people.

“Fuyang’s growing strength in human resources helps catalyze economic development and create more opportunities in the city,” said Hu Yan, deputy dean of the Innovative Development Institute of Anhui University.