In a flower livestream studio in Chang'an Town, Haining City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, the host was busy promoting various best-selling flowers during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, while warehouse staff in the back office were busy packing and shipping goods, creating a bustling scene. Zheng Huijun, the head of the company that owns the livestream studio, said online sales now account for more than half of the company's total sales.
The livestream studio is set up in the rural fields, connecting to a vast market through the internet. In Jiaxing, what kind of consumption vitality can this wave of digital villages stimulate? In September, the "Digital Commerce Empowers Agriculture · Jiaxing Products Shared Prosperity" 2026 Jiaxing Digital Village Consumption Season event was held. According to incomplete statistics, during the event, the city carried out more than 4,300 livestreams and achieved sales of more than 178 million yuan.
From the fields to the "cloud shelves," the digital economy is accelerating the restructuring of local rural consumption scenarios, with three particularly striking changes.
The first is expanding channels, allowing rural goods to "go online" and onto platforms. During the consumption season, Jiaxing encouraged specialty agricultural products to conduct online sales through mainstream e-commerce, instant delivery and community group buying platforms such as Taobao, Douyin and Dingdong Maicai, and launched supporting consumption promotion activities such as limited-time flash sales and full-reduction discounts, accelerating the shift of rural goods from self-production and self-sales to "online direct sales." Among them, Haiyan County held a special grape livestream, mainly promoting national geographical indication products, selling 2,014 kilograms of grapes and achieving sales of 110,000 yuan; Haining City organized 15 rural e-commerce enterprises to participate in the event, focusing on flowers and gardening and local specialty agricultural products for livestreams, with cumulative livestreams exceeding 600 sessions and online sales exceeding 20 million yuan; Jiaxing Economic and Technological Development Zone organized 6 merchants to carry out 20 agricultural assistance livestreams, distributed 6 million yuan in consumption coupons, and directly drove sales of 20 million yuan... Haiyan County held a special grape livestream. Photo provided by the Publicity Department of the Jiaxing Municipal Party Committee.
One livestream after another is not only about selling products, but also about continuously broadening new paths for specialty products to "go out."
The second is strengthening talent, making more "new farmers" the protagonists of rural e-commerce. In digital villages, goods are the foundation, and people are the key. During the consumption season, Xiuzhou District's "Xiuxingbo · Shared Prosperity Workshop" carried out more than 10 thematic public welfare training sessions, covering more than 300 participants, and through the "account accompaniment" and "mentorship" shared prosperity mentor mechanism, cultivated a total of 73 influencer accounts and generated income of more than 1.9 million yuan; Majiaqiao Village in Jiashan County, targeting farmers' shortcomings in digital marketing capabilities, carried out public welfare training on AI short video creation, from AI copywriting scripts to agricultural product short video shooting and editing, helping farmers move from "being able to make products" to "being able to tell product stories"... As more rural business entities learn to use traffic to find customers, use content to tell stories and use platforms to do business, the effect of "cultivating one person, driving one household, radiating one area" is gradually emerging.
The third is looking at scenarios, making rural consumption no longer limited to agricultural products. The value of digital villages is not only about selling a box of grapes or a pot of flowers to farther places, but also about bringing rural scenery, culture and experiences to consumers. Focusing on the theme of "poetic and picturesque Jiangnan," Jiaxing actively promoted two-way empowerment between online traffic and offline experiences, further expanding the boundaries of rural consumption. Nanhu District combined real farm scenes to carry out agricultural experience promotion, turning pastoral scenery and farming activities into online communication content, guiding consumers from "seeing it online" to "walking in"; Jiashan County's Yunlanwan Scenic Area seized the Mid-Autumn Festival and the scenic area's anniversary and other nodes to launch a series of activities such as a Chinese-style moon worship ceremony, autumn hot spring wellness and food handmade DIY, enriching all-for-one consumption formats.
Behind this transformation, the continuous support of talent and education is indispensable. "Rural e-commerce development needs platforms, and even more needs people who understand products, the market and communication." Yin Yashu, Party branch secretary of the Modern Business College of Jiaxing Vocational and Technical College, introduced that the school has built on-campus and off-campus e-commerce talent training bases and regularly carries out special services such as e-commerce skills training, agricultural product brand building, livestream operation guidance and entrepreneurship incubation and cultivation. Through "team + technology + brand," it will help more rural business entities improve their digital operation capabilities.
"Next, we will continue to consolidate the results of the event, improve the long-term mechanism for e-commerce to assist agriculture, carry out origin livestreams and e-commerce talent training on a regular basis, deepen the integrated development of agriculture, culture, tourism and commerce, continuously broaden upward channels for agricultural products, and provide strong support for promoting farmers' income growth, improving rural consumption quality and comprehensively advancing rural revitalization," said a relevant person in charge of the Jiaxing Municipal Bureau of Commerce.