Paean to the power of plants

In a previous incarnation Zhu was a fashion magazine editor, and while on assignment in South Africa stumbled across a plant called Lithops.

"This thing is stone-shaped, and looking at it you would think it's from another planet," Zhu says. "I was intrigued and wanted to know more about it."

She began doing research on succulent plants, which not only sprouted hundreds of articles that appeared in magazines and on the internet, but turned her into a veritable succulents aficionado and grower.

"It has been wonderful to be able to pass onto the public something that I myself love so much," says the dyed blonde Beijinger with gold-rimmed glasses.

Succulent are hardy souls that are undemanding on attention and time, with little care but right condition, they propagate easily. Doing just that, before long Zhu had hundreds of succulents, and at first shared them with workmates and friends, and in March 2012 began to sell them in the hutong where she grew up.

"The sense of achievement in selling plants is totally different to what you get in publishing articles. The satisfaction is palpable when you see how much people love the plant you have grown."

Shortly after deciding to become a plant seller Zhu came up with the idea of running her own succulent-themed cafe, and within three days it opened in the Dongcheng district of Beijing.

In 2013 she quit her editing job to devote herself to running the cafe and in 2016 published a book titled Duo Rou Le Sheng Huo (Happy Life with Succulents), an introduction to growing succulents, of which she says 40,000 copies have sold.