Taiwan-born entrepreneur expands lotus business across China

Over the past 18 years, Taiwan-born Chien Fu-chuan has expanded his lotus planting base from Xiamen in Fujian province to other provinces, including Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Hubei.

"I was born in Tainan city, where lots of residents grew lotus flowers," said the 68-year-old Chien. "Since I was young, I felt that lotus flowers were so beautiful, so I had the idea of planting them when I grew up."

Chien began to pursue his lotus flower dream in Taiwan at the age of 30.

After 20 years of hard work, and despite achieving moderate success in lotus flower cultivation, he felt frustrated by the scarcity of land resources, which prevented large-scale planting.

Then, he had the idea of promoting his business on the Chinese mainland.

With an investment of 3 million yuan ($416,760), Chien began his business in Lianhua village of Xiamen.

In Chinese, lian hua means lotus. Chien was surprised to learn that the town, the village and the mountain were all named after lotus flowers.

However, he found nobody was planting lotus flowers there when he arrived.