Discarded pearl shells are made into buttons in Yuwei village, Zhanjiang's Xuwen county, and sold to customers in big cities including Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and even exported overseas to India.

Yang Weiquan, 28, is the owner of a shell button workshop in Xuwen. He read computer engineering and practiced spoken English during college years in Guangzhou, which later helped his shell button business expand to the Indian market.

In 2014, two Indian purchasers found Yang on the Internet and started trading after they visited the workshop and inspected Yang's products.

The two Indians have become regular customers of Yang and one fourth of shell buttons he made were exported to India.

Xuwen is a large base for pearl production. However, huge amounts of shells are discarded after pearls were removed.

In 1990s, farmers in Xuwen tapped into the opportunities, making use of the wasted shells. They made them into buttons and sold them to clothing manufacturers. That is when Yang's father founded the workshop.

After decades of development, the workshop now has 35 machines with an annual output of more than 25 million shell buttons.

The production of shell buttons has also led to a rise in local employment, benefiting the local economy.

Workers are busy making shell buttons at a workshop in Xuwen county, Zhanjiang, South China's Guangdong province. [Photo/gdzjdaily.com.cn]