Thinking outside the box, villagers in Gansu profit from rare lilies

LANZHOU－"Is everybody OK?" Gao Zuowang asked as he began his livestreaming show in clumsy but enthusiastic English ahead of this year's Spring Festival.

The former Party secretary of Yuanjiawan in Gansu province, Gao was hosting an online promotional event featuring the village's new specialty－a soil-filled "blind box" with local agricultural products inside.

Blind boxes, mostly containing cartoon figurines, are all the rage in China, with the size of the market expected to exceed 30 billion yuan ($4.59 billion) by 2024, according to a recent industry report.