If asked to showcase the development of China through Zhejiang with a few individual stories, the question "which ones are the most representative?" arises.

Following David Ferguson's exploration in Zhejiang, we have found some examples. In the video series Decode China: David Ferguson's Storytelling, co-produced by Zhejiang International Communication Center and Foreign Languages Press, there are vivid narratives that can bring insight to the development secrets of Zhejiang.

Jin Lishen was the first interviewee we met. Owning an agricultural cooperative in northwestern city of Ningbo, Jin's success has spread far and wide, with his cooperative selling agricultural products to Japan, Germany, the United States, Australia and Canada.

Born and raised in Ningbo, Jin speaks Mandarin with a strong local accent. The word he mentioned the most during the interview was "unexpectedly". He did not expect that as a son of a farming family, he could lead the whole village to a moderately prosperous life.

He attributed his success to two reasons. The first one is his own efforts, of course, as he had been trying hard to make a living out of the remote village since the 1980s. Second, the construction of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge has made the village he lives in transform from "the middle of nowhere" to a two-hour ride from bustling Shanghai. The shortened distance to larger markets brought opportunities and wealth to Jin and his fellow villagers.

"Infrastructure is what I consider to be the first key to opening the door from poverty to prosperity," Ferguson wrote in his book. And Jin's story is a vivid illustration of this.

What impressed us the most during the interview was that in Jin's company, or warehouse, to be more precise, women of different ages were working with their children or grandchildren around. Jin said they are the relatives of migrant workers of nearby factories and he provides them a job where they can both earn a decent salary and take care of children.

"The better they live and work here, the more attractive this place will be to more talents," Jin said.

Our second interviewee Wang Lichun did not go far in school. He dropped out at the age of 16.

As a native of Yiwu, a county-level city of Zhejiang and now dubbed the "world's supermarket", Wang is luckier than Jin as Yiwu developed as a center of barter trade in the 1920s.

Statistics about Yiwu are surprising. Yiwu Market, covering a business area of more than 6.4 million square meters, has 75,000 stalls. It has a daily footfall of more than 200,000 people and trades with more than 230 countries and regions around the world.

When asked about the reason to his success, Wang said: "Having a strong backing".

"The market is here and all we need to do is to perform well by developing good products and providing good services to our clients," he said.

Wang is now one of the largest producers of soft toys in China. His daughter and son are now both taking over his businesses as they have graduated from overseas universities.

Wang's daughter, Wang Qiuting, speaks fluent English and shows insightful business concepts as we talked to her. She knows clearly what path her family's business should take and how to keep on going.

She is a typical example of the second generation of Yiwu entrepreneurs. She studied abroad from the age of 16, the age at which her father dropped out of school.

Her education helped provide new strategies to meet the fast-paced demand of the modern business world.

The Wang family's business, built up over 30 years, is a real success story. There is no doubt many more such examples, which testify to a level of grit, hard work, and acumen that explain the runaway success of the Yiwu phenomenon.

If Wang Qiuting represents the second generation of businesspeople in Yiwu, Shen Bin's story showcases how the second generation of rural areas in Zhejiang are leaving big cities.

Shen runs two cafes in Moganshan town of Deqing county in northern Zhejiang. We met him on a sunny winter afternoon and he was preparing Chinese New Year decorations for his cafes.

As a well-educated young man, Shen shared with us his ideas of bringing more spiritual satisfaction to tourists.

His cafes hold regular parties for pets, which is not common in China, and he invites local craftsmen to demonstrate their creative process so that tourists can enjoy unique cultural products.

According to Ferguson, Shen's cafes "would not be at all out of place in the center of the world's great capitals".

Shen said that his opportunities come from the policies of rural vitalization that Zhejiang has been implementing for two decades.

"We are talking about rural vitalization these years. So here is the question: Are we vitalizing the rural area, or the other way round?" Shen believes it's the latter, because he is realizing his dreams and values in the countryside.