Pan Penghui, an over 40 year old man living in an outlying coastal village in east China's Zhejiang Province did not expect that the Internet would provide him with so many business opportunities.

An owner of a valve producing firm in Shuilong Village of Yuhuan County, a six-hour bus drive from Hangzhou, the provincial capital, Pan's business has been booming since he bought a computer and began surfing on Net two years ago.

Pan describes the impact of the Net on his business as akin to an "earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale." His company's monthly business has risen from 300,000 yuan (about 3,500 US dollars) to one million yuan (120,000 US dollars).

Hampered by poor, rugged road conditions and little access to information technology, villagers in Shuilong (lit: "water dragon") have relied soly on crops as a means of eking out an existence. However, with the introduction of information technology (IT), in particular, the Net, local farmers in the village have been adopted a number of other ways to compete and survive.

Chen Xiuping, owner of the Yuhuan Carburetor Factory, has invited a college student to help him get access information from the Net. His factory produces accessories for China's largest automobile manufacturer -- China No.1 Automobile Works. Automobile accessories from Chen's factory have entered the world market and are sold to Italy, Indonesia, Turkey and other countries.

More and more people in the village have telephones and computers in their homes, attend technical training courses and surf the Net. The telephone has now become an integral part of the life in some 300-household Shuilong Village. More than 30 percent of the villagers are on-line. "We have come to realize that the Net is window to the outside world," Pan noted.

Today, Pan no longer travels to Shanghai, the country's largest commercial center, to access business information. He sits at home instead and communicates to businessmen as far as Australia.

Currently, 21 enterprises with an output value of more than one million yuan (120,000 US dollars) have set up their own homepages on the Net.

From January to October, total exports in Shuilong Village exceeded 41 millio yuan (5 million US dollars), more than five times that figure five years ago. Local villagers not only use the Net for business, but also use it for accessing all kinds of information.

Yan Jianqian, a young woman villager in her 20s, reads news on the Net everyday and e-mails her friends, and her family has also logged onto the Net. (Xinhua)