Dong Liping, a 29-year-old farmer from Sichuan province, has been working on a poetry magazine with a rural theme for more than two years. With his magazine, Dong hopes to feature and raise profiles of poets that write about life in villages. Recently, Dong received the final version of his first issue.

“I am not trying to get famous by doing this. I hope [the magazine] can be a platform for rural-themed poetry,” said Dong, adding that the periodical, titled “Farmer Poets,” will be aimed at fellow poets.

With his passion for literature, Dong has been writing for magazines for the past few years. However, he was forced to open an online shop in order to make ends meet. Even so, his love for poetry never faded.

Dong prepares rice as compensation to contributors.

In 2013, the idea of starting a poetry publication came to him, and he began to solicit articles on online poetry forums. To his surprise, more than 10,000 poems were sent to him by August of last year.

Xu Fei, the former editor of a literature magazine that Dong has written for, helped Dong to pick out 100 poems from the 10,000 submissions. Due to limited print space, only 90 were ultimately included.

Since the production of “Farmer Poets” is at Dong’s personal expense, he had no money to pay the contributors; instead he compensated them with homegrown rice. As for when the next issue of “Farmer Poets” will come out, Dong said it depends on when he has the time and money.