The vocabulary of CSA was popularized in China through Shi Yan’s doctoral dissertation research. As a student at Renmin University’s School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Shi Yan worked out a plan with her professors to learn about small-scale sustainable farming models in the US. The school has a longstanding connection with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, which helped to arrange an internship position for Shi Yan at Earthrise Farm, a CSA farm in Western Minnesota, beginning in April 2008. Upon returning to Beijing, she started planning a CSA project of her own. Although NGOs like Hong Kong -based Partners for Community Development (PCD) had been introducing the concept of CSA well before 2008, the media attention garnered by Shi Yan’s research trip to “learn to be a peasant in America,” as some descriptions put it, helped to publicize the model much more broadly.