In the 1950s and 1960s, most of the ‘farms’ were merely vast tracts of rugged, uncultivated wasteland. For the huaqiao who were resettled there, many of whom were former shopkeepers and petty merchants (xiao shangfan), the job of turning the rugged landscape into a successful agricultural production site was gargantuan. Many people remember crying after seeing the conditions on the nongchang for the first time. One man describes his first impression of Xinglong
Huaqiao Nongchang :