This farm, as wild as any other surrounding unclaimed land 12 years ago, has now become a flagship and a token of the Chinese-Zambian cooperation in agriculture.

Eggs produced in Johnken Farm are sent to Lusaka and other cities every day, snatching 10 percent of the whole market of Zambia.

Together with its 1,000 head of cattle and over 2,000 pigs, the 3,500-hectare farm is the biggest one among a dozen of Chinese-owned farms in Zambia.

Behind the success of Johnken is the middle-aged Chinese woman, Li Li, 43, who came to Zambia to support her husband, Wang Chi, former managing director of the farm, but ended to shoulder the task by herself after Wang passed away one and a half years ago.

The early days with the farm was a struggle of the couple against harsh wilderness, bad infrastructure and inexperience.

Wang used to be a university lecturer in Beijing before he arrived in Zambia with his African dream. His wife, Li, gave up her nurse career in a famous hospital in the Chinese capital of Beijing and followed Wang here.

They had to begin their work with cutting down bushes and grass along with 100-plus local employees to turn the primitive area into cultivable farmland.

Electricity was then connected to the farm and boreholes were drilled for irrigation.

"We had to start from scratch by ourselves," Li reminisced in her sitting room decorated with a verity of African wooden artwork and a shelf of agronomic books.

They came to the farm in 1994 with 200 chickens. As there was no henhouse at that time, they had to share their house with the chickens.

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