Dou Li poses in front of a closet of film and vintage cameras in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Feb 25, 2019. [Photo/IC]

By selling film cameras and vintage cameras part-time on Alibaba's e-commerce platform Taobao, Dou Li has earned more than 40,000 yuan since this year's Spring Festival.

Dou, born after 1995, works as a video content producer at a new media company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. The job is so busy he sometimes does not have enough time to operate his online shop, but can make decent money from it because film cameras are sparking a retro trend among young people.

Dou's enthusiasm for film and vintage cameras started several years ago when he visited a camera museum in Tokyo. He was surprised by all of the fancy cameras and began to work on his own camera collection.

Over the years, Dou has collected more than 1,000 cameras of more than 500 types and made a name for himself in the circle of film and vintage camera lovers. He has strict taste with cameras, only selecting good-looking ones that are cute, classical or have mechanical beauty.

Dou's Taobao shop is so popular revenues have exceeded expectations. At the very beginning, he just wanted enough income for him to raise his cat.

Instead of a shop that only aims to generate business, Dou is changing his Taobao store into an online film and vintage camera exhibition platform.