He Feng, a co-founder of this website from Beijing, studied in the United States for seven years and obtained an MBA from Stanford University in 2009. He said that his support for self-expression drove him to set up such a website.

"Creation is the way people try to express themselves. That's something in short supply in China because the Chinese are poor at expressing themselves," he said, adding that he hopes that the website can help those who have creative ideas to fulfill their dreams.

With the development of social networks and websites like Demohour.com, creativity and entrepreneurship are flourishing in China.

Sun Yang runs a studio of fine letterpress printing and handmade stationery with a vintage press he bought with the help of Demohour.com.

Back in 2007, Sun, who owned a small but successful design company, saw a letterpress greeting card on a foreign website and was amazed by its beauty and texture. Compared with offset printing, which replaced letterpress printing as the primary way to print and distribute information in the second half of the 20th century, the latter gives visual definition to the type and artwork. From that moment, Sun could not stop dreaming about operating his own letterpress and producing the same fine paper products.

When his search for a letterpress proved fruitless after two years, Sun closed down his company and dedicated all his time to finding his dream machine at the end of 2010. When he eventually found a vintage Heidelberg Windmill press in 2011, he could not find enough money to purchase it, even after borrowing all he could from family and friends.

After Sun's fundraising bid went on Demohour.com in August 2011, 463 netizens offered a total of 43,941 yuan ($6,975) over two months, surpassing his original goal of 40,000 yuan ($6,350). The returns for Sun's "investors" include greeting cards, upscale stationery and invitations produced by his press.

Other difficulties the 34-year-old paper artisan faced during the initial days of his new studio include borrowing money to make rent and learning how to operate the press through trial and error. Although still deep in debt for his big purchase, Sun is now convinced that his studio will be his lifelong career.

"I admire what actor Will Smith says about dreams in movie The Pursuit of Happiness, 'You got a dream? You gotta protect it. If people can't do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can't do it,'" Sun told Beijing Review.

Sun said that netizens who invested in his studio through Demohour.com had waited patiently for their returns. "I guess the pleasure for them mainly comes from helping a man in need and doing an interesting yet meaningful thing along the way," he said.

Sun's idea is echoed by Zheng Wei, a white-collar worker in an advertising company, who has financed 13 projects on Demohour.com. Zheng told China Youth Daily that it gave him enormous satisfaction when his modest support helps a person to fulfill his or her dreams. Instead of comparing returns between projects, Zheng chose to support projects that he deemed interesting.

Entrepreneurship

Since the beginning of this year, several "many people's cafes" have been set up in cities across China. Usually, these cafes are founded by around 100 people who have full-time jobs and know each other from the Internet. Individual shareholders' investment is as low as 2,000 yuan ($317). Their communication on how to run their cafes is mainly conducted through instant messages online.

Last January, Ge Wen, a young civil servant in Beijing, posted a message on a social networking site calling for people with the same dream of owning a cafe to set one up with each investing 2,000 yuan. This message quickly went viral and eventually attracted more than 100 investors, whose votes are equal in deciding affairs about running the cafe and electing board members.

The cafe was set up last May and this model has been quickly copied in other Chinese cities.

"This new type of micro-entrepreneurship features small inputs of capital, time and energy by a large number of people and a democratic, open and transparent decision-making process," Ge told China Youth Daily. Ge's team won the award of Global Business Top 20, which celebrates creativity in the business world, with another 19 business cases like online scrapbooking site Pinterest in September. The award was organized by Global Business magazine, the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University and the Chinese website of Financial Times.

Ge told China Youth Daily by investing in these cafes, people can realize their modest dreams, meet new friends and enjoy life. "It also satisfies them psychologically as they can be entrepreneurs and keep their nine-to-five jobs at the same time," she said.

Email us at: lili@bjreview.com