An Extraordinary Local Business Woman

Entrepreneur Xu Minli is an extraordinary woman. She is extraordinary not because she has worked hard， not because she has made herself a multimillionaire by riding the surging tides of China’s modernization over the past 30 plus years. After all， Zhejiang boasts numerous hardworking millionaires who have benefited from the business chances opened up by the modernization. Xu Minli is extraordinary because she has kept her home village Digang’s rural beauty intact and has tried her best to keep its green ecology intact.

Digang is a 1，000-year-old village tucked away quietly in a suburb of Huzhou City in northern Zhejiang province. The village in the south of the Yangtze River Delta is an epitome of a lyrical， Shangri-la-styled rural beauty rhapsodized so famously and nostalgically in Chinese poetry and art for more than 1，000 years. There is a famous national saying about the gorgeous beauty of Suzhou and Hangzhou in the Yangtze River Delta area: In heaven is paradise; on earth are Suzhou and Hangzhou. The villagers of Digang are so proud of their home village that they put an inspiration of their own into the famous national saying: In heaven is paradise; on earth are Suzhou and Hangzhou; and between Suzhou and Hangzhou is Digang. The modified saying is not merely about the geographic position of the village. It’s also about the primitive beauty. This saying is famous in the village and in its rural neighborhoods.

I visited Digang early this year and I was impressed by its beauty. I was told that I was not the only one feeling this way. A few years ago a preeminent essayist visited Digang and was impressed by what he saw around the village. He likened the village to an only existing copy of an out-of-print book.

Rivers and ponds are the most distinguishing feature of the village. Profuse reeds and mulberry trees flank rivers and ponds. Connected by corridors and bridges， well-built houses look neat and natural， mixing well with the background. Fish farming is a big pillar of the village economy.

Xu Minli has played a big part in keeping Digang beautiful and boosting its economy over the past decades. During my visit to Digang early this year， I was able to have a talk with her after she was back from a session of the district CPPCC. Xu Minli is the president of Digang Fish Restaurant.

She began her fish wholesale business after her graduation from junior middle school in 1979. She shipped her fish to Huzhou City and sold them in wholesale and retail. She got her first bucket of gold after spending nine years in this business. What she gained through the business was more than assets. She learned about business; she established a business network; she made a lot of friends; and she was ready for something bigger.

She came back to Digang at the age of 27 and ran a machinery factory in the village. While running the factory， she also completed a self-education college-diploma course. At 35 she founded a grease business. Her business grew and it turned out products worth 10 million a year. One day， however， she discovered the rivers around the village were polluted by her business. The discovery startled her and made her worry.

Xu Minli might be just one of the numerous successful entrepreneurs that one might find anywhere in Zhejiang Province， but she is certainly an extraordinary entrepreneur because she decided to stop her 10-million business so as to stop serious pollution. She did not want to pollute her home village and destroy its rare beauty between Suzhou and Hangzhou.

She shut down the grease-manufacturing business and started a teahouse business. Many of her friends and guests came to visit Digang but the village didn’t have a restaurant to entertain them. Xu Minli thought of setting up a restaurant business. She walked around the village and tried to find an ideal site in the river area. During a field study one day， she ran into a group of district leaders who came to do their field study on the socialist new countryside movement. Xu Minli consulted them on her dream restaurant. It was a long and enlightening conversation.

She came up with a business plan. She commissioned a village architect specialized in building village Buddhist temples to design the restaurant. She asked her architect to visit Hongcun Village in Anhui Province because she wanted to build an Anhui-style restaurant in perfect harmony with the village and river scenes. The restaurant now sits in a spot surrounded by ponds and rivers.

Xu Minli is now back to fish business， though this time it is not selling fish in an urban market. This time， she cooks fish and sells fish in her restaurant in her home village. The motif of restaurant fully reflects her aesthetics. Everywhere within the restaurant one can see poems and paintings about fish. Fortunately， the millennia-old Chinese poetry is rich enough to provide a full range of fish-centered texts for her restaurant. The proud villagers of Digang resorted again to their famous inspiration which once enabled them to modify a famous national saying. This time， inspired villagers created a fish song and a fish dance. Their original creations were so impressive that CCTV， China’s largest television network， came to document the song and dance and screened the village creations to the national audience.

Xu Minli’s fish restaurant does a brisk business not merely because it has the freshest fish supply from village fish ponds and not merely because the rural beauty attracts visitors from all over Huzhou. A smart businesswoman， she knows she needs a success formula for the fish eatery. Chen Guofu (1892-1951)， a high-ranking KMT official， was a Huzhou native from a rich local family. Xu Minli‘s chefs at the restaurant studied the private culinary art of the private kitchen at Chen Guofu’s house. Now some fish dishes from the Chen family’s

kitchen can be found on the menu at Xu Minli’s fish restaurant. Chen Guofu’s daughter and son-in-law came to visit the restaurant and they praised Xu’s culinary success.

Of course what makes Xu Minli extraordinary is more than her business success. It is also her care for her village and villagers. Nowadays， more than 200 villagers work at her fish restaurant. The big-hearted entrepreneur has built a 6-million-yuan seniors’ home for old villagers to retire and spend their evening years. Some old people living at the house believe Xu Minli is a living Buddha. Some think Xu is dearer to them than their own sons and daughters. □