Zhang Xin, CEO of SOHO China | The Brave Ones

I always see myself as [Music] Fearless One of the great joy of being a developer is really see the whole

spectrum of how a building is being built even today after 20 years doing it I still get so excited just to go to the construction side and see the workers

working and see the rawness of a building you know being built I tend to try not to do things that people have done before I'm the one who's

safeguarding the standard and I really should be the one who go for the best and should never be satisfied with anything that's not the [Applause]

[Music] best it's been 20 years you know building buildings and and doing real

estate developments right and at times I didn't quite understand the magnitude of urbanization right it's only recently you know when I look around I realize

that I just happen to be in the right time and the right place I think Tang Shing is often referred to as the woman who built Beijing because of her property investment and property development and really at a time where

people were just beginning uh to look at real estate and think about the possibilities in that field she's very clear and SE SE the potential in uh projects and opportunities and I think

she's always taking that step because of that I think she's really transformed the skyline of of Beijing and Shanghai for someone who's been given an

opportunity to build as much as 55 million square fet you have to be right right standing in the moment in history when urbanization is happening and

happening in such an intense moment and you know there aren't so many CI in the world around us now have that opportunities most of them happened to

be in China in the last 20 years and of all the Chinese cities Beijing and Shanghai happen to be the most urbanized I was born uh during the cult

Evolution uh those were the days when China was closed from the outside world uh and you know we had no knowledge of other countries or or what was it like

outside of China in simple terms China went mad um politically the country was in chaos economically uh the country collapsed

almost the country was on the verge of a civil war you have a leader maidong who is slowly losing power and wants to make sure he can secure it so trying to

energize the youth uh to revitalize his own campaign and activating the youth against an adversary these were professors intellectuals urbanites and all of these people were sent to the

countryside for reform through work and so it was in that kind of environment in that political chaos in which Jang Shin

was uh growing up my parents uh were getting exactly the same pay as any other University graduate no matter what

you do how you do it we lived in a a small apartment when it was allocated according to the ranking of my parents

growing up in Beijing in this city right it was there was only one color gray the cities were all built on these uh gray

braks and everyone used to wear in mous suit gray and there was no color and so really this is a country uh when you

know what does socialism mean that is everything is uh equal and everybody is equal [Music] good day from the Great Wall of China on

a day when President Nixon came visiting here no Chinese leader of dang sha Ping's stature had ever made a state visit to the US president Lee addressed the controversy Brewing on Capitol Hill

over China's birth control policy there are harsh restrictions limiting couples to one child in 1980 I moved uh with my family to Hong

Kong well Hong Kong was and still is a capital Society so even though it's a Chinese Society but it it had a very very different feel to China uh

especially then first thing I remember struck me when I went to Hong Kong was the color you know I remember oh my God I had never seen any placed on Earth

that are that had so many colors and so much sound and then you walk into a fast food restaurant and they to be they' be playing music right you know just like

some one from China it was fascinating to hear the sound and see the colors and and see all the moving things in China it was you know very very quiet uh and

so that was that was a difference right and so when I went to Hong Kong I was 15 and and then iend ended up working in factories for 5

years she would have been in China at a time when the reform movement was starting but because all the decisions had been made at the upper chalons of power those changes hadn't really

trickled down to regular people so life would be really hard uh she was in Hong Kong and in that area still supposed to be better than most of mainland China at the same time um it would have been

difficult slaving away in a lot of sweat shops and assembly lines for several hours a day let's not underestimate how much work there is to be a manual uh

worker in a textile Factory um I I don't think I could survive that experience and she did there was a huge demand for

that type of worker and I imagine that her entrepreneurial Spirit really Shone through but also her ability to eat bitterness that you can eat bitterness today for the hopes of eating something

sweet tomorrow working in the factory was never my ambition and I knew that I had to do that because I need to make a living but I also knew that I would look

for any opportunity to get out of it eventually I saved enough money I went to England so for all my dream of getting education and to be away from

Factory I ended up on this almost a new planet and I remember the first night I got there I sat on my suitcases and

cried cuz I really felt scared that was a moment of scariness I remember profoundly it wasn't common at the time for people to decide to leave the

country and to be able to to get a passport to be able to leave the country but for her to go and decide that she was going to carve out a new life would have been a daring move I think that

when I went to England I really felt that I am entering into a bigger world and you know the possibilities are unlimited and it's really up to me to

shape it but I knew that you know with the education I'd be able to do a lot and I very quickly got into the academic life uh living in eng Eng le as a

student in Chinese there's a phrase waii which is in times of potential risk there's huge opportunity and if you grew up with that sense I think she would

have seen that as a major stepping stone and one that you could not say no to after Cambridge uh I went to work for Goldman saxs I didn't stay there for

very long all I remember was this was the hardest job I've ever worked for and all the time I was thinking uh really I should be coming back to

China to work because much of my work at Goldman Sachs was to work for Chinese factories uh that being privatized and take them public to the outside world

getting the investors to come into trying to invest in that I thought she was crazy you know going back to China you know and um going to Real Estate I respected her choice but I didn't think

that was really the right thing to do during that time I was thinking wow you know it's exciting what China is doing I wanted to be part of it uh and of course the immediate reason is because I met my

husband he was doing real estate development in China uh in a very small scale so we met uh we fell in love and 4 days later he said I think you should be

my wife we decided to get married and I remember when I told my friends everyone was like are you out of your mind like you going to get married with the guy you just met 4 days ago with a guy has

never stepped out of China for a day are you sure this is going to work and and I was telling people yes I'm sure that's going to work I remember waking up in the morning

one day thinking you know do I want the marriage or do I want the [Applause]

[Music] business the Great War that's always my favorite but that's hard to say there's

so many good ones and I love them all I'd love to visit Egypt chocolate chocolate at the moment robber reford

[Music] when I was a student Mrs Vater was my role model and she continues to be my role model the early days of him and I

working together as business partners but also as husband and wife were difficult it was only then uh the differences between the two of us me

having had the Western education him having had the the business experience in China uh meant that we our

sensitivities are very different our values are different what he believe can be done and different from what I believe can be done it turned out to be

terrible for the partnership and for the marriage so we would carry the problems from the business back home so this really created a very

unhealthy uh relationship in the marriage so much so to the point that we're about to break up after maybe 2 3 years we I said you know this this is

not working out and you know let just call a break I took some time off he also took some time off I went to England I I went to spend some time with

my friends and you I remember uh you know just waking up in the morning one day in the countryside in England and thinking you know do I want the marriage

or do I want the business and I decided that I wanted my life and want my um marriage to to work I came back I told

my husband you know what I am going to quit the job you go ahead to do your job I'm going to just going to stay at home

uh be a housewife and hopefully be a mom but it was a very positive change we stopped arguing and the business took

off and in fact few months later he was so busy to the point that he said hey I need you to come back to work cuz this is too much work for me right do you want to

come back to work and I was very happy to be reemployed again so that's how we survive you know our marriage survived our partnership survived and ever since

I think we cuff out a row for each other so I realized that over the years that what my sensitivity suits better is in designing the product designing the

buildings just imagining when we buy a piece of land you know how we want to build commu by The Great Wall was really the beginning of my architecture career

before that you know I had been building buildings but really that was really the Showcase of my passion for architecture I first found this Valley

by the great wall and I thought this is a great place to uh invite some great Architects to each design something according to their imagination

and at the time I did not really know who are the great Architects so I I had a book it's called 40 under 40 and they

talk about the great talents 40 of them under the age of 40 and then I look at the list and I just chose the ones they

have they were Asian I wrote to them and said would you be interested to come to China so I sent out I think 12 letters every single one answered and

say yes I'd like to come she I think saw that it was important to nurture uh talent in China and the rest of Asia not

just to import Talent from the West if they were going to build uh a viable uh

culture the commune was really seen as a revolutionary project because you had 12 Architects all in the same place and that was really unheard of U especially in China but in countries all over the

world usually you have one developer and one architect and if you look at the profile of the 12 it was really unusual because all of these people were relative

unknowns except for maybe one a Japanese architect who's named um Ken go Kuma and he was this you know tall handsome cool guy right didn't show much

emotion I took him around and I he just took some photos and had no idea what's he going to do so he came back a few weeks later and

gave me the the design proposal and I thought that was fantastic and he has studied how the Great War was built along the mountains right not cutting

the mountains make it flat it's just you know along the mountain if was a the the peak is the peak if the valley is the valley right just build along it so he

thought the same thing for the house so he's given a a bottom of the valley and he thought okay so I would just build something sit on the bottom of the

valley so he thought I must choose a material that does not require precise construction method so he came with the idea of bamboo the

bamboos are natural right so if they're not straight it's not a problem this was years later he told me I had hadn't realized what a smart approach it was to

this bamboo house and I build it and I build all of them 12 of them it's a beautiful piece of property you

appreciate art but you also appreciate the serenity of the nature just the the natural beauty is is is incredible after I build I didn't know what to do with

these I have a good friend who's art collector and he's Venice b and's art director so he's responsible for inviting projects to be

showcased and you must ask him to Showcase this so then once you're shown in in the Venice ban alley the world would know about this project and people would come to see it and he was so

impressed he was like wow this is great this is fantastic he invited us to Showcase it and I remember I went to see the opening the head of the committee

called me two days later I remember I was on this you know the the water taxi in Venice right the the boote and he said I want you to know that the

committee has decided and voted to give you a special prize for this year's Venice Bali so I put the phone down and I remember like you know cheering and

and you know so happily there was a photo taken of that moment precisely the moment I was on the phone with him so that began my you know architecture Journey as in working with creative

people in China during culture Evolution I wanted to be a peasant the glorified job is to be a peasant she has opened up a new world to me that would never Happ have been possible

[Applause] [Music] otherwise I wake up in the morning first thing I do is to put on the clothes and go to

run perfect day off would be in the mountains uh hiking or running and be with my children talking about their future debating with them these days

they're so good at debating with me growing up in China during cult Evolution I wanted to be a peasant that's what we were all taught the

glorified job is to be a peasant I work with pretty much the leading architects in the world and and brought their work to China One most

noticeable work was by the late zaha Hadi when we met about 14 years ago uh she was largely a paper architect who hadn't

really built that much but had always been known as her incredible Innovative style her Office Buildings a lot of the ones that she designed was aid for

example became expressions or symbols of a kind of a Chinese version of capitalism right uh fluid technologically super Advanced part of

the future rather past it really is about how to create an architecture that creates a special place for the people and for the city and and we work very

closely to discuss ideas as well as uh we present new ideas and I think this is the exciting and fun part I think she along with her husband

we we're able to really find a niche in the real estate market that nobody else was really addressing because if you talk to a lot of foreign companies here they will tell you that there are like nine and a half trillion different

buildings here but that it's really hard to find office space it's hard to find something that isn't dark that's suitable for them where it's it's more pleasant to set up an office and so uh

because of that she with International Architects was able to design interesting style buildings they have a different look and feel they're seen as a bit more hip a bit younger and their

price point is a little bit lower we visited around the world and there was lots of co-working space places and we decided that let's do that in China now we have all over Beijing and Shanghai uh

18 centers uh like [Music] this there's three words she mentioned to us in this initial meetings said I

have no really idea uh where we should go but I know one thing it should this space should be hip warm and easy uh basically these three words was a whole

briefing to develop the coroporate identity of thank you I think because she's been in Multicultural settings she's seen the beauty of architecture and what it can do for a city and she's

really taken that to another level in China you know my next excitement is to build around the world you know I want to take this skill set that I have of

working with uh creative people and bring them to uh you know other parts of the world and I feel excited about building in a new place I also want to

share part of my experience to with younger people I always felt that if I look back my life what was the single most important factor that transformed

my life and that was education I knew that I could get into good college uh I did not know how am I going to pay in my undergraduate college at Sussex and graduate uh studies at

Cambridge I was under financial aid and so there was somebody else's generosity and helped me along the way we came with

the idea of Soho scholarship which is to endal money to uh install scholarship financial aid for Chinese students uh

getting education outside of China Chinese history shows that uh many uh innovative

ideas came from Chinese who were educated in the west so they particularly want to support Chinese

students who can receive a education in the western universities the process sort of works in a way that uh the school uh gets to select which students

they would like to designate as soal China Scholars with my children all growing up and I have a sign about to go to college I really feel like at this

stage of my life U part of me should really be sharing my experiences with the younger generation on one hand Shen herself is a truly a remarkable woman um

that I would simply just look up to even just as a girl um but on the other hand she has also changed my life forever she has opened up a new world to me that

would never have been possible otherwise I think she is rightfully held as a role model for many many women uh

young women uh and women entrepreneurs I always tell my sons that you should should do the things that you want to do in life and don't worried about what

other people expect you to do they might expect you to be a great businessman to be this and that but if you want to be a soccer player go ahead to do that you know if you want to be an artist go

ahead to do that you would only do the best if you want to do it so badly and that I think was the guiding principle for my

life she's a Visionary well she's able to to understand the value of design and creativity and what you can do with

that given her success given her level of wealth she's still a very humble person at heart uh she's very kind and she's always concerned about not just

about business success really but also about bigger things uh economics politics and and Society now I often think you know maybe

this is a sign of getting older you know I was thinking you know one day I'm going to take my grandchildren to see some of the buildings that I built and I you know I want to tell them the stories

of how this building was built conceived the ideas the stories behind it she's so young compared to some of her peers I mean in her early 50s she has achieved

more than people have achieved collectively um from some of the billionaires we see in the United States you know I'm sure I would look back and feel very proud that that uh

this is a great opportunity in history that um we were able to build that much

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