Zhang Xin, CEO of SOHO China | The Brave Ones

I always see myself as fearless [Music] what is the great joy of being a developer is really see the whole spectrum of how the building even staying after 20 years doing it I still get so excited just to go to the contractors the workers working and see the bonus of the building being built I can to try not to do the thing that she was done I'm the one who stayed guarding the defender and I really should be the one who go for the best and should never be satisfied for anything that is not the best [Applause] [Music] it's been 20 years in a building buildings and during military domination and at times I didn't quite understand the magnitude of urbanization it's only recently you know when I look around I realized that I just happened to be in the right time and the right place I think song Ching is often referred to as the woman who built Beijing because of her property investment and property development and really at a time when people were just beginning to look at real estate and think about the possibilities in that field she's very clear and I see the potential in projects and opportunities and I think she's always taking that step because of that I think she's really transformed the skyline of Beijing and Shanghai for someone who's been given an opportunity to build as much as 55 million per annum you have to be ready 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 cities in the world piranhas now have that opportunity most of them happen 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 during the couch revolution those are the days when China was closed from the outside world and you know we had no knowledge of other countries or what was it like outside of China simpleton China Lim Mac politically country was in chaos economically the country collapse no the country was on the verge of a civil war you have a leader Mao Zedong who is slowly losing power and wants to make sure he can secure it so trying to energize the youth 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 and that political chaos in which Junction was over much my parents were getting exactly the same pay as any other university graduate no matter what you do how you do it we lived in a small heaven when it was allocated according to the mention of my parents growing up in Beijing in the city right it was there was only one color gray the cities will all build on these gray breaks and everyone used to wear in mao suit gray and there was no color and so really this is a country when you know what is socialism means that if everything is equal and everybody is equal good day from the Great Wall of China on a day when President Nixon came visiting here no Chinese leader of done shopping 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 with my family to Hong Kong well Hong Kong was and still is a capitalist society so even though it's a Chinese society but it had a very very different to me China 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 place on earth that had so many colors and so much sound and then you walk into a fast-food restaurant and there be maybe say using you know just like someone from China I was fascinating to hear the sound and see the colors and see all the moving things in China was very required so that was a different right and so when I went to Hong Kong I was 15 and then I ended up working in factory for five years he 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 echelon to power those changes hadn't really trickled down to regular people so life would be really hard she was in Hong Kong and in that area still supposed to be better than most of mainland China at the same time it would have been difficult slaving away in a lot of sweatshops and assembly lines for several hours a day let's not underestimate how much work there is to be a manual worker in a textile factory I don't think I could survive that experience as she did there was a huge demand for that type of worker and I imagine that her entrepreneurial spirit really showed 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 little living but I also knew that I would look for any opportunity to get out of it eventually I think enough money I went to England so for all my dream of getting education and to be away from factories I ended up on this almost a new planet and I remember the first night I got there I set on my suitcases and fly there really felt scared that was a moment of scariness I remembered for Harley 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 see 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 living in England as a student the Chinese there is a phrase Wei Qi which is in times of potential risks 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 [Music] after Cambridge I want to work the girl McGrath I didn't stay there for very long all I remember was this was the hardest job I've ever looked for and all the time I was thinking really I should be coming back to China to work because much of my work at Goldman Sachs was doing work for Chinese factories that being privatized and take them public to the outside world getting the investors to come into charlie mess in bed well I thought she was crazy you know going back to China you know and according to British days I respected her choice but I didn't think that was the right thing to do during that time I was thinking wow that's exciting what China is doing I wanted to be part of it and of course the immediate reason is because I met my husband he was doing real estate development in China in a very small scale so we met we fell in love and four days later he said I mean you should be my wife we decided to get married I remember when I told my friends everyone was like are you out of your mind like you get married with a guy you just met four days ago the guy who has never step out of China for a day I'm sure this is going to work and I was telling people yes I'm sure that's going to work I remember waking up in the morning one day thinking midwife one of the marriage or do I want Odysseus [Applause] [Music] the great wall that's always my favorite oh that's hard to play there's so many good ones and I love them all I'd love to visit Egypt chocolate at the moment Robert when I was a student mrs. Thatcher was my role model as she's complete to be my life the early days of Kim and I working together as business partners but also as husband and wife were difficult it was only then the differences between the two of us me having had the Western education him having had the business experience in China meant that we our sensitivities are very different our values are different what he believed can be done and from what I believe can be done it turned out to be terrible for their partnership and for the marriage so we would carry the problems from the business back home so this really created a very unhealthy relationship in the marriage so much so to the point that we're about to break up after maybe two three years release ice idioms this is not working out and you know that just call a break I took some time off he also took some time off I went to England I want to spend some time with my friends and I remember you know just waking up in the morning one day in the countryside and when I'm 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 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 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 because this is too much work for me right if you want to come back to work and I was very happily to be reinforced so that's how we survived you know marriage survived a partnership survive and ever since I think we toss out a role for each other so I realized that over the years what my sensitivity feed better is in designing the product designing the buildings just imagining when we buy kisses Anya how we want to build community the beginning of my architecture career before that you know I have been building buildings but really that was really the showcase of my passion for architecture I first found this valley by the Great Wheel and I thought this is a great place to invite something we got to get to each design something according to very imagination and at the time I did not really know who are the great architects so I had a book it's called 40 under 40 and they talked about the great talent 40 of them under the age 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 send out I think 12 letters every single one answers and say yes I'd like to come she I think saw that it was important to nurture talent in China and the rest of Asia not just so import talent from the West if they were going to build a viable culture the commune that was really seen as a revolutionary project because you had 12 architects all in the same place and that was really unheard of 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 but it was really unusual because all of these people were relative unknowns except for maybe one a Japanese architect who's named Ken go kuma you're this you know tall handsome cool guy I didn't show much emotion I took him around and I took some photos and no idea what you gonna do he came back two weeks later and gave me the design proposal and I thought about what's intact and he had studied how the Great War was built along in the mountains right not cutting the mountains make it flat I just you know a long long so it was a the pieces repeated the valley the valley register ironic so he thought the same thing for the house but he's given a bottom of the valley and he said okay so I will just build something sit on the bottom of the valley so he thought I must choose a material that does not require precise contraction method so he came to 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 10 realized what a smart approach it was to this bamboo house and I build it and I built all of them twelve of them it's a beautiful piece of property are you appreciate honors I also appreciate the serenity of the nature just the natural beauty 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 is Venice peon at ease art director but he's responsible for inviting projects to showcase I mean us I came to showcase this so then once you're shown and in the Venice Biennale the world would know about this project evil would come to see it and he was so impressed he was like wow this is great this fantastic he invited us to showcase it and I remember I wanted to see the opening the head of the committee's call me two days later I remember I was always you know the the water taxi in Venice right this is the boat and we said I want you to know that the committee has decided voted to give you a special prize for this year's Venice Biennale so I set the phone down I remember like you know cheering and you know so happily there was a photo taken of that moment precisely the moment I was in the floor with him so that began my you know architecture journey as I'm working with creative people in China spring cause revolution I wanted to be it hasn't the glorified job you peasant she has opened up a new world to me that would never have been possible otherwise I wake up in the morning first thing I do is another closet god Erasmus perfectly off would be in the mountains hiking or running and be with my children talking about their futures Oh debating with them these days are so good at debating with me growing up in China during car revolution I wanted to be it hasn't worked we were all taught it was glorified job with the pebbles I worked with pretty much the leading architects in the world and brought their work to China one most noticable work was by the late the Hadid when we met about 14 years ago 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 with a hadith for example became expressions or symbols of a kind of a Chinese version of capitalism right fluid technologically super advanced part of the future present time it really is about how to create an architecture that creates a special place for the people and for the city and we worked very closely to discuss ideas as well as we present new ideas and I think this is the exciting and fun part one kind of to the cat had we think she along with her husband we're able to really find a niche in the real-estate market that nobody else was really interested 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 more pleasant to set up an office and so because of that chic with international architects was able to design interesting style building they have a different look and feel your theme is a bit more hip a bit younger and their price point is a little bit lower we visited around the world and the most lots of co-working spaces when we decided that let's do that in China now we have all over Beijing or Shanghai 18 centers like this the three words she mentioned laughs in the initial meetings that I have no really idea where we should go but I know one thing should this space should be hip warm and easy basically three words what our whole breathing to develop the corporate identity of thank you I think because she's been a multicultural settings she's seen the beauty of architecture and what it can do for a city and she's really taken back to another level in China you know my Amex excitement is build around the world I want to take this skill set that I have been working with creative people and bring them to the part of the world and I feel excited about really going to do place I also want to share my experience with younger people I always tell that if I look like my life what was the single most important in my life that was education I knew that I could get into good college I did not know how many pay in my undergraduate college a subject and graduate studies at Cambridge I was under financial aid so there was somebody else's generosity helped me along the way we came with an idea of so whole scholarship which is to involve many to install scholarship graduate for Chinese students getting education outside of China service history shows many 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 University the process sort of works in a way that the school gets to select of which students they would like to designate as so whole China scholars with my children all growing love and I have a sign about to go to college I really feel like at this stage of my life part of me should really be sharing my experiences as a member generation on one hand she herself is actually a remarkable woman that I would simply just look up to even just as a girl 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 impossible otherwise I think she is rightfully held as a role model for many many women young women and women entrepreneurs I always tell my friends that you should do the things that you want to do in life and don't worry about what other people expect you to do they might set you to be a great businessman to be dissin bad 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 and that I think was the guiding principle for my life she's a visionary what she's able to understand the value of design and creativity and what you can do with that given for success given her level of wealth to school a very humble person in a cart she's very kind and she's always concerned about not just about business success really but also about bigger things you can Amish politics 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 see some of the buildings that I build and I you know I want to tell them the stories of how this building was build conceived the ideas of 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 it collectively um some of the billionaires we see in the United States I'm sure I would look back and feel very proud that this is a great opportunity in history that we're able to do that much [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CNBC International TV

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Id: VHWsaXNUll4

Length: 24min 58sec (1498 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2017