CHAIRMAN LIN IS telling me his plans to make his company one of China’s biggest. Sitting across the oval oak table with his chin perched in his hands, he smiles sincerely. Two of his managers, in suits and ties, sit in leather chairs at his sides, all eyes focused on me. At the end of the long table, the heavy oil of the impressionist painting on the wall is gleaming in the afternoon sunlight coming through the picture windows. The fresh-cut yellow tulips in the vase sitting between us give out the first scent of spring.
This is my first time hosting a management team from China. I feel a little nervous. Gazing at the chairman, I tell myself to stay alert.
“We are planning to invest two billon dollars in Suzhou to build a couple of new plants.” He points to a dot on the page.
“Oh?” I respond, leaning forward with interest. “I’m from Suzhou.” Here in the faraway land of America, the familiar name warms me.
“Really? No wonder, Ms. Shen. The city is famous for producing sophisticated and pretty women.”
“Well, I’m not from the city itself. I’m from a tiny village in the rural area around Suzhou. My parents are just illiterate peasants.” I smile shyly. “If you had seen me fifteen years ago on the street of Suzhou, my fingernails were still filled with dirt,” I say, probably telling him more than I should.
He chuckles and dismisses my words with a light wave of his hand. “Oh, come on, Ms. Shen.” His expression tells me that he doesn’t think this can be true. The same girl who he is now so eager to impress couldn’t have been one of those dirty countryside people he ignores back in China. I remember standing outside a big factory in Suzhou fifteen years ago in drizzling rain, desperate for a job, when a boss just like Chairman Lin caught sight of me while walking to his limousine and ordered the guard not to let me through the gate. I stood there and watched him getting into the limo with its tinted windows, never giving me a second look, and then zooming away in a cloud of dust.
Flipping the pages of his presentation, Chairman Lin continues to speak about his grand expansion plan.
I nod my head from time to time, but my concentration is broken. My mind can’t help but drift back to those early years. I think of planting rice shoots in the paddies with my bare feet deep in the mud. I can hear the mosquitoes buzzing around my ears and feel the leeches sucking the blood from my calves. I see myself later, wandering penniless in the streets. All I wanted at that time was a hot steamed bun. It was years ago, but it feels like yesterday.
This man, who once appeared on the cover of Forbes, sits here flattering me, while for my whole life I have begged one powerful man after another for a slice of opportunity. I’m in this gorgeous office in Boston’s financial district dressed in a black suit, but just ten years ago I was literally homeless, wandering from city to city in China.
I tell myself that it would be silly to try to convince this multimillionaire that what I said is true. Even if I told people a fraction of the struggles I have gone through, few would believe me. I’m only thirty-three, but I’ve faced enough for a hundred lifetimes.
This is my story.