China, and the world, could really do with more Dorothys
While reading an American classic recently — the 1900 book The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum — I found myself pondering how much the main character, Dorothy, is like a Chinese friend of mine who runs her own business.
The book, on which the wonderful 1939 movie of the same name is based, was intended to be a 20th century fairy tale. However, after stumbling across the novel on a bookstore shelf in Beijing, I was struck by how much the characters in the book, and Dorothy in particular, present a model for the ideal entrepreneur/innovator of the 21st century.
Indeed, my friend Yang Yingyin, who lives in Nanning in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and whose English name is Kelly, embodies all of the best qualities that Dorothy and her friends demonstrate in the face of countless challenges.
The book is the story of a fantastic journey that begins when Dorothy, who lives in the US prairie state of Kansas, is carried away by a tornado, which deposits the girl, and the farmhouse in which she lives, in a strange new land.
She befriends a scarecrow whose head is full of straw (and who laments, “If I only had a brain!”), a cowardly lion and a tin woodsman. The four, along with Dorothy’s dog, Toto, set off on the “yellow brick road” to the fabled Emerald City, where the girl’s friends hope the Wizard of Oz can bestow upon them the qualities they believe they lack, while Dorothy hopes she can find her way home.
What the girl’s three friends don’t realize is that, in the course of treacherous circumstances that arise on their journey, they have proved they already have the qualities they seek: The scarecrow uses his brain, the lion his courage and the tin woodsman his heart.
The wholesome and generous Dorothy, meanwhile, demonstrates all three of these traits, as well as acute people skills, a humble demeanor and a hefty dose of charm.
This also sums up my friend Kelly, who manages in the face of great odds to be a great family person, a successful and highly competitive businesswoman, a creative genius, and a generous and compassionate person to everyone she meets. She strives each day for the betterment of herself, her family, her business and her community.
The mother of two, inspired by her own mother, runs a specialized food processing plant, Guangxi Nanning Xiyin Shunquan Food Co, and a local grilled chicken restaurant brand. She is also incubating a new restaurant brand catering to Nanning’s mid- to high-end community with ready-made meals of roasted chicken, snacks and staple food. She has mastered the art of preparing highquality food on a large scale, but with the loving touch expected of a mom’s kitchen.
Kelly constantly expands her knowledge through classes and seminars, experiments with new culinary techniques and nurtures her employees with a blend of kindness and discipline. She frequently stays up overnight when hot on the trail of a new recipe, or when perfecting a cooking process.
A child at heart, she still manages, upon returning home to her family after a typically long day, to delight in a game of hide-and-seek with her young son and daughter before settling in for dinner.
Kelly proves that being an innovator calls not just for brains, which she has in spades, but also courage in implementing ideas and a bit of modern-day wizardry, since innovators create things or approaches not seen before.
But above all, she shows time and again, in big ways and small, that she has heart.
In a recent WeChat posting, she related an encounter with a hungry sanitation worker.
“My fried rice is popular,” she wrote, “but the sanitation worker thought it was too expensive. I told him he could just order 9.90 yuan ($1.40) worth. Then I served him the 18 yuan serving of fried rice.
“He finished eating, and then he said to me, ‘Your rice is not very expensive after all. I have never eaten such delicious fried rice.’”
How easily, by merely treating this hardworking wage earner as an equal, and with compassion, she had won over a new customer. And there’s nothing magic about that.
Bilingual: Global warming