This is the story of the spirit of Chinese enterprise across thirty-six years.
In 1989, Chen Wanqiu quit her job in the Northeast and headed south to Hainan. From hauling bricks at construction sites to narrowly surviving the real estate bubble, she eventually moved to Shanghai's Pudong district and became a real estate queen of her generation.
In 1995, Wang Chunyan set up a stall selling dried fruit, and people said she brought bad luck to her husband. She started getting up at three in the morning and spent twenty years building the Xi brand of dried fruit into a product advertised on CCTV, silencing everyone who said she was ill-fated.
In 2005, Li Min took over a bankrupt state-owned enterprise and started from scratch with twenty female workers. She weathered Japan's zero-defect demands on orders, returned goods at US customs, the glory of ringing the bell at her company's listing, and a night of going prematurely gray after short sellers accused her of fraud. She believed in just one thing: People who fake things can't sleep at night.
In 2015, Zhang Beichen, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, resigned to go into business and developed China's first gene therapy drug to receive FDA approval in the United States. His secret to success: We have more patience than the Americans.
The stories of these four people are brought together by Lin Xiaoman, a director who has spent twenty years making documentaries. She followed them from Hainan to Beijing, from street stalls to the listing bell, capturing every step of their climb from the very bottom: three women and one man.
Not one of them came from a wealthy family. They simply came of age during China's Reform and Opening Up, then gritted their teeth and endured every rise and fall of the tide.
This is an epic about Chinese entrepreneurs, and a story about every ordinary person. When the next wave comes, the one standing on the shore might be you.
At the crest of the wave, what matters is that you keep moving.
