When Chinese people pass Ma Xiuying, they often stop dead in their tracks and take a double look. To many, she looks remarkably like Guanyin, Chinese Goddess of Mercy, with her round, smooth face and kindly eyes.
But what makes this 50-year-old woman truly special, apart from her resemblance to a spiritual figure, is her real-life transformation from a laid-off worker to the owner of two large restaurants famous for Gansu delicacies and vegetarian food.
Ma never thought she could go so far in life. Before she was laid off in 1993, Ma worked at a state-owned enterprise in west Gansu Province. When layoffs hit, she said she voluntarily chose to leave her job because she could no longer bear “going to work at 2 p.m. and getting off work at 2:30 p.m. because there’s nothing to do.”
“This kind of situation in state-owned enterprises definitely needed to be reformed,” Ma said.
While she agrees with the government’s efforts to reform state-owned enterprises, Ma said she feels sorry for the difficult lives of thousands of laid-off workers in her hometown. Her life wasn’t easy when she was laid off, and her first attempt to start a business as a way out of unemployment was a failure.
“But I fear no difficulties and hardships, which I experienced too much during my childhood,” Ma said, as a partial explanation for her later success in the restaurant business.
At the beginning, Ma was engaged in the trade of clothes. But soon she found it hard to earn money by selling clothes, and considered quitting the business. By chance, a friend told her there was a small restaurant available for rent and asked if she was interested in. “It may be a good idea,” Ma thought.
So, in 1994, a year after being laid off, she started a business with 30,000 in borrowed yuan and three tables, which occupied her entire restaurant.
“At the time, my two nephews and I were the only staff members of my restaurant,” Ma said. “I bought things from the market, I cooked and I served as a waitress. I just did everything.”
Recalling her tentative steps in the restaurant business, Ma’s voice is full of emotion. “I really didn’t expect that my food would be so popular that I would have to expand the restaurant again and again.”
By the time she moved to Beijing in 2002, Ma had opened five restaurants in Gansu Province, reaping net profits of around 1.1 million yuan. She called her success, to some extent, a kind of “miracle.”
Miracle or not, she has “made it” in life. “People say a person with such an appearance like me is born to have a wealthy life. It might be true. Who knows?” Ma said with a hearty laugh.
Though she admits that without her own persistent efforts her restaurant business would not have grown so quickly and so smoothly, she said she doesn’t totally deny the mysterious theories behind Chinese fortune telling. “That’s one of the reasons I gave up my business in Gansu and decided to move to Beijing,” Ma said, half-jokingly.
She said she occasionally used to meet with Buddhist monks, most of whom were surprised at her appearance. One suggested that she move to Beijing, but at the time she didn’t take the monk’s words seriously.
However, one day, a friend mentioned that the restaurant in the Gansu Provincial People’s Government Beijing Office was available under contract. “Beijing, the capital of China, did attract me,” Ma admitted.
She finally came to Beijing in 2002, with confidence, as she was backed by starting capital of the more than 1 million yuan earned from her restaurant business in Gansu. She also figured she would receive government support, as her restaurant is in the Beijing office of the Gansu Provincial Government.
However, at the beginning, life in Beijing wasn’t easy. “I never expected that I would encounter so many difficulties when I came to start the business,” Ma said.
She said her contracting of the restaurant affected some people’s interests, and these people tried by any means to force her out. But her persistence and courage ultimately helped her clear away obstacles and she remained.
Ma’s restaurant experienced hard times during the SARS crisis in 2003, and it wasn’t until 2004 that it began to turn a profit. After her four-year contract expired in 2005, Ma didn’t continue to run the restaurant despite its prospering business, because the original owners “saw profits in the restaurant and wanted it back to run it themselves.”
Then, based on her previous experiences, Ma began to open her own restaurants in Beijing, which soon proved to be popular. “Even the chef of the Great Hall of the People came to learn the special way of cooking mutton from me,” she said, proudly.
And what makes her prouder is that she has provided job opportunities for nearly 1,000 people, some of them laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises.
Now she considers herself lucky enough to be laid off. She said that for her next project, she is thinking of opening restaurants on foreign lands after receiving suggestions from friends.
“I’m confident in making the restaurants of my own brand popular in foreign countries,” Ma said.