"Within 10 days of meeting Pan Shiyi, in 1994, I decided to marry him, even though he was newly divorced, was not so rich, and was balding," recalls Zhang Xin, co-chief executive of SOHO China Co Ltd.
The firm is today one of the region's leading real estate development companies. It is owned by Zhang and her husband, Pan Shiyi, who is also co-chairman of SOHO China.
Zhang's seemingly cursory decision resulted in the pair becoming one of China's most successful entrepreneur couples.
But it wasn't always easy. The pair struggled their way, over the past 20 years, to the top of the nation's social strata.
Humble beginnings
Pan was born into a poor family in Gansu Province in 1962. His father, who was a college teacher, was purged as a "rightist'' and sent to the countryside in the late 1950s.
In 1984, Pan graduated from a small petrochemical college on the outskirts of Beijing, and began a career as a government functionary.
Three years later, Pan bid farewell to his dull life in China's bureaucracy. He moved to Shenzhen determined to swim or drown in the sea of business.
In 1989, Pan travelled to the tropical island province of Hainan with his boss. The development in the Hainan Special Economic Zone was just taking off, and the island had become a bevy of real estate speculation.
Pan's received his first taste of wealth from real estate speculation. In Hainan, he and five friends -- most of whom later became famous real estate tycoons -- established the firm Hainan Agricultural High-tech Development Co.
"We bought eight villas with 5 million yuan (US$603,864.73) we had borrowed ... but no one wanted to purchase them from us. We nearly went crazy," Pan said.
Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997, inspected South China in February 1992. That tour resulted in a new round of reform and investment across the nation.
That saved Pan and his partners. Properties were selling like hotcakes and they managed to sell some of the villas at twice the price.
The ease with which they earned the profit did not prompt Pan and his friends to irrationally speculate -- as did many investors in Haikou, the provincial capital -- in the real estate sector.
"When I learnt the housing construction planned for Haikou would guarantee residents had, per capita, 50 square metres of living space, while Beijingers had just 7 square metres, I knew it was time to leave the island to avoid the bubble," Pan recalled.
With the money earned in Hainan and some new investments with a State-owned conglomerate, China Huacheng Group, Pan and his friends formed Vantone Investment Co in Beijing in 1993.
Pan was selected the firm's general manager.
Vantone New World, a 100,000-square-metre shopping complex, was their first project in Beijing.
Pan spent 10 million yuan (US$1.21 million), an incredibly large sum in those days, on advertising. It worked. All the units quickly sold out.
Unfortunately for Pan and his partners, Vantone's fortunes took a dive, as the success of Vantone New World prompted the group to make more diverse, but unsuccessful, investments.
Every cloud has a silver lining. Pan, around that time, met Zhang.
Like Pan, Zhang wasn't born into a wealthy family. She was born in Beijing in 1965, and moved to Hong Kong with her parents in the early 1980s.
She worked for five years in garment and shoe factories, for tiny salaries, after she finished middle school.
She eventually went to England to finish her high school education and to earn her undergraduate and graduate degrees.
Zhang received a master's degree at Cambridge University in 1990, and worked for ING Barings and Goldman, Sachs & Co as an analyst, on Wall Street.
Zhang returned to Beijing in 1994. One day, Zhang accompanied a friend -- who had been set up with Pan by a matchmaker -- on a double date.
Zhang and Pan spent a lot of time talking with each other, and forgot Pan was on a date with another woman.
Pan and Zhang soon fell in love.
"Pan was humourous, honest, creative and even idealistic, which attracted me deeply," Zhang said.
Shortly after that, Pan and Zhang decided not only to begin their life together -- but to start their own company.
Cultural conflicts
In the mid 1990s, the real estate sector was one of the lest governed sectors, due to the lack of regulations, in China. Speculation was rampant and underground deals were common.
"But I saw it as one of the most creative and robust sectors in the world's most dynamic country. In the United States, you will not see several new buildings constructed in one year,"
Zhang was attracted to real estate development, because she believed it would give her the opportunity to use her Wall Street financing experience in China's booming property sector.
But bridging East and West was not easy.
"For nearly one year, (Pan and I) quarreled everyday. Everything Pan practised was different from my understanding and habits cultivated on Wall Street," Zhang said.
Their first major development, eventually named SOHO New Town, was located on the site of a collapsed factory. Traffic conditions were poor, the environment was dirty and the sky was nearly always grey.
From Wall Street investor's view, the project was not satisfactory. The location was poor, and there were problems with financing.
Although the project was underway by 1996, Pan and Zhang separated, temporarily, because of their deep-rooted differences in philosophy.
"I chose to give up my job in our company to become a housewife, to prevent our disputes," Zhang said.
But Zhang's US background helped Pan. She arranged for Pan to speak at Harvard University.
Pan began his address at Harvard, which was in 1999, but realized only a few students were in attendance.
At the same time, an dotcom investor was speaking in a nearby hall. Pan and Zhang decided to attend the other person's speech.
That speech gave Pan and Zhang something to think about: The new economy versus the traditional economy.
"We tried to understand what the booming Internet development could mean for us, and what we could do for the new economy,"Zhang recalled.
They had an idea.
"The Internet made it possible to easily take business from the office to home, to save traffic time. We figured the Internet, with China's booming economy, would create a huge number of small companies that would pursue low operation costs. Offering a product that enabled them to combine their homes and offices would meet the demand,'' Pan said.
They designed SOHO (small office, home office) New Town -- to accommodate both businesses and residences.
The concept caught on. Sales of the 400,000-square-metre development's units were nothing short of a miracle.
Well before the project was completed in 2000, Pan had sold all the units -- for a combined US$482 million. Their profit: US$157 million.
Pan also introduced a revolutionary sales tactic -- unsatisfied home buyers could return their properties, provided they were not decorated -- without any excuse.
That was rare in China at that time.
The tactic worked on home buyers, but infuriated other developers, who criticized Pan and suggested his strategy might cause them to suffer lost sales.
Amid the criticism, Pan wrote a book, "Criticizing Pan Shiyi." The book was an instant best-seller.
Art versus profit
The profit from SOHO New Town elevated Pan and Zhang into China's billionaire club. They seldom argue these days.
"We cannot afford to get divorced because it will be too difficult to divide our money," Zhang joked.
On a serious note, she acknowledges the reason for their harmony is she does not try to influence Pan's development plans with her Wall Street practices.
After giving birth to two children, Zhang returned to the company's leadership. She is now responsible for management and design. Pan focuses on development and sales.
In recent years, they developed the 700,000-square-metre Jianwai SOHO in Beijing's central business district (CBD).
That development was welcomed by Beijing's real estate sector. Sales of the units were worth more than 2 billion yuan (US$241.55 million) in 2002, and hit 4 billion yuan (US$483.09 million) last year.
Sales of Jianwai SOHO accounted for nearly half of the total property sold in CBD in the past two years.
In addition to profit, their business success has given the opportunity to collect and appreciate art.
"We can find a common interest here without the Wall Street dogma," said Zhang.
"One day in 2000, I asked Pan, 'Why can't we make our developments into art?'"
They purchased land beside the Great Wall at Badaling to develop villas. They invited 12 of Asia's leading architects -- from the Chinese mainland, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and South Korea -- to design what they felt would be ideal homes.
"The idea of letting architects do what they wanted was novel in the real estate sector, because developers were afraid imaginary and unrealistic works would puzzle property buyers and prevent them from buying," Zhang said.
Developed for US$24 million in 2001, the project was first called Asian Architects' Passage, but renamed Commune by the Great Wall.
Some homes in the development had bamboo wall, while others were featured with glass ceiling and capricious architectural lines. When it was finished, Pan and Zhang decided not to sell the villas, but rather to transform them into a resort.
Their success has paid off in more ways than profits. Last year, Zhang became the first non-architect to receive an award at the Venice Biennale, for her "bold personal initiative."
"Although the villas do not produce monetary profits, they bring greater interest to us -- people caring very much about quality construction and respecting architects. This brings long-term returns for our future developments," Pan told China Business Weekly.
