Zhang's father was a retail tycoon in Heilongjiang and regarded as the biggest local capitalist before the "cultural revolution", when the family's fortune was taken away.
"If I had inherited my father's wealth, I wouldn't have the motivation or enthusiasm to start my own business," Zhang says.
His mother lived a glamorous life when Zhang's father owned a big business. But overnight his father was arrested and his mother had to carry the burden of raising six children and caring for four grandparents.
The only living she could find was tailoring.
Zhang Zhifeng
"My mother was a kind-hearted person who never had conflicts with people. Sometimes customers changed their mind and did not like the style of the finished clothes. My mum kept the clothes and started over on a new one," Zhang says.
As time went by those clothes piled up. Zhang worked on them, made changes and turned out a new look. Most of the time they sold very well.
"That experience gave me happiness in design and innovation, and imparted a desire to do business," he says.
Two decades and a half ago, Zhang founded a process-on-order firm. His company made clothing based on orders and patterns supplied by companies from the former Soviet Union. He then exported the finished goods to eastern European countries.
What first attracted foreign clients was Zhang's tailoring skills in making bell-bottom trousers.
That was in early 1980s, when international thinking and fashion first entered China, and Chinese people's dress codes opened up. Bell-bottom trousers were one of the hottest fashions. Zhang was a skillful tailor, making pants from a pattern with only one cut. He earned less than 10 cents for each cutting.
At that time, people paid little attention to the type of cloth, whether cotton or polyester, but Zhang kept ahead of fashions. He traveled to Shanghai, China's fashion capital, to purchase some rarely seen textiles.
Later his business grew so big that there were 16 subsidiaries in different sectors, even including hotel management and steel trading.
As his process-on-order business and experience grew, Zhang found that the same clothing sold for much higher prices in the United States and Western Europe.
"'That's cheating!' I was naive enough to think at that time," Zhang says. So in 1990 he started NE-Tiger.
He is currently studying philosophy at Fudan University in Shanghai twice a week with the hope that philosophy will give him insight in business management.
Zhang believes the Chinese expression for an entrepreneur - qi ye jia - is a perfect explanation of the spirit of innovation and business. Qi means lifting up your heels to stand higher and look to the future; ye means god-given responsibility; and jiameans teamwork and unity.
