Immigrate to Singapore focus on Singapore immigrant life: In 1991, the second year after China and Singapore established formal diplomatic relations, 29-year-old Zou Xiangyun resigned from her accounting position at a state-owned enterprise in Shanghai and traveled to Singapore alone to seek new opportunities. At that time, her knowledge of Singapore was limited to what she read in newspapers, knowing only that it was a beautiful garden city.
At that time, China was undergoing economic reforms that would change the fate of many people and the development trajectory of the entire world, and Singapore was frequently cited by the media as a model for these economic reforms. With infinite longing for Singapore, she set foot on this land.
Upon arriving in a foreign land, the first challenge she faced was language."They speak Singlish here, and we were not quite used to their accent. However, I had fully prepared myself mentally before coming, so I did not feel discouraged, but instead focused on learning."
For Singaporeans at that time, China was still a strange country. "When I first arrived, Singaporeans would ask me: 'You are from China, do you have air conditioning?' They felt that China was very poor; they did not understand China."
Zou Xiangyun initially squeezed into a small room with five other people, going to school every day to study English, and tutoring others in Chinese in her spare time to earn living expenses. After four years, she finally overcame the language barrier and brought her son over. A chance stroll through a shopping mall led her to discover a business opportunity, making her one of the first immigrant entrepreneurs from China in Singapore.
"At that time, looking at the mall, a cheongsam was wholesaled for 38 Singapore dollars (at that time, 1 Singapore dollar was about 5.6 RMB), and retailed for 79 Singapore dollars, while in Shanghai and Suzhou, the cost of a cheongsam was only 5 yuan (RMB). So I spent a few thousand yuan (RMB) to import hundreds of cheongsams from China and wholesaled them to Singaporeans. That is how I slowly started my business."
Between 1995 and 2005, Zou Xiangyun's clothing business flourished. At its peak, she opened four stores in Chinatown, a hub for the Chinese community, and undertook wholesale business for many large commercial centers in Singapore. However, just as her business was in full swing, a consumer revolution in China at the time led her, with her keen business sense, to choose to change industries again.
"Starting in 2005, everyone could order goods online from Yiwu, and I felt there was no opportunity left," said Zou Xiangyun. In the same year, "Taobao" became the largest online shopping platform in Asia, with an annual transaction volume exceeding 8 billion RMB. The rapid development of e-commerce made Zou realize that she was losing the advantages of her traditional business model, and it also made her marvel even more at the changes in China.
In July 2007, she acquired a Bak Kut Teh restaurant near Beach Road in downtown Singapore, and from then on, she began to enter the catering industry. With her accurate market sense and strategic vision, Zou Xiangyun's Dongjiang Holdings acquired 18 companies in just 9 years. Today, it has become a small and medium-sized enterprise with more than 200 employees, delivering meals to more than 10,000 people every day.
It is her hard-working and indomitable spirit that has made her somewhat famous in the industry. When she chose to become a Singapore citizen in 2008, she was received by Singapore's founding Prime Minister and then Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. "There were more than 260 people who received citizenship with me at that time, and the government selected 10 of us because our businesses were doing well. We were all very happy to hear that Minister Mentor Lee was coming to present us with our certificates."
Over the 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations, economic and trade exchanges between China and Singapore have become increasingly close. Singapore is one of the largest sources of foreign investment in China, while China is Singapore's largest trading partner, with more than 2 million personnel exchanges between the two sides each year. Today, more than 5,200 Chinese companies have settled in Singapore, and many companies, including Alibaba and Baidu, use Singapore as an important platform to expand their regional markets.
Zou Xiangyun said: "It is wise for Chinese companies to set up overseas headquarters in Singapore because Singapore is a bridge and also has a very good reputation. Chinese merchants can make good use of this bridge and reputation to go global."
As Chinese companies go global, the Singapore government is also actively promoting local companies to seek business opportunities in China. International Enterprise Singapore leads a large number of Singaporean small and medium-sized enterprise leaders to China for inspections and investment every year. Exploring the Chinese market, which has huge potential, is also one of Zou Xiangyun's next plans. "The Chinese market is very large, and I especially hope to find partners in China to jointly develop business in China. I am very much looking forward to the arrival of this day."