From herdsman to entrepreneur

HOHHOT - Bai Yujuan had just 1,000 yuan ($150) to celebrate the 2012 Spring Festival in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. On the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year, a client defaulted on a loan from her company.

At a time when most of China was celebrating with traditional family reunions, Bai and her college-freshman son simply stayed at home, with a malfunctioning heater barely countering the cold, snowy conditions outside.

The 44-year-old mother of Mongolian ethnic group, a leather goods craftsman and private lender, is hoping for a better time of the upcoming Spring Festival, as she continues her life of toil, bidding for success as a modern entrepreneur.

Born to a family of herdsmen in Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Bai is like many with her background in that she is struggling to modernize her lifestyle in fast-developing 21st-century China.

Yet she has suffered more hardship than most. She lost her husband, her son's father, to a brain hemorrhage in 2010.

Migrants to entrepreneurs

Bai continues to run the Mongolian arts and craft store they opened together, selling handmade leather paintings and bags she designs. She deeply misses her spouse. Over more than 20 years, the couple worked their way up from a small town to the big city of Tongliao in Inner Mongolia.

In the process, they transformed themselves from migrant workers to entrepreneurs. They moved from grossing 10,000 yuan in 2008 to more than 10 times that in 2009.

The couple first moved to the city in 2006 so their son could get a better education. They rented a 16 square-meter shop, mainly to sell leather bags, but made very little profit. "It was like rolling a small snow ball," Bai recalls.

The situation changed when her art work became popular among locals. In 2008, Bai got a small loan of 30,000 yuan from the Women's Union. The same year, she invented a carving technique and they opened their company.

The family decided to buy a new apartment. Then, "life played a trick on me," as Bai puts it, and her husband died.

"My whole world fell apart and the meaning of life faded under the shadow of my husband's death," Bai remembers. She refused to cry in front of her son, bottling up her emotions instead. Then, one day, she realized that life was too short to live in depression.

"My dignity said 'stand up and live.' I can apply my talent to our company. For my son's welfare, I have to move on," she says.