Property mogul Zhang Xin’s story is a classic “rags to riches” tale. Growing up in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, the one-time factory worker’s ambition was to be a peasant, a “glorified” job in the eyes of Mao Zedong’s communist regime.
Now, together with her husband Pan Shiyi, her net worth is around $3.3 billion. She’s regularly named one of the top businesswomen in the world and her real estate company SOHO China is credited with bringing color to Beijing’s cityscape. Yet Zhang’s was a life that started in monochrome.
