Success conquers insecurity

Xu Qingshui, 37, managing director of Lianjie Investment Group

There was no kindergarten in the village I lived in as a youngster, so my parents had to take me to the nearby town for preschool education. Though I was young, I noticed the differences between my urban counterparts and me in terms of speech, behavior and dress. I tried hard to talk and behave like them to hide my sense of inferiority.

As reform and opening-up deepened in the 1980s, my father started a business with some other villagers. It later became the Heng'an Group and had a market value of several billion.