Being an entrepreneur is either going to heaven or hell.
--Lan Shili
Wen / Ba Jiu Ling
After 897 days of detention and residential surveillance by the Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau, I have now been acquitted by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court.
He is Lan Shili, the "first person in China's private aviation", more than a decade ago, he opened China's first private airline.
Like his achievements, it is impossible to ignore that in his 62 years of life, he has returned 4 times in the cycle of going to prison and getting out of prison to start a business.
Each time, Lan Shili went to prison or was imprisoned, for different reasons.
The first was because of smuggling high-end cars to pay bribes to government and bank personnel; the second was the bankruptcy of Dongxing Airlines, Lan Shili owed taxes; the third time was a dispute with the partners about the transfer of equity, which was reported by the other party for fraud; the fourth time was during residential surveillance in a designated residence, absconding to Singapore, and later being caught by the Guangzhou police.
The twists and turns of the second half of his life are related to The East Star Airlines that brought him to the highest point of his life.
01. The multitude rebels and rebels
In 2005, the assets of Dongxing Group involving multiple industries exceeded 2 billion yuan, and Lan Shili became the first richest man in Hubei to enter the Forbes China Rich List.
This year, the state introduced a new policy to allow private capital to enter the aviation industry. Yuan Shanla, then vice mayor of Wuhan, took Lan Shili to the provincial and municipal leaders to jointly write an application to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. In 27 days, Dongxing Group was approved by the Civil Aviation Administration of China at a record-breaking speed and obtained 550 mu of aviation land.
In 2006, Lan Shili, president of Dongxing Group, was interviewed by reporters at the inaugural flight ceremony
Thanks to the vigorous publicity of the Wuhan Municipal Government, when lan shili's booked plane was still on the assembly line, the two-month ticket of East Star Airlines was booked.
East Star Airlines has gone all the way up, but behind it is the story of dog blood that officials and businessmen turn against each other. Lan Shili borrowed 90 million yuan from the Agricultural Bank of China, and after the East Window incident, one president was dismissed and 9 staff members were punished on their backs. He didn't even look at the people he dragged into the water, and only said lightly, "What do you have to do with me?" Since then, Eastern Star Has not received a single bank loan.
Because the investment was not smooth, he criticized the investment environment in front of the leaders of Wuhan City, and the other party sneered: "The investment environment is not good, how will your airline do it?" ”
At that time, the vice governor of Hubei Province saw the signs of Lan Shili and advised him: After getting flowers and applause, he should remember to shake hands with the people in the audience and show gratitude and modesty.
Lan Shili did not shake hands, and the evil consequences buried by East Star Airlines were quickly revealed one by one.
The first is that competitors spared no effort to encircle and suppress, Air China, China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and other 8 airlines banned offline agents and travel agencies to sell tickets of Dongxing Airlines, and the boycott more than a decade ago caused at least 2 million yuan of losses to Dongxing Airlines.
Then after the crash of East Star Airlines, almost no one wanted to pull Lan Shili.
In 2008, the financial crisis hit the space transportation industry, fuel prices continued to rise, operating costs increased, and East Star Airlines revenue plummeted. The debt of Dongxing Airlines and its parent company Dongxing Group totaled more than 1 billion yuan, and Lan Shili had to raise money everywhere.
After pledging his shares to Rongzhong, he only got less than one-third of the expected 80 million. He and Xie Xiaoqing, chairman of Rongzhong, blamed each other, and both believed that the other was the snake in the story of "The Farmer and the Snake".
Lan Shili could only borrow usurious loans, and no matter how high the interest rate was accepted, but it still failed to save the decline of East Star Airlines.
The final blow was that East Star Airlines directly ripped off the last bit of decency with the Wuhan Municipal Government. In 2009, the Wuhan municipal government once again brokered the debt-laden Dongxing Airlines to find AVIC Group to acquire Dongxing Airlines, and as a result, Lan Shili repented when the contract was about to be signed.
After the Wuhan Municipal Government investigated, it was found that the shareholding structure of East Star Airlines had been divided to the point that none of it was in Lan Shili's own hands. In the end, the matter ended with the bankruptcy auction of Eastern Star Airlines, and Lan Shili was also arrested for tax arrears.
In 2009, the plane that suspended flights of East Star Airlines stopped at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport
02. Behind the madness
The louder the shout, the more likely it is to be due to uneasiness.
In the eyes of the world, the reason for Lan Shili's arrest is different every time, but every time, Lan Shili summarizes the reason for his imprisonment as "the conspiracy of the other party.".
During the first Spring Festival when he was imprisoned for tax arrears, he washed his face with tears every day, and serious problems occurred in his stomach and nervous system. He couldn't eat and couldn't sleep well. In prison, he spent a lot of time thinking about his business landscape and his life, but he eventually came to the conclusion that someone wanted him to die.
He felt that his condition could lead to paralysis or even death at any time, claiming that the hospital did not treat him and only use glucose to maintain his life, and he told his family that no matter how he died, he was persecuted to death.
In fact, he could not eat because of gastrointestinal and nervous system disorders, and used normal saline and glucose to maintain his body in prison. He was a regular visitor to the prison commissary, and in order to condition his stomach, he could eat two packs of melon seeds a day, and often bought fast food noodles and soy milk.
Because of his poor health, the prison relieved him of his labor. Lan Shili subscribed to 24 financial magazines and wrote 7 books in prison. In order to reduce his sentence, Lan Shili actively reformed in prison, compiled 15 programs for the Spring Festival performance of prisoners, and the three and a half sentences he participated in were awarded the special prize, which gave him a 3-month commutation.
He wrote a long whistleblower letter in prison, reporting Yuan Shanla, the deputy mayor of Wuhan who helped him at the time, and also wrote a tearful suicide note in prison, which eventually flowed smoothly and attracted everyone's attention.
What he did after that release was strikingly similar to what he has now, with two press conferences in Wuhan and Beijing, where he explained the high profile as a means of saving his life, saying: "Otherwise someone might make me disappear again." At a press conference, he suffered two power outages, and he pursed his lips nervously, feeling that his personal safety was threatened.
He did not expect that the high-profile he would be imprisoned again. In 2015, because of the transfer of 50% of the shares of Siam Airlines and Dongxing Online to the businessman Li Quanjiang, Lan Shili was considered to be a thief and slippery, cheating money but not giving enough equity, Li Quanjiang sued him for fraud. Lan Shili was first placed under residential surveillance, then secretly absconded to Singapore, and finally caught by the Guangdong police and imprisoned in a detention center in Guangzhou.
The fourth time he was imprisoned, after 897 days, the court finally found that the fraud charges against Lan Shili were insufficient and acquitted him.
This time, Lan Shili still did not "stop", in addition to holding a press conference, he also registered his own Douyin number to increase exposure. Two days ago, he posted a video on Douyin, where he stood next to the former East Star Building and said that the two buildings are now illegally occupied, but sooner or later they will return to him.
Many people do not understand his excitement, and every time he waits for his hard-won freedom, Lan Shili will become "rampant" again. Fear of persecution, fear of being misunderstood, this negative emotion may still be driving him.
When he was studying at Wuhan University, Lan Shili, who came from a poor family, could not even eat enough. He found that an aluminum toothpaste skin could sell for a penny and could buy a bun in the cafeteria. So in order to eat enough, he searched the toothpaste skin of the boys' dormitory and sneaked into the girls' dormitory to find it.
The girl who came out of the bathroom found Lan Shili next to the pool and shouted "hooligan" in horror. Surrounded by a group of girls to accuse him, he panicked, crouched down with his head in his arms, and held up in his hand the wuhan student ID card that proved that he was not a bad person.
This memory left a deep scar in his heart. After he became the president of the East Star Group, he had the courage to bring it up. He repeatedly said that I am not a thief, I am not a rogue.
The uneasiness brought about by this memory may have run through his life, and he needed to constantly shout to prove his innocence and toughness.
Some people call him the "undead bird" of the business world, and perhaps he is more like a bird of fright, gray because of uneasiness, and scrappy because of uneasiness.
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The author of this article | Wu Runqian | When the value is edited | He Mengfei
Responsible Editor | He Mengfei | Editor-in-Chief | Zheng Yuanmei | Image source | VCG