One day in September 1999, a 25,000-square-meter China Rosewood Museum in Beijing's Chaoyang District opened.
Many leaders and celebrities came to attend the opening ceremony, and the scene was very lively and spectacular.
When people enter the museum, they will find that there are four floors of exhibition halls, with a total of thousands of ancient collections.
There are not only rosewood furniture, but also ancient furniture such as ebony, pear blossom wood and golden silk nan wood.
By 2004, the museum had been rated a 4A tourist attraction.
It is worth noting, however, that this museum is the first private museum in China, and the founder is an outstanding woman named Chen Lihua.
Many people may be unfamiliar with this name, but if you mention her ancestor Cixi, it must be known to everyone.
One
Chen Lihua was born in 1941, a Manchu Zhenghuangqi person, and from the genealogy, she is a descendant of Cixi.
For this, she never hid, and repeatedly said that she was indeed a descendant of Cixi.
In addition, people who know the history of the Qing Dynasty should know that the Zhenghuang Banner is the upper three of the Eight Banners of the Manchu Dynasty, and it is the second largest banner after the Yellow Banner.
However, at this time, the Qing Dynasty has been destroyed for decades, even if she is a Zhenghuangqi person and a descendant of Cixi, but there is no difference between her and ordinary people, and she has long lost the honor of the Qing Dynasty.
Because of this, Chen Lihua's family is not well-off, the family is tired of making a living, and even Chen Lihua, who is very young, has to drop out of school to support her family after graduating from middle school.
You don't say, three hundred and sixty lines, lines out of shape, although she can't change her fate with knowledge, but she is born a piece of business material.
Because her father was a carpenter, she made and repaired furniture from an early age.
However, at that time, it was a planned economy, and furniture manufacturing was nationalized.
Although Chen Lihua can't make furniture to make money, she can help people repair furniture, and she is very enthusiastic about doing things.
At first, when repairing furniture for everyone, they didn't charge any money at all, and at most they drank saliva and ate a piece of sugar in someone else's house.
But after a long time, people are embarrassed, and they all take the initiative to stuff her with money and introduce customers for her.
For now, her approach is word-of-mouth marketing, creating a solid customer base, establishing a good brand image, and paving the way for future development.
Sure enough, when the country was liberalized, she opened her own furniture factory.
Because she has accumulated a lot of experience in repairing furniture over the years, and has also listened to a lot of suggestions about furniture styles and functions, the furniture she makes is not only practical, but also very beautiful, and the most important thing is that it is very cheap.
So within a few years she was making a lot of money.
In fact, if she honestly makes furniture for a lifetime, although she can live a worry-free life, she definitely does not have the glory of China's richest woman in the future.
What really set her on the path to change was a visit to Hong Kong in 1981.
Two
In the early 1980s, Hong Kong's capital began to enter the mainland, and some new styles and more practical furniture also appeared in shopping malls, which brought a huge impact on her career.
To this end, she decided to go to Hong Kong to study, hoping that she could keep up with the development of the times.
However, when she came to Hong Kong, she saw a new world that she had never seen before.
The lights and high-rise buildings here make her dizzy, and at the same time, she smells new business opportunities.
At that time, Hong Kong's land industry developed rapidly, while the mainland's real estate industry was not well developed because the economy was recovering. If you go home at this time to develop the real estate industry and be the first wave of crab eaters, wouldn't it be more realistic than making furniture?
So she studied in Hong Kong for a whole year, during which she sold a lot of antiques from her previous collection and used the money to buy real estate everywhere.
After the property appreciates, it sells at a high price and completes its own capital accumulation.
A year later, she came to Beijing again and continued to look for opportunities for development.
At that time, there was a piece of real estate at No. 10 Chang'an Avenue ready to be sold, and she quickly bought it.
But what is such a big place for?
Thinking that Beijing is an international city, and this land is adjacent to Tiananmen, it is definitely a good choice to build an international club.
In this way, the Chang'an Club, which covers an area of 8,000 square meters and occupies almost a street, was born.
Since then, she has invested in a number of properties in a row, so by 2016, her assets have reached 50.5 billion, becoming the richest woman in China.
Three
Don't look at Chen Lihua mixed up outside, an image of a strong woman, but very gentle at home.
Before the development of Chen Lihua and ordinary women like husbands and children. But somehow later divorced her husband, she had to rely on repairing furniture alone to support herself and her children.
Fortunately, after developing with her own efforts, the women have gradually grown up, and she also wants to find her own happiness.
In this way, she and her 11-year-old Chi Chongrui entered the palace of marriage.
After marriage, the two lived a sweet life and the family was happy and harmonious.
However, Chi Chongrui knew that his wife worked very hard every day outside, so he stipulated that as long as his wife did not socialize and needed to go home to eat, the whole family must wait for her to sit at the dinner table before she could open the meal.
Although his wife repeatedly discouraged him, Chi Chongrui said that there were no rules and no circles, whether from the way of husband and wife, or filial piety, Chen Lihua, as the hardest worker in the family, should enjoy such treatment.
In addition, Chi Chongrui knows that his wife still has a deep affection for furniture, especially rosewood furniture. So he encouraged his wife to build a rosewood museum, which led to the scene where the article began.
Such love, such a family atmosphere, really makes people envious and jealous.
Indeed, the ancients always said that self-cultivation and family governance can only lead to the country and peace in the world, if there are no rules within the family and contradictions are continuous, even if there is a talent for the world, it will not be able to achieve a hegemony.