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Rekindle ideals
In 2021, at the age of 76, Lan Shili re-established himself in the familiar city of Wuhan. After a long absence, when he saw this bustling street scene with his own eyes, he had mixed feelings in his heart.
Although the years in prison behind him were like a nightmare, he never gave up his vision and pursuit of the future.
"Wuhan, I return to your arms!" Lan Shili muttered to himself, his tone firm and persistent. Although the once glorious wealth of tens of billions is now gone, he still has an entrepreneurial dream in his heart and is eager to show his strength in a new field.
Now, he has set his sights on a new business opportunity – the carbonated beverage industry. Lan Shili knows that dreams are by no means something that can be taken lightly, even if he is old, he is still high-spirited.
During his long and turbulent life in prison, he realized the impermanence of life and realized that only by persevering and forging ahead can he find the path to success.
After regaining his freedom, Lan Shili looked resolute, and his eyes flashed with confidence. He stopped in the street, looking at the passers-by, as if looking for something.
In fact, he just wanted to re-record the city in his mind with his eyes. Wuhan, a city that once made his tens of billions of fortunes come to naught, will also witness his great cause of phoenix nirvana and re-emergence.
The fire in his heart has been burning since he was born, whether he was turned away from studying because he had no way to study, or he was cold-eyed by relatives and friends in the early days of entrepreneurship, Lan Shili gritted his teeth and persevered and never got discouraged.
Now, he is preparing for the second half of his life, and he will continue to strategize, be high-spirited and brave to open up a new world of his own.
Reminiscing about the glorious history
Speaking of the glorious years of the past, Lan Shili was full of emotion. With the courage of loneliness, he started from the bottom, overcame obstacles all the way, and finally climbed to the throne of the richest man in Hubei and ranked among the Forbes billionaires.
All this glory was paved with his own hands and sweat, and he was built brick by brick with indomitable fighting spirit.
It all started in 1991. At that time, Lan Shili had worked in Hainan and saw the huge business opportunities of the booming tourism industry, so he secretly decided to get a piece of the pie in this field.
He quit his stable job like a strong man with a broken wrist, and used all his savings and 500,000 yuan borrowed from relatives and friends to found Dongxing Electronics Company.
The beginning was not smooth, Lan Shili gambled on all his belongings to open two luxury hotels, boldly abandoning the outdated practice of "entering by ticket" at that time, and the wind of reform caused his peers to call it ridiculous.
But soon, the innovation was an instant hit with diners, and business was booming, with queues to get in.
With the foundation laid by these two hotels, Lan Shili has become more powerful and has taken a fast pace. He quickly invested in a number of real estate projects in Wuhan and surrounding cities, and amassed considerable wealth in just a few years.
The most remarkable thing is that in 2005, he spent a huge amount of money to build the paper highway, which became the culmination of individual investment in the country. In the same year, he also appeared on the Forbes list of China's richest people.
All these achievements embody Lan Shili's unique investment vision. He is adept at capturing new market opportunities and taking a different approach to marketing, which has enabled his business to spread across more than 20 areas and become a "diversified" business empire comparable to large corporations.
Ill-fated and bumpy
Although his career seems to be booming and suffering, Lan Shili's life is not smooth all the way. Just as his business territory was expanding day by day, fate suddenly gave him a heavy slap in the face.
In 2008, when the global financial crisis raged, a new project created by Lan Shili came into being. In order to maintain this weak airline from running out of vitality, Lan Shili spared no expense and made up his mind to sell a large amount of assets under his name, but after all, he was unable to catch it.
In 2009, Dongxing Airlines finally declared bankruptcy, and Lan Shili, who fanned the flames, was saddened.
And that's just the beginning of bad luck. In order to investigate the liability for breach of contract when acquiring Dongxing's assets, Lan Shili bravely filed a lawsuit with the court to seek justice. Who would have thought that instead he was charged with fraud and sentenced to four years in prison, which was also the fourth time in his life that he was in prison.
Prison life is naturally miserable. The cells were damp and cold, and the food was rough and simple. But even in prison, Lan Shili never bowed to fate.
He insisted on his innocence and devoted himself to writing articles to protect his legitimate rights and interests. It is this tenacious and unyielding attitude that has won the understanding and support of family members and employees.
After unremitting efforts, Lan Shili was finally released on parole in 2013 and regained the freedom of life. But when he walked out of prison, he was faced with the fact that the once glorious business empire had come to naught.
Billions of assets were gone, and he had to start all over again from scratch with no money.
Struggling to study and aspire to be deeply rooted
When it comes to Lan Shili's legendary life, many people are envious of his rich and noble success story, but few people know that he actually came from a humble background and was once quite poor.
Lan Shili was born in Wuhan in the 1960s, and his family was an ordinary working-class family. As the youngest child in the family, he was doted on since he was a child. At only 5 years old, Lan Shili showed extraordinary intelligence, and he begged his parents to let him go to school with his sister.
Despite his young age and the school's reluctance to take him in, Lan Shili cried tenaciously, and his parents had no choice but to let him be allowed to attend classes as an auditor first.
At the age of 14, Lan Shili, who was from a poor family, had to interrupt his studies and work as a salesman in the supermarket where his father worked. As a small salesman, Lan Shili was often despised and ridiculed, so he secretly decided to change this family situation with his own hands.
The dream of studying was rekindled. After some fundraising, Lan Shili finally scraped together enough to pay for college. He assured his knowledge-hungry parents that this would be his last attempt at studying, and that if he failed again, he would be an ordinary person.
With the support of his parents, he was admitted to his dream school in one go.
During college, Lan Shili made a living by working part-time, working hard while studying. He himself has experienced first-hand the life of working people at the bottom and has a deep respect for those who work hard to support their families.
It was this grinding process that allowed Lan Shili to understand the philosophy of perseverance in life.
Hurt both family and friends
During the low period of Lan Shili's life, the abandonment of relatives and friends broke his heart.
In 1995, Lan Shili's hotel business was in an embarrassing situation, and even the staff could not be paid. Penniless, he wanted to ask for help from relatives and friends, but was met with cold words from his family.
Instead of comforting and encouraging, his biological father brought up the old story and reprimanded him for his reckless decision to quit his job as an "iron rice bowl".
What made Lan Shili even more chilling was that his biological brother actually directly refused the request to borrow money, on the grounds that "you are too idealistic and too reckless and risky".
Faced with his family's incomprehension and abandonment, Lan Shili could only force his composure and secretly swallow this breath.
In the blink of an eye, in 2005, the once crumbling Lan Shili had already appeared on the Forbes rich list, and his family background changed from poor to rich. Surprisingly, when the money in his hands rolled in, those relatives and friends who had turned against him took the initiative to come to the door to "climb relatives".
Some family relatives who had drifted away from Lan Shili suddenly showed an unusually warm affinity for him, and continued to borrow money under various pretexts. What's more, he simply took both the stolen goods, and directly declared that Lan Shili was an "ungrateful and indifferent to his relatives", and asked him to indiscriminately take money to fund him.
Faced with this cynical environment, Lan Shili could only take a deep breath and secretly laugh at the capriciousness of human feelings. However, this time he made a different choice - he insisted on signing a loan agreement with relatives and friends, and was extremely abused by the other party, accused of being a miserly philistine.