On that bright spring day in 2018, Ms. Chen Xiaoying, who is already 73 years old, sat calmly and firmly in a courtyard in her hometown Tonglu Village, looking at the once warm scenery with far-reaching eyes, and her heart surging with extremely complex but wonderful emotions.
In the near future, this woman in her prime decisively withdrew all the shares of Shentong Express Group, which she had created, and handed it over to Mr. Ma Yun, thus obtaining a rich return of up to 14.6 billion yuan, and at the same time completely getting rid of the heavy burden of the company's operation for many years.
Now, she is finally able to enjoy that quiet and peaceful old age in this familiar land.
Looking back on her life, Ms. Chen Xiaoying has too many stories worth pondering and recalling. She was born in a poor family, and since she was a child, she followed her parents around and worked hard to make a living.
However, it was this environment that shaped her tenacious character until 1992, when she met Mr. Nie Tengfei, who was also from an ordinary background but had great ambitions, and the two hit it off at first sight and worked together on the stage of Shengtong Advertising Company to create Shentong Express Company.
When her husband passed away, Ms. Chen Xiaoying's inner pain was indescribable, but instead of pursuing the truth behind the accident as the outside world speculated, she quickly decided to take over Shentong and promoted Mr. Xi Chunyang, Mr. Nie Tengfei's former driver, to the company's top management.
This decision caused widespread skepticism and suspicion at the time, but Ms. Chen Xiaoying remained silent and only silently pushed the company forward.
Today, Ms. Chen Xiaoying sits quietly in this familiar courtyard, recalling those challenging entrepreneurial years, and what emerges in her heart is not bitterness, but the emotion and strength when she fought side by side with her beloved Mr. Nie Tengfei.
She has never regretted her choice, as these experiences have made her legend what she is today.
If we want to talk about the starting point of Ms. Chen Xiaoying's life journey, then we must go back to 1998, 25 years ago. At that time, Mr. Nie Tengfei, the 25-year-old founder of Shentong Express, suffered a sudden car accident and passed away when his career was booming.
This news was like a bolt from the blue, and the entire Shentong team fell into deep grief and mourning.
As Mr. Nie Tengfei's wife and business partner, Ms. Chen Xiaoying's courage and determination in handling this major incident have also aroused widespread attention and heated discussions from all walks of life.
Many have speculated whether she had some ulterior connection to the crash.
Indeed, as early as a few years ago, Nie Tengfei and Chen Xiaoying, two couples from a poor family, were high-spirited and ambitious young people.
At first, they were just a helpless ordinary couple, huddled in a dilapidated rental house. However, with their ambition to change their fate, with their yearning for a better life in the future and their unwavering trust in each other, the two young couples went hand in hand and embarked on a journey to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.
In the beginning, they were only engaged in some trivial errands and deliveries, relying on running around to attract business to make ends meet. However, with his fearless courage and extraordinary courage, Nie Tengfei often took the initiative to ask various bosses to take on high-risk, high-reward express delivery tasks.
Behind the scenes, Chen Xiaoying is his most solid backing, going all out to support her husband's career.
In this way, after unremitting efforts and hard work, they gradually developed and grew from the initial running around, and Shentong Express Company also emerged in Hangzhou.
At that time, private express delivery was still an emerging industry, facing the constraints of capital and policy.
However, Nie Tengfei and Chen Xiaoying have a unique vision, insight into the broad development potential, and resolutely choose to show their strength on the stage of Shengtong Advertising Company.
In the face of the achievements in front of them, Nie Tengfei and Chen Xiaoying are full of endless beautiful expectations for the future.
However, on that night in 1998, fate played a cruel joke. Nie Tengfei was supposed to return to the company with joy and celebrate Shentong's new achievements with his wife Chen Xiaoying and his colleagues in the company.
However, on the highway on the way home, the vehicle driven by Nie Tengfei suddenly lost control and rushed out of the protective fence of the highway, causing a tragic car accident.
On the spot, Nie Tengfei, who was only 25 years old, unfortunately passed away, and his bloody body was escorted back to the company. In an instant, the entire company fell into extreme grief and shock.
No one could accept that this promising young entrepreneur who had just started his career would pass away so suddenly.
What's even more puzzling is that on the day of the accident, Nie Tengfei did not accompany his personal driver Xi Chunyang as usual. According to Xi Chunyang's explanation afterwards, he did not drive himself because he was unwell.
However, such vague explanations have not quelled all kinds of speculation.
When the famous entrepreneur Nie Tengfei unfortunately passed away in a car accident, his wife Chen Xiaoying behaved unusually calmly, which made the outside world speculate whether there was an unknown secret behind it.
Especially Nie Tengfei's younger brother, full of doubts about his sister-in-law's cold behavior, firmly believes that there must be an ulterior inside story in this, after all, the sudden car accident is too bizarre for people to easily accept the fact that only accidents can explain.
However, something even more shocking is yet to come. Soon after Nie Tengfei's death, Chen Xiaoying resolutely took over the responsibility of Shentong Express and became the de facto helmsman, despite the strong opposition of the company's top management.
What's even more surprising is that she chose Xi Chunyang, her husband's personal chauffeur before his death, as her right-hand man, and the two worked closely together to deal with various challenges.
In the days when she just took over Shentong, Chen Xiaoying was full of ambition, but the reality poured cold water on her. The company is in the midst of the most difficult trough period: Nie Tengfei's death has caused panic among employees, a massive loss of high-level talent, serious management vacancies, and increasingly fierce competition in the industry, Shentong's performance has plummeted, its market share has been shrinking, and she has felt pressured by competitors.
During that time, the doubts of the outside world, the internal predicament, and the confusion of the future all brought unprecedented heavy pressure to Chen Xiaoying. It was as if she was in a lonely battlefield, struggling to move forward.
Luckily, however, she wasn't alone this time. Her younger brother and Xi Chunyang stood beside her without hesitation and supported her with practical actions.
The three of them supported each other and worked together to work hard for the revival of Shentong.
In the face of such a grim situation, Chen Xiaoying did not choose to compromise, but actively planned to survive in adversity. She deeply realized that Shentong's original franchise model could no longer adapt to the new situation and must carry out bold changes.
After in-depth research and careful consideration, she decisively proposed a landmark reform plan: allowing franchisees to further develop new franchise outlets on the basis of the original franchise outlets, and the franchise fee is relatively low.
This was later known as the "two-tier franchise system".
In short, Chen Xiaoying, with her keen insight, has skillfully adopted an innovative strategy in the process of expanding the territory of Shentong's franchise network: to attract new franchise partners through near-zero cost franchise fees, so as to stimulate and promote the growth of the entire network! This radical but extremely clever move has enabled her to occupy a considerable market share in a short period of time.
Needless to say, this was the wisest and most decisive decision Chen Xiaoying made at that particular moment.
What is remarkable is that once this bold and far-sighted policy was launched, it immediately triggered a warm response and active participation from the majority of investors and franchisees.
In just a few years, Shentong's franchise outlets have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, all over the country, and the service quality has been significantly improved.
With the rapid growth of the network scale, Shentong's business volume and operating income also increased, successfully achieving a counterattack and quickly surpassing many competitors at that time.
After accumulating sufficient funds and strong scale advantages, Shentong's investment in various fields such as marketing, publicity and fleet construction has gradually increased.
In 2003, after several years of hard work, Shentong finally ushered in a new glorious chapter, successfully ranked among the industry leaders, proud of its peers.
However, while the company has successfully weathered the crisis and is back on track, some observant observers may find that Chen Xiaoying has begun to fade away from Shentong's day-to-day operations, leaving more decision-making and management power in the hands of a professional management team.