Xin is extremely stubborn. And very pleasant with it. Once she’s set her mind on something, then off she goes. And she doesn’t stop until she’s achieved what she set out to do. This was already the case when she was just a little girl. There is one day in her childhood that the 33-year-old can still remember well. She was eight years old, and at a restaurant with her grandparents. In China, dog meat is also traditionally on the menu. “When I heard the desperate howling of a dog coming from the kitchen, I suddenly realised that something dreadful was going on there. I cried and screamed as loud as I could to stop myself from hearing the howls.” Her grandparents saw no need to take their granddaughter to restaurants like that again.
Later, it was not enough for Xin to be merely indignant at the cruel way the creature had been treated. For a long time, she played with the idea of becoming an animal keeper at the zoo and also began to get involved in animal protection. Today she works in an aid organisation for the welfare of neglected or endangered dogs and cats, and tries to bring them together with new, caring owners. It goes without saying that she has a dog of her own. A two-and-a-half-year-old Schnauzer. Its Chinese name “酸奶” means something like “Yogurt” – maybe so that traditional butchers and cooks don’t get any funny ideas?
Xin has always had a very clear idea of where her own life should be going. Emulating the example of her very successful mother, she studied accounting, and wanted to put all the hard work she had put into her education to good use and significantly broaden her horizons. She met the right partner for this at college, when she was just 17. He was two years older than her and, like her, wanted to reach for the opportunities offered by China, a country that was emerging in every way.
“I come from the southwest of China, moved all the way north to study, and finally ended up in Shanghai in 2007, where I took a job as a controller in a production plant,” reports Xin. Bearing in mind the size of the company, this was a trip that took the young woman and her husband into completely new worlds and cultures. The 26-million metropolis of Shanghai, China’s largest city, was what fascinated Xin most of all: “An unbelievable city, extremely modern, and the pace of life is hectic. The city and its people always seem to be looking ahead and giving it everything they’ve got.”
In 2011, Xin joined EDAG as a project controller. “For me, the company stood for new beginnings and the future,” she recalls. “When I started, there were 100 of us, today there are more than 350.” She particularly likes the intensive intercultural exchange: “We are an international team, with people from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, India and China. This is something I really enjoy,” enthuses Xin.
Here it becomes evident that she is someone whose gut feelings and heart are just as important as her passionate application of mind and intellect. “Figures obey a clear logic,” she explains. This means that, for her, bringing together plans and results is not by any means a dry subject. “In order to be able to understand how to achieve the desired results, everyone involved in a development has to communicate all the time.” This is only possible in a strong, motivated team.
In 2013, when she took over the management of her department, Xin became pregnant: twins. A two-fold challenge. Nevertheless, she only took a short time off for the birth of her two sons. In China, it is common practice for grandparents to play a major role in childcare. This was one advantage that Xin’s small family didn’t have. The grandparents lived too far away to be able to take care of the children on a regular basis. “We had to see to everything ourselves,” says Xin.
This did not, however, mean that she lost sight of her own professional interests and goals. Alongside her career and family, Xin spent two years doing a special controlling course at the renowned Institute of Management Accountants of USA, which she successfully completed a in 2019. “Those were two really tough years,” she admits. “There are only 24 hours in a day, and I didn’t want my children or work to suffer. So I just had to make do with six hours’ sleep a day during this period. Seven days a week.” Her sons accepted that their mother couldn’t always be there for them during that phase. “In spite of being so young, they understood this and managed things very well together,” she says, delighted at this extraordinary family team effort, which brought everybody even closer together.
“For me, these professional and private experiences are of equal importance,” emphasises Xin, who is now the Finance Director at EDAG Engineering und Design in Shanghai, and as such bears great responsibility. There is no reason to fear that this might cloud her vision of the future. “I constantly need new goals,” she says with absolute certainty. “Not long-term, but short-term, because then they are more tangible and more immediately attainable for me.”
For this reason, she has made it a habit to look in the mirror whenever she has a birthday, and ask herself what she has achieved in the year just gone and where she wants to go in the year ahead. The length of this monologue can differ from year to year. But there is one result that is always absolutely certain. “I want to be constantly learning and experiencing new things, to broaden my horizons and do something good for people, animals and nature,” says Xin. If, when looking back, she realises that she has failed to achieve one of the goals she had set herself, it isn’t an issue. “But it does fuel my ambition, and this makes me all the more determined to succeed. Then I can be really stubborn.”
