Woman behind Philanthropist Billionaire

Billionaire philanthropist Chen Guangbiao has been most widely known for his unconventional charity activities. As soon as he learned that a killer earthquake had just hit Wenchuan, Sichuan Province in May 2008, for example, he hastily organized a rescue team composed of his employees and machinery and rushed for more than 1,000 kilometers to the earthquake area. The team arrived earlier than many other rescue teams. The machines played a big part in saving people’s lives. More bizarre was, while he was there, he distributed to earthquake victims a great amount of cash in 100 yuan banknotes.

Over the past few years, he and his wife have donated more than 1.4 billion to charity programs. The couple has also pledged to donate all the five billion when they get old. In sharp contrast to Chen Guangbiao who has been in national limelight for years, his wife Zhang Ting has kept a deliberately low profile until the couple’s gratitude tour to Taiwan before the Spring Festival of 2011. The couple and their son visited Taiwan, distributing NTD 500 million in cash to nearly 50,000 people who had suffered in natural disasters across nine counties and cities of the island province. Chen Guangbiao said the big-hearted people in Taiwan had most generously helped their fellow countrymen on the mainland when natural disasters such as earthquakes hit Sichuan in May 2008 and Qinghai in April 2010 and now it was his turn to return the generosity to Taiwan people and express his gratitude.

It was not until this tour that the general public finally had an opportunity to see Zhang Ting in person. People were astonished to find that the billionaire’s wife is pretty, big-hearted and prefers a simple lifestyle. For six days in Taiwan, she wore a black dress and wore no jewelry at all.

Chen Guangbiao is from a poor rural family in Sihong County, Jiangsu Province. After college graduation, he came to Nanjing for his first bucket of gold. One June evening in 1995, the 27-year-old Chen Guangbiao met his future wife in a photo shop in downtown. He came to have a roll of film developed and saw a pretty girl standing at the service counter and examining her photographs one by one carefully. Sixteen years later Chen described his reaction at the first sight of the beauty: the scorching air of Nanjing suddenly stopped flowing. She was exactly his type of girl as if she was out of an art film. He stood stupefied, trying to hunt for an appropriate pickup sentence. None came. And he created his own pickup sentence: “Hi, you have beauty ears. Your earlobes are big.” The girl turned around and looked at him, asking whether he could read faces. One thing led to another rapidly and he managed to get her telephone number before they said goodbye to each other at the photo shop.

1996 was the most difficult year in Chen’s entrepreneurship and that year Zhang Ting, a government employee, decided to marry Chen, still nobody at that time.

Chen soon struck gold in dismantling old buildings in urban areas and recycling steel and plastic windows and doors. He found the industry profitable and soon stepped in. He set up a company to recycle construction materials and had his projects in megacities such as Beijing and Guangzhou and Wuhan across the country. In a few years, he became a billionaire.

The first charity project he did was initiated by his wife. In June 2005, Zhang Ting watched a television news program and learned that Tibetan children in Yushu, Qinghai Province had very poor schools. She decided to go and help. Chen Guangbiao said the altitude was too dangerous. So he went.

He barely survived the altitude. On the way to Yushu, he vomited many times and took oxygen repeatedly. He bought two big tents so that the children in a school could study safely. After learning that many more schools had classrooms in similar dilapidated conditions, Chen decided to donate money to have 40 schools built. By July 2006, Chen had spent 12 million and finally had all the schools completed. He went there to inspect and acknowledge the completion of the schools. He was most warmly welcomed. Everybody treated him as a hero. Chen promised the children there that he would continue to earn big money so that he could continue to help them.

After watching the video of her husband’s visit to Yushu, Zhang Ting wept and hugged her husband.

In September 2009, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett invited 50 Chinese wealthy people to attend a charity dinner in Beijing. Chen Guangbiao was invited. The night the invitation came, Chen was sleepless. He wrote a reply stating that he was to donate all his property to charity when he left the world. It has been calculated that the wealth under his name now amounts to five billion. Zhang Ting reveals that the couple made the decision because of their son Chen Huanbao (the given name literarily means environmental protection). The 8-year-old has shown academic brilliance and is a promising piano player who won the top prize at a children’s piano competition in Shanghai. She realized that their son would certainly be able to earn enough through honest work in the future.

Chen Guangbiao is widely known for his seemingly reckless contribution to charity. But few people know that his younger brother works as a security guard earning 2,500 a month and his younger sister works as a restaurant waitress. Chen is most generous toward other people and Zhang Ting prefers a simple lifestyle. She buys no luxury brands. If her parents are hospitalized, her husband will always manage to find time and sit with them at night in hospital. Chen thinks it his duty to look after his parents-in-law, reasoning who else can provide better care than the son-in-law.

And Chen Guangbiao lives a simple life too. He never goes to night clubs or KTV or sauna. Nor does he drink wine or smoke cigarettes. He buys cheap fabrics at a local market and has his clothing made by ordinary tailors. His shoes are no more than 100 yuan a pair. His mobile phone is an ordinary type worth about 1,000 yuan. But he sends three text messages to his wife every day expressing his love.