Yang Jian: In Xinjiang, just as the natural environment endows people with love and praise of life, multiculturalism gives birth to a fun, happy, and humorous atmosphere of life.
I wasn’t a good student in high school and I never managed to pass the national college entrance exams, even after two tries. Eventually, I had to settle with a technical college called Xinjiang Industrial Vocational and Technical College, which was right next to Bayi Iron & Steel Co. Ltd. My major was seamless steel tube.
In 1995, I got a job with Xinjiang Steel, which was to put away newly tempered steel outdoors. So, I mainly worked outside. From July to April the next year, I was alternately exposed to the blazing heat of summer and the freezing cold of winter. I experienced the hardships of life first hand and I learned to cherish my hard-earned happiness. I was desperate to get out of there, because life in a workshop like that was not what I was shooting for.
Three years later, I got married and settled down in Shanghai. In December 12, 1998, I opened COCO BBQ, my first BBQ restaurant in the city, investing all of my savings into it. But, as I soon found out, there were already quite a few similar restaurants in Shanghai, and because I still had a regular daytime job, I could only open it for business at night. So business was bad and my turnover was just 249 yuan per day.
I didn’t like that at all, so I went to my boss to ask for leave of absence. He was nice and supportive and told me to return to him if things went south. Now that I was able to focus on the restaurant business, COCO BBQ began to show signs of prosperity in just about two months. At start-up, there were only three of us: a dishwasher, a server and me. My wife helped me in the kitchen after being done with her regular daytime job. There was a lot to do and many hurdles to cross. BBQs in Shanghai are mainly a night-time business that involves graveyard working hours, typically from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to get to bed until daybreak. Long-term irregular schedule and drinking and smoking made me feel physically and mentally exhausted. I began to doubt if this was the right career for me. Despite the good money, deep within me I did not enjoy what I was doing. So, I contracted the restaurant to my partner while I remained the owner. My plan was to find a new job in a new industry, but I ended up finding nothing after three months. Given my experience, I couldn’t bring myself to take up a low-paid manager job. On the other hand, I couldn’t get anything better than that. So, I went back to the restaurant when my partner-turned contractor returned to Xinjiang for a funeral. After three months’ setbacks, I repositioned myself and decided to focus on catering.
On June 18, 2002, I turned the grille into a regular Xinjiang favor restaurant and began making at least twice as much money as before. I saw hope coming my way and I called my partner back for further cooperation. On January 1, 2003, we opened our first franchise with an investment of 300,000 yuan. Unfortunately, the SARS endemic broke out and nobody came out to dine any more. Everyone was wearing masks. Half of my staff had gone back home, while the other half fidgeted in fear and worry. I knew I had to hold on and find a way out, so I put a lot of garlic and ginger in the food I made. Later I discovered that my restaurant business actually got better and better during the SARS outbreak.
We recovered all of our investment within the year, but our built-up confidence soon lapsed into conceit. We set up new franchises everywhere. By 2005, we had as many as five franchises, of which four were running at a loss either for wrong location or poor management. I ran into a down moment of my life. Worse still, a key partner who was also one of my best friends, had left me. I was very sad and decided to shut down the four and keep the profitable one only. I found the right business model after learning from my mistakes and failures. I never knew it would take 10 years.
One of the big problems we used to have as a restaurant was that the food we served were not to the taste of local customers in Shanghai. The reason was because we were getting too involved in cooking authentic Xinjiang cuisine. So, we had figure out ways to localize Xinjiang cuisine or integrate it with Shanghai, Cantonese and even Central Asian cuisine. Such integration fit in very well with the name of my restaurant: Yerishari, which came from an employee named Kerem. I love it because it’s the Uyghur word for “the earth” and Xinjiang is known for its cultural diversity. Yerishari is a culturally and ethnically diverse enterprise that hires more than 1,200 employees from 17 ethnicities and seven different countries. Hand-shaking is a form of greeting that we advocate among employees so that they would live and work together as a harmonious team.
Shanghai World Expo was a very important turning point for us. At the Expo that year, we had a small Yerishari that catered to all Muslims working at the Expo on behalf of different organizations and countries. Through this small restaurant, they got to know some of my other restaurants downtown, which they would frequent in groups of between three and five. Through the joint efforts of all parties concerned, we successfully hosted 57 Muslim countries and six international Muslim organizations. Excited about seeing a halal restaurant in Shanghai, they made some short videos, took many photographs and exchanged gifts and literature after dining. Among the clientele were Muslims of different races from Central and West Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. In December, we hosted a post-Expo Muslim culture exhibition to exhibit all of our videos, photos and gifts and made an immediate hit.
Due to name recognition, Yerishari Restaurant has become a routine Halal food caterer for Muslims who participate in international competitions and conferences and it has served many international friends, including Iraqi Minister of Agriculture, Malaysian Minister of Tourism and the presidential envoy of Somalia.
These celebrated customers gave boost to our international reputation (we even found briefs on Yerishari Restaurants in some tourist guides used by foreigners). It shows us for the first time that a restaurant not only can serve customers, but also play the role of boosting cultural exchanges among all nations.
In 2015, Yerishari Restaurant became the only Halal restaurant to have a booth at the Milan World Expo, when we co-sponsored a cultural show about Food on the Silk Road with China Pavilion. At the Milan Expo, we were able to build up relations with 57 Muslim countries that we had served at the Shanghai Expo.
I always see Xinjiang cuisine as world cuisine, because Xinjiang is the very result of East-West cultural collision. I often wonder how Easterners and Westerners would react to the delicious food in their hands when they came across each other on the ancient Silk Road and how they would have communicated with each other.
I am grateful to all employees, all of the average young people who work here, for making Yerishari what it is today and for making me a success. Many of my staff started out as little boys and girls who knew next to nothing, but gradually took up responsibilities as managers within five to 10 years.
Restaurant workers have to work very hard. Many of our employees don’t get to go home for no more than 20 days in 10 years. They work on most of the holidays, including Chinese New Year. I keep thinking every day what I can do for them and what I need to do to help them take root in Shanghai and find a sense of home and a sense of worth as a member of our society. Many of our employees are migrants in Shanghai, and they lack identification and communication with the mainstream culture here.
Hand-shaking is what we do to make our pluralistic corporate cultures coexist in harmony. But if we want our employees to survive in society and have a sense of belonging, we will have to do more than that. When I was new in Shanghai and spoke Mandarin on the bus, the people around me would stare at me and immediately know I’m an “outsider.” Because of that experience, I have been trying to find ways to help my employees become new Shanghainese. And it has become a new mission for me to turn kids from different regions, especially those from villages in northwest China into new Shanghai citizens with professional skills. Apart from providing them with career development training and letting them know that the service industry is also a profession that they could engage in to make a living in the city, the most important thing is to teach them etiquette and manners in dealing with people. I would go out of my way to tell them to brush their teeth, maintain personal hygiene, develop good habits, and even guide them around the city.
I am a marathon fan and advocate, and I call for running in the company. By the end of every year, all of my employees have to go through a long-distance running test and I would also take them to marathon races. This is a very good way for them to merge into the city. Running on the streets while many people are watching can make you feel that you belong to the city and the city is cheering you up.
As I work in the labor-intensive catering sector, I particularly hope I can present a safe, healthy and fashionable catering culture of Xinjiang cuisine in this internationalized city so that I may take pride in our culinary culture in my capacities as a Xinjianger, as a Shanghainese and as a Chinese citizen in general. Meanwhile, I hope I can work out some changes in my employees and turn them from migrants into urbanized professionals in Shanghai, who will not only make money, but also master job skills and learn how to be a better person. I love Shanghai and I’m very grateful for the all-encompassing, tolerant, pluralistic city, because I met my wife here, found my career here and learned the valuable lessons of life here. Starting out as a drifter from Xinjiang, with all my crudeness, gallantry, and bluntness, I have gradually learned introspection, professionalism and meticulousness typical of the Shanghainese. I am a relatively new member of Shanghai, but have become an indispensable part of the city, and I have created some new elements for it. With a grateful heart and a true sense of citizenry, I will work out the worth of my life along the path that I have discovered for myself.
Like all people walking in the darkness, an entrepreneur can’t see what’s ahead of him. However, he or she has to be the one who manages to light up a torch and shine it on those around him or her so that they may be able to see what’s going on.
If you want to do one thing well, you will have to drop many others. Why was I born in Xinjiang? Why couldn’t I get admitted to college? Why did I end up in Shanghai? It’s because the Divine has determined that I have to focus on one thing and do it well, as I gradually figured out.
(selected from Xinjiang: Beyond Race, Religion, and Place of Origin by Kurbanjan Samat, translated by Wang Chiying, published by New World Press in 2017)
