Zhang's business partners, the owners of Qinghai Haoyun Investment, have a different story to tell. But then, Haoyun chairman Li Xiangchun has a college buddy in the Xining government. Li met his company vice president, Zhao Wei, when they were trying their luck in a property boom on Hainan island in the early 1990s. With southern coastal areas becoming saturated, they decided to invest inland. The West is poor and backward but it's easier to get things done.
Poverty makes the government more flexible.
Construction was completed last year and all the office space has been let or sold. Now Haoyun is investing in a water plant and moving into finance. Tsuoma has run a tea house on a bank of Qinghai Lake, China's largest inland salt-water lake, since she lost her job at a state factory in 1997. Four other plants closed around the same time. With two other laid-off workers she opened the tea house in a tent next to an abandoned torpedo factory.