Wu Ying
The eldest of four sisters, Wu Ying was born in May 1981 to a farmer's family in the village of Tangxia in Dongyang. After graduating from middle school in 1997, she studied accounting at a local vocational school, but dropped out after a year and a half to work at her aunt's beauty salon. Later she opened her own beauty parlour on Dongyang's West Street and claimed to have made huge profits selling sheep placenta extract, a popular anti-aging product in China. She also opened a car rental company in nearby Yiwu.