Xie Meng appears to have led a charmed life - given a Western education, he has been groomed to take over his well-connected father's mainland property empire.
But the young Xie was not so keen to take up the family mantle when he returned from his overseas studies. As the only child of Xie Tieniu, owner of China's biggest shopping centre, he was expected to rough it with the workers as he learnt the ropes of the family business.
Educated in Singapore and the United States from the age of 15, Xie felt uneasy in his new working environment that required him to deal with mainland construction workers as they built the family's mega Grandview Mall in Guangzhou.
'I put on helmet and boots and headed for the construction site in Guangzhou's Tianhe district every day during this time,' recalled Xie, now the vice-chairman of the Guangzhou Grandview Enterprise. Being immersed in the mud and dirt of a major building site meant the young manager soon grew up.
The 30-year-old's first job was with the company's planning department. His job was to develop a good relationship with the construction workers, and make sure they could complete the mega shopping mall before 2005. That was the year the government ordered an end to new construction of shopping malls as part of austerity measures to regulate the property market.
With a total gross floor area of 420,000 square metres, the development includes a 30-storey office tower and a 48-storey apartment-hotel tower. It also has a mega shopping mall with 300,000 sq metres of leasable area - the biggest in the country.
