A multi-millionaire with a 3-ideogram vocabulary (#142; Topic B)

As a "pack rat," I keep old newspapers and periodicals until read. Yesterday, I came across a heart-warming story in the 3/3/06 issue of American Business Journal, a Chinese language daily published locally. It seems that an illiterate 51-year-old woman in Guiyang 貴阳, with but a 3-ideogram vocabulary, is the CEO of a company with sales of 300,000,000 yuan (= US$37,500,000) in 2000. In 1989, with scrap materials she salvaged and her meager savings over the years, she built a simple one-room eatery, naming it "Worthy Restaurant." It offered only cold rice noodles and spaghetti; for condiment, she concocted a spicy sesame sauce. Business was good. One day, she did not feel well and, thus, did not go to the market to buy peppers needed for her sauce. Many diners who came, hearing that the sauce was unavailable, left without eating. From this incident, she came to the realization that what attracted her diners was not noodle or spaghetti, but the sauce -- an extremely astute observation despite her lack of education. She then spent the next several years improving the sauce, and, in 1997, using sincerity as her guiding principle to attract both investors and employees, she formed a company. With 200 employees in 1997, the company grew to one with 1,200 in 2000. Paying 43,150,000 yuan (= US$5.4 million) in income taxes that year, the company is ranked #5 among privately owned enterprises in China. Her 3-ideogram vocabulary? 麻辣醬 (= hot spicy sauce) She is known not by her name, but by her nickname 老干媽 (= Old Mother Guardian), and her sauce is known as 老干媽麻辣醬, not unlike "Paul Newman's Own Sauce" in USA.