Education
Veteran Chen Lei, founder of 81-Lianpin, an online employment platform for ex-forces personnel, echoed Chen Kunyuan's point about further education. Self-study is always the focus when she shares her experiences with veterans.
While serving in the PLA for five years, she gained a bachelor's degree in arts from Fujian Normal University. In 2002, she began a marketing career in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province before working as deputy general manager of a company in Beijing in 2004. She was admitted to Peking University's Guanghua School of Management in 2015.
"A soldier's training is mainly about mental toughness. As long as we are willing to learn and work hard, nothing is too difficult. I think an unwillingness to accept mediocrity is the motivation behind everyone's progress," she said.
The soldier's spirit
For Chen Honggang, starting a new business is a battle, so people must overcome difficulties or fail. He recalled an experience during his service days when he sprained an ankle during a training exercise, but he ignored the pain and completed the course.
Though his family gave him lots of help, he still had to shoulder most of the workload in the company's initial phase. In addition to collecting rice from local farmers, he had to monitor his computer screen until midnight every day to accept orders.
"It was a hard time, but I would not quit－there is no such word in a soldier's dictionary," he said.
The first three years of his business life were hard for Chen Kunyuan.
He spent every day looking for customers, before spending the hours from 10 pm until 7 am calculating the types of vegetable he would require and the quantities he would need, along with purchasing, manually logging and delivering them.
Unable to afford a van, he rode an electric tricycle or a bicycle to make deliveries.
"The skin of my hands and face often peeled in the hot summer and cracked in freezing winter," he said. "Sometimes I asked myself why I didn't just find an easier job, especially when customers refused to pay or I couldn't pay my employees."
Despite occasional doubts, he persevered and became successful thanks to the soldier's code of "Never give up".
"Tasks in the army were much harder than running a business, and sometimes they were life-threatening. Also, I knew I could change my life as long as I persisted," he said.
