Family Story: self-employed pen-repairer becomes national model worker

Figure: Zhang Guangyi (80 years old)

Members of the family: four members including wife, son, daughter-in-law and Zhang

Family profile: old Beijingers that live in Dongsi, Dongcheng District

My business license was issued in 1999. The photo on the left was taken when I was about 30 years old. Though I looked like a young man at that time, I had already repaired pens for over 10 years. The photo on the right was taken more recently. Already an old man rather than a young man, I have sat in this small shop in Dongsi repairing pens for 62 years.

A small pen-repair shop, which is located at No. 102, Dongsi South Street, is sandwiched among a row of fashion shops.

Push the door open and you will see an old-fashioned wall calendar, Yongjiu branded bicycle, a green wall and a radio on a wooden table, as though it were a Beijing home from the past.

The small shop has been open for 62 years, and the shopkeeper is Zhang Guangyi who was the first self-employed entrepreneur in Beijing. Dwarfed by others in the past but now awarded Beijing’s and China’s model worker award and elected as a deputy to the NPC, the previously “non-collective business entrepreneur” has now become an “excellent builder of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

I took few photos, because I spent most of my time in repairing pens. This picture was taken by a friend who came to me and asked me to repair a pen, and it shows how I worked every day.