Meihua Chen
Lovingly known as “Meihua-jie”
13 January 1952 — 26 October 2023 · aged 71
Wenzhou shoe-factory founder who began with one sewing machine and employed 300 women
Wenzhou, China Born in Yongjia County, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Resting at Hillside cemetery near Yongjia, ZhejiangAbout Meihua
Chen Meihua started with one second-hand sewing machine, a bag of off-cuts and the stubborn belief that a woman who could stitch a straight seam could do anything. Born in 1952 in a village in Yongjia County, outside Wenzhou, she left school at fourteen to work in a collective shoe workshop, where she earned thirty-six yuan a month and learned to sole a shoe faster than the foremen.
In 1984, as private enterprise slowly opened in Wenzhou, she borrowed two thousand yuan from her brothers and set up a workshop in her mother's front room with four neighbours. Orders came slowly, then all at once. By 1996 her company, Meihua Footwear, filled three floors of an industrial estate in Lucheng and employed three hundred people, two-thirds of them women, many of them migrants from Jiangxi and Guizhou for whom she arranged dormitories, night classes and a nursery. In her forties she studied business management in evening courses at Zhejiang University of Technology, taking notes beside students half her age. When the export market faltered in 2008, she refused to lay off her workers and instead drew no salary for a year.
A devoted member of her local church, she led the women's choir for twenty years and quietly paid school fees for more than sixty workers' children. She loved hot-and-sour fish soup, bright silk scarves and teasing her husband Lin Guoqiang about his terrible singing. She died peacefully on 26 October 2023, aged seventy-one, after a short illness. She leaves her husband, her son Lin Hao, who now runs the company, her daughter Lin Xia, four grandchildren, and hundreds of people who say they owe her their livelihood.
“A shoe is honest: it fits or it does not. Be that honest with people.”
- Faith
- Christian
- Place of birth
- Yongjia County, Wenzhou, Zhejiang
- Resting place
- Hillside cemetery near Yongjia, Zhejiang
- Passed away
- 26 October 2023, Wenzhou
Christian Memorial Service
Sunday, 29 October 2023 at 10:00 UTC
Add to calendarLife journey
Shoemaker
Yongjia Collective Shoe Workshop1966 – 1983 · Yongjia County
Learned every step of shoemaking, from last to sole.
Married Lin Guoqiang
1975 · Yongjia County
A marriage of forty-eight years.
Founder & Chair
Meihua Footwear Co.1984 – 2018 · Wenzhou
Grew a front-room workshop into a company of three hundred employees.
Business Management (evening programme)
Zhejiang University of Technology1992 – 1994 · Hangzhou
Studied alongside students half her age.
Women's choir leader
Dongmen Church2000 – 2020 · Wenzhou
Led the choir and quietly funded workers' children's schooling.
Outstanding Women Entrepreneur
Wenzhou Women's Federation2005 · Wenzhou
For creating jobs for hundreds of women.
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Family & connections
Meihua is survived by
- Lin Guoqiang· Spouse
- Lin Hao· Son
- Lin Xia· Daughter
- 4 grandchildren· Grandchildren
Tributes & memories
6 people have shared a memory of Meihua.
Knew Meihua? Share a memory with the family and everyone who loved them.
Sign in to write a tribute- DL
Nephew in New York
Aunt Meihua mailed me a pair of handmade shoes the week I started university in America. They were a size too big; she said I would grow into them. I did. I wore them to my first job interview, and I got the job.
- MZ
Business partner in Prato, Italy
We met at a trade fair in 1998. She carried her samples in two plastic bags and out-negotiated everyone in the hall. Twenty-five years of partnership never needed a lawyer. In my business that is a miracle. In hers, it was a habit.
- XL
Scholarship recipient, now a primary-school teacher
My mother worked on her packing line. When I was twelve, Madam Chen paid my school fees without telling anyone. I found out at my graduation when my mother wept. I teach now, and every September I quietly pay one child's fees. That is how kindness travels.
- WF
Choir member, Dongmen Church
Sister Chen sang soprano, loudly and slightly flat, and told us God preferred honesty to perfection. On weekday nights she brought hot soup for the whole choir. Our hymns this Sunday sounded far too clean without her.
- PD
Pastor, Dongmen Church
She gave more than anyone knew and boasted about none of it. When the church roof leaked, a contractor arrived unannounced and refused to say who had sent him. We all knew. We said nothing. She would have scolded us for saying anything.
- ZY
Worker since 1989, now floor supervisor
She taught me to hold a shoe up to the light and ask whether I would wear it to my own wedding. I started on the gluing line at seventeen. Now I train the newcomers. She said, 'If you can feel the shoe, you can feel the customer.' I will never forget it.
