Biz Unusual

Kindergarten founder learns to grow with the times

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-23 10:27

Tong Yongrong and children pose for a picture at her Xiaoxiao Kindergarten in Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo / Provided to China Daily]

BEIJING - Appropriately, Tong Yongrong's family name means "children" in Chinese. The founder and chairwoman of Xiaoxiao Education Ltd says she is destined to devote her whole life to loving children, and not just her own.

Tong, whose company is an Australia-listed pre-school education provider based in Hangzhou, in East China's Zhejiang province, said: "I have been working in children's education for more than 30 years and I believe smiling and love form the core of the industry as well as providing the best logo for our company."

The businesswoman established her first Xiaoxiao kindergarten in 1996. Her company now operates 10 kindergartens and an art training school in China and is preparing to open another 10 kindergartens. It was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASE) in 2010, raising about A$7 million ($6.6 million).

Tong says she takes advantage of her femininity and motherhood in winning in business. "Children at my kindergartens always call me mother Tong or grandmother Tong and I regard the parents and my employees as brothers and sisters. It is the proudest thing in my life," she said in her characteristically mellow and sweet voice.

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Born in 1963 to a well-educated family in Hangzhou, Tong moved to a small village nearby with her parents when she was 9 during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

"I'm quite talented in taking care of children and always led children in the neighborhood in reading and writing or playing games together when I was young," she said.

After graduating from middle school, Tong started her career in children's education as a teacher in a tatty rural nursery when she was 19, a simple girl with a straight bang and two pretty braids.

She said: "We didn't have any curriculums or instructional theory and children of different ages were mixed together in the same class."

However, Tong had already developed her own concepts for educating children.

She frequently took the children to watch cars and trains in a town about an hour's walk away. "In isolated rural areas, the priority in teaching was to enable children to observe the new things and phenomena of modern society as soon as possible so they didn't lag behind their peers in the cities," she said.

In the absence of textbooks, Tong gave her children language classes by taking advantage of local resources. They moved the classroom to vegetable fields and fisheries or farms so the children could learn new vocabulary by touching real plants and animals as well as making up stories using the new words they had just acquired.

"The rural nursery was a cradle in which my interests in children's education and also my initial pre-school education theory was cultivated," Tong said.

"Many of the children at that nursery grew up to have very bright futures, becoming officials in their towns, army officers or entrepreneurs. In time, they sent their children to Xiaoxiao and I think our business success is based on their trust in me and my education philosophy."