Welcome to meet Ms. Heng Yun from BASF Go back »

2011-03-30 | Nanjing

We took the occasion of Women’s Day which each year is celebrated on March, 8th to talk to Ms. Heng Yun, a successful business woman from BASF (China) Co.,Ltd., Nanjing Branch.

As the Chief Representative of the branch, Ms. Heng is mainly in charge of supporting BASF experts dispatched to Nanjing and their families, government liaison, media and public relations and office  daily operation.  Among all those, the most interesting but also the most challenging task is, according to Ms. Heng, dealing with people with different culture backgrounds.

“Take expert delegations as an example. I should  help our  experts and their families from Germany, Belgium , US and other different nations settle in Nanjing so that   all the experts could  focus on their work and the project. People have different value and styles in their work and private life and it is very interesting dealing with them in different occasions , and accommodating all requirements calls for experience and wisdom.

When asked about the strengths and weakness of business women compared to their male counterparts, Ms. Heng said men and women cannot be separated into two different groups because every woman is different and so is every man.“However, as far as I can judge, sometimes women are less determined when it comes to career compared to men because social traditions add more responsibilities to women and besides work, they have to take care of their parents, kids, husband and husband’s parents. As a result, they will find it very hard to balance work and family life.” says Ms. Heng during our interview.

However, Ms. Heng admits that short term unbalance is necessary for a successful business career and only in this way, long term balance can be achieved at last.

For example, she remembers the time when she was dispatched to Hong Kong for two years from 1994 to 1996 during her assignment with SINPIEC Jinling Petrochemical Co. At that time, a call from Hong Kong to mainland China required international phone calls which were too expensive for her and the internet was not widely used yet. In order to keep contact with her family, Ms. Heng had to take a train to Shenzhen and use the public phones outside the train station. She did this every weekend. “During those two years, my salary was almost spent on buying phone cards. I had to stand outside the train station for three to four hours every time. I had previously suffered an injury on my waist so every week when I talked on the phone for a long time, I felt a strong pain. I wanted to sit down but the phone cord was so short that I couldn’t hear anything.” Says Ms. Heng, “But in the long run, the experience in Hong Kong broadened my vision and prepared me for my future work.”

When looking back, Ms. Heng is convinced that continues learning was the most important thing for her success. At the very beginning, her motivation for working hard was to earn money to insure a better life. However, after achieving that goal, her motivation changed into making life more meaningful and adding value to others.