<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Chinese luxury hotel chain Songtsam\u2019s founder Baima Duoji \u2014 who was born in Kena Village, a Tibetan community in the Shangri-La region in Yunnan Province \u2014 home is a sacred idea, and one that came to define his luxury hospitality proposition, which now spans 20 properties in Southwestern China.<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring a talk at WWD\u2019s Global Fashion & Beauty Summit in Wuhan, Baima shared his journey as an entrepreneur, which sprang from an existential crisis after nearly two decades of making documentary films.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI spent 20 years engaging in intellectual pursuits, I was exhilarated every day, convinced that I was a miracle of humanity, capable of thinking so many profound and important ideas, I even took my films to Cannes,\u201d recalled Baima.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe reality check came when I began interviewing people who felt inauthentic, they were pretending to think deeply about things, I felt detached from my work, what I once cared about didn\u2019t really matter anymore,\u201d Baima added.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2000, using two plots of land he inherited and with only 60,000 renminbi, or around $9,000, Baima opened his first hotel, Songtsam Green Valley Lodge beside the Songzanlin Monastery in an area named for a mythical place, Shangri-La.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe entrepreneur\u2019s journey quickly expanded along the historic Tea House Road, an ancient route used to transport tea from Yunnan toward Tibet \u2014 Baima remembers his grandfather telling him about the journey, which could take months and depended on a brief window between melting snow and winter weather.<\/p>\n
\n\tDesigned to connect travelers with local communities and landscapes, the founder described the company\u2019s mission as \u201chelping more people encounter nature and Tibetan culture,\u201d said Baima.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI believe my own people\u2019s culture is an exceptionally powerful and great culture,\u201d Baima said.<\/p>\n
\n\tOut of the company\u2019s 2,000 employees, about 1,800 are locals \u2014 for Baima, emphasizing local employment is in pursuit of a larger goal, which is to help employees gain confidence in their own culture and ensuring guests treat it with respect.<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring the conversation, Ji Xiao\u2019an, Baima\u2019s longtime friend and the founder of SKP, inquired about how Songtsam could convey his idealistic ethos within a business context.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhere does this conviction come from? Is it family upbringing, education, or education within the company? How do you help people act with such generosity?\u201d asked Ji.<\/p>\n
\n\tTo answer, Baima shared an anecdote of how he taught employees to take sympathy on city-dwellers.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI told my employees, people from these big cities are unfortunate, they only understand themselves, they spend all day scheming and don\u2019t realize that so much suffering comes from being constantly guarded and suspicious,\u201d said Baima.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI also told my team, don\u2019t ever let SOPs [standard operating procedure] erase who our employees are,\u201d said Baima. \u201cMany of our employees didn\u2019t even finish middle school. If you hand them an SOP, they may no longer know how to do their jobs. Do what you can professionally, but as long as the guest is happy, that\u2019s what really matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBaima also invoked the Tibetan story of Shambhala \u2014 a place imagined as a source of lasting happiness. \u201cAll the joy in the world comes from wishing for others to be happy, all the suffering in the world comes from wishing only for oneself to be well,\u201d Baima recited.<\/p>\n
\n\tConservation also informs another part of the company\u2019s purpose. Dubbed \u201cliving in harmony with nature,\u201d the project was conceived alongside the hotel business and Baima urges all visitors to foster connections with living creatures big and small.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf we can build that awareness in people\u2019s hearts, perhaps there is still hope for the world,\u201d Baima said.<\/p>\n
\n\tTo conclude, Baima offered an outlook on artificial intelligence, with his signature humanistic approach.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHumanity \u2014 including what we call AI \u2014 is really just capital fighting against capital. What\u2019s so extraordinary about that? The world isn\u2019t as extraordinary as people make it out to be. The culture that has been passed down for thousands of years is the true source of strength,\u201d said Baima.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cA lot of you may travel to outer space one day, if you look down, you will see a big white section that\u2019s my home, it is the highest place on earth, and it\u2019s what I call home,\u201d added Baima.<\/p>\n
#Songtsam #Built #Kind #Luxury #Chinas #Tea #Horse #Road<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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