Wenzhou Entrepreneurs

Wenzhou (温州) is frequently referred to as the birthplace of China's burgeoning private economy.

Indeed, Wenzhou cared less about model workers and economic theories, and showed less evidence of state interference than anywhere else in China. It had never even possessed any commune enterprises.

Some say this was because the region lacked a tradition of state involvement, and has long been regarded as vulnerable to a possible invasion by Taiwan.

With a population of 8 million people. Wenzhou's lack of agricultural land is also said to be one of the reasons behind its astonishing entrepreneurial flair.

Traditionally, locals travelled throughout the country as pedlars or itinerant tailors, and indeed, Beijing even has its own Wenzhou enclave where tailors were ready to copy any garment that was brought to them.

Fanning across the country, locals also sold buttons, combs, and other trinkets reportedly ignored by state planners in Beijing.

In little villages around the port, small workshops sprang up with a few pieces of machinery where teenage girls sat endlessly punching out buttons, and soon Wenzhou was known as "the world's button capital."

Everyone in Wenzhou was said to have ignored regulations on working hours, health and safety, and insurance and pollution. They could do so because they did not have to rely on state banks for credit, or on the state bureaucracy for contacts to market their goods overseas.

Even in death, Wenzhou people preferred to be buried in private.

The local government had reportedly built a public cemetery in which, to save space, the coffins of the deceased were stacked on shelves like, in the words of Jasper Becker, "cans of beans in a supermarket." But alas, the shelves remained empty, having been shunned by the Wenzhou people.