Disabled entrepreneur weaves a career

A spate of challenges

When she was born, villagers gossiped about her disability.

Her grandfather said she was an angel with a broken wing, and she was destined to be special and successful.

To support her studies, her little brother abandoned his after finishing middle school and started working.

She enrolled in Hunan International Business Vocational College in 2008 and majored in international business and trade. While studying in college, she took a variety of jobs to help pay her tuition, including giving out flyers in the streets and working as a cashier, tour guide, sales agent and street vendor.

Before she graduated in 2011, she had applied for more than 200 jobs with employers in different cities, but all of them turned her down because of her disability. "After some time, I started telling the human resources department about my disability before I came to the company for an interview, in case it was an issue for them," she said.

Finally, a foreign company in Changsha hired her to work as a receptionist. Her salary was 1,200 yuan ($165) per month, which was the minimum monthly wage in Changsha back then.

Yang soon discovered that there was little chance of her being promoted at the company.

She began thinking about quitting and starting her own business, but she hesitated after many of her disabled friends told her that she was doing very well for a person with a disability and that she should relish the opportunity she had.

After weighing her options for about six months, she decided to quit her job and started a business selling handicrafts on the streets with five other disabled people.

She invested all her savings in the business and even borrowed 20,000 yuan ($2,759) from a friend.

"The toughest time for us is when it rained. Changsha is a city where rain occurs frequently," she said.

The business was much harder than Yang imagined. Selling the crafts was not easy, so they did not earn much money and often quarreled with each other.

After around seven months, the business failed and Yang lost all her money.

Afterward, a friend advised her to consider making Xiang embroidery for a living, as it did not require much investment.

"I chose it mainly because I had no money left, and threads and needles do not cost much," she said. "However, I still had a lot of difficulties, as I did not have the resources, nor did I know how to run a business properly."

At first, Yang would sneak into different commercial buildings in Changsha and hand out flyers to workers to promote her business. The local disabled persons federation even offered her a free office. Still, her efforts did not materialize into success.