Early Days
Pao was born in 1918 in Ningbo, the 3rd of seven children of a prosperous upper-middle-class family. In 1931 he went to Hankou to work in his father's shoe manufacturing business whilst continuing his education at night. However, he decided that the shoe business did not suit him and he secured a traineeship with a foreign insurance company. By the age of twenty he was established in his new position and married a young girl selected by his parents, which marriage was to endure until death separated them.
In 1937 Hankou came under attack from the Japanese and Pao along with 70 colleagues moved to Hunan and then Shanghai whilst leaving his wife in the relative safety of Ningbo. In Shanghai he found a position in the insurance department of the Central Trust of China and as tension eased sent for his wife to join him. He was soon moving up the corporate ladder, moving into the area of banking, and moving to Hengyang and Chongqing as the progress of the war dictated. At the end of the war in 1945 he was sent by the Government back to Shanghai to help set up and manage the new Municipal Bank and in a short time had worked his way to Deputy General Manager, effectively in charge.
Read more about this topic: Yue-Kong Pao
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or days:
“The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer? Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 7:1-3.