Shopping for the Good Life

"Are you ready?" Xue Qiwen asked, calling gently to her daughter while descending leopard-print-covered stairs in her luxury Shanghai duplex. The 45-year-old businesswoman had changed into one of her 100 white blouses, this one made in Italy and anchored by a red Fendi belt.

"Nearly," said Judy, a 19-year-old tomboy in an Armani T-shirt, bob haircut and jeans. Her near-life-size photo hung in the living room. She was leaving for her first year at Nottingham University in England to study manufacturing. She had packed her own enormous suitcase and insisted on carrying it downstairs herself.

Xue, known as Yvonne, was divorced from Judy's father when Judy was 7. She admires her nearly grown daughter's independence but made sure she had afternoon plans to distract her from the loss she would feel after taking Judy to the airport.

As mother and daughter glided out of the underground garage in a silver BMW, a longtime housekeeper paused outside the car, quietly telling Judy not to cry. Judy, already a three-year veteran of high school in Britain, nodded, looked down and pulled a sleek $900 Nokia cellphone out of a silken case. Xue reached over and rubbed her daughter's cheek.

As they cruised over the new Lu Pu bridge, the longest steel-arch bridge in the world, toward Shanghai's Pudong^ airport, Xue popped in a CD by the British boy band Westlife. "I don't want to be old-fashioned and not understand her," Xue said. "I want to know what clubs she likes, what singers she likes."

Xue's tastes run to European designers and Western brand names, from the Carnegie self-help books and Bill Clinton biography in her bookcase to her favorite dress designer, Celine . Her bedroom is entirely fitted out in Versace, and a framed Greg Norman photo sits at the top of the stairs. It's a souvenir from meeting the golf legend at a BMW racing competition. She won't disclose her net worth, but she does not appear on any high-profile rich lists.

Like a growing number of wealthy Chinese, Xue's attitudes embrace the West, and not just in terms of fashion. Xue is independent and less traditional than her peers. Chinese officials could use etiquette lessons, she says. In general, she believes, Chinese people need to be better educated. That's why she's putting much of her money toward her daughter's Western schooling.

"This issue is so important, to send your children to the right school," Xue said. British schools are more responsive, promptly replying to e-mail and promising parents that their children will improve, Xue said.

"They encourage the students and treat them on an equal level with the teachers," Xue said, repeating an increasingly common complaint that Chinese students are not taught to think for themselves but to only pass exams. "In China, teachers prefer the best students and are always angry with the poor students. That's why I send her abroad, so her viewpoints will be broader."

 Xue is board chairman of a company that assembles the outsides of electronic appliances. She also owns a company that sells electronic cable to the construction industry. She started the cable company in 1992 , the year before her divorce.

"I worked for a state-owned printing factory, and I knew I couldn't make enough to support my daughter and myself," she said.

Xue began with the help of her husband's friends. He worked for a state-owned enterprise delivering cable to factories and power plants. "That's why I started a cable company. Because we had connections," Xue said.