Market Data 
A work-anniversary gift was the wake-up call that pushed Nathan Huixiang Zhang to quit his job.
After seven years at a Canadian telecom company, where he worked in data entry and project management, his employer gifted him an alarm clock to mark the milestone. The gesture made him realize it was time to move back home to China.
“I felt like a dead person,” he told Business Insider about his job, adding that he was finding no challenges in the workplace.
Zhang had moved from China to Edmonton, Canada, with his then-wife in 1999. Their plan was to build a new life. But that day, sitting in his office, he realized this was not where he wanted to be.
He wanted to build a new life back in China — not in his hometown, but in Beijing, a city full of authors and artists who had inspired him since he was a kid.
When he got home from work that day, he talked to his wife, and she agreed to the move. They arrived in China’s capital with their two kids — then 3 and 5 — three months after he handed in his resignation.
His wife went on to complete a Ph.D., and his kids attended a local elementary school in Beijing. In 2013, the couple decided to separate. She moved back to Canada with the kids the following year.
Career pivot
In Beijing, Zhang finally felt at home. Over the next few years, he formed strong social connections that helped him discover and build a new career path.
For the first few years, Zhang worked at a TV station and on social projects across the city.
In 2015, Zhang took a leap and opened a restaurant.
The original White Tiger Village, a barbecue restaurant, was 40 square meters and had an open kitchen, three small tables, and one long bar.
Zhang kept the initial costs low, around 200,000 yuan, by exchanging favors and relying on the friends he’d met over the years.
A graphic designer he knew helped him out with the logo and menus. Another friend designed the restaurant’s interiors.
The restaurant closed in 2017 due to building restrictions, but Zhang went on to open a second iteration of White Tiger Village in 2021.
It was sleeker and located in a cosmopolitan area of east Beijing.
Chinese flavors with a Western vibe
The time Zhang spent in Canada influenced his restaurants.
“White Tiger Village was the first restaurant in Beijing to serve Chinese food in a Western way,” Fiona Wu, a sales professional working in Beijing’s lifestyle industry, told BI. “It popularized the bistro-style style of dining, pairing small plates with wine,” Wu said.
The space has also served as a creative hub, hosting events such as film screenings, art talks, and musical performances. Zhang’s vision was for it to serve as a platform for artistic exploration.
When BI visited the restaurant on a Friday evening in March, it was busy. Couples out on dates and small groups of fashionably dressed 30-somethings were seated at the wooden tables.
Popular dishes included two twists on Yunnan classics. The first was fermented tofu mashed with a local herb, shaped into balls, and then fried. The other was rushan, cow’s milk curds stretched into thin sheets, stuffed and rolled into cigars, then fried.
Zhang attributes their popularity to the affordable price, between 42 and 78 yuan.
Still, Zhang, like others in the restaurant business, has felt the winds of China’s economic downturn.
He said that fewer people were ordering alcohol, which restaurant profits rely on. Zhang said the latest White Tiger Village cost 2 million yuan to launch, all funded by an investor. He said the restaurant has not yet made back the initial investment.
In Beijing, he has a purpose
In winter 2022, Zhang opened a second restaurant. Called In-Between, it’s located in a small alley near Beijing’s shopping district of Sanlitun.
In-Between is a more casual dining spot than White Tiger Village, the kind where you can pop in for some comfort food, like a bowl of noodles, or for some skewers and a glass of wine.
In March, when BI met Zhang at In-Between, he was dressed in a floral button-down, a smartly cut navy blue coat with white trimmings, and a white Ami Paris beanie. He said that since an employee had taken leave that day, he had been waiting tables.
As he brewed coffee and served guests bowls of rice noodles topped with chicken, mushrooms, and pea sprouts, the tattoos on his hands — his children’s names — were clearly visible.
Zhang said that despite the amount of responsibility that comes with running restaurants, he now has the opportunity to be creative. “When working in an office, I felt useless,” he said.
“In Beijing, I feel useful.”
