Diana is the founder/owner of Cha Spa locations in Santa Monica and Brentwood, Los Angeles, which she built with a passion for perfection driven by a need to help her family she left far behind. Her mom and 8 older brothers and sisters. Diana was born in a small village of Bartu located at the upper reaches of Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region within Greater China and bordering on the southern edge of Siberia.

Her hometown, in fact the entire region, is bitter cold for several months of the year. She lived in a traditional yurt with a dirt floor – yes, a dirt floor only, no covering at all. Feet kept warm and clean in sheepskin booties – pre Uggs. There was a wood-burning stove and a heater in the middle of an open space shared by a family of 12. No electricity until she was 11 years old and even then, only limited electrical power for 2-3 hours per night, the very time every evening after dinner that the family clustered around the radio. Songs, comedy and news about Chairman Mao Zedong entertained the family in the glow of the radio dial and a dying fire in the background.

In this tundra climate, near-frozen water had to be drawn in wooden buckets from deep wells. Her sisters took her to the outdoor wooden potty in the dead of night right before bedtime, boots crackling on the frozen snow. As she matured to her early teen years, she, like many young girls graduated from selling sunflower seeds and later clothes on street corners after school during the summer months. She and her sisters and brothers lost their only living parent, their mother, when she was 17 years old. Diana really never knew her father who died when she was an infant. Being parentless motivated Diana to start a sewing business that year with a girlfriend. Her steely resolve and entrepreneurial instinct led her to a nursing school, moving to Beijing to attend a physical therapy institute there where she gained a certificate. Yet, her itch to have a business led her to open a restaurant in this, China’s capital.