God and govt are the only things beyond our control, says Trip.com Group CEO

Everything else can be solved, says Jane Sun, who runs a $5 billion travel empire comprising Trip.com, Ctrip, Skyscanner and Qunar.

- Wong Kim Hoh

The first thing you notice about Ms Jane Sun is how she eats—or rather, how she doesn't.

Over lunch at Hua Ting Restaurant in Orchard Hotel, the chief executive of Trip.com Group—one of the world's largest travel companies—barely touches her food.

"I eat very little," she says.

"A lot of the time, they will say: 'Oh, it's just a lunch meeting.' But in reality, I know everybody eats, but I need to talk. So normally, I just bring a banana or something, and eat it in the car."

This is quintessential Sun, a woman who lives large and packs wonder into every minute. She runs a US$40 billion (S$51 billion) travel empire comprising Trip.com, Ctrip, Skyscanner and Qunar, with nearly 42,000 employees.

Getting by on just three hours of sleep at night, the mother of two daughters, aged 20 and 24, runs marathons in her spare time.

One staff member, also at the same lunch, later leans in and whispers: "I don't think that's true. She probably only sleeps an hour a day."

The elder of two children, Ms Sun was born in Shanghai to chemical engineer parents. As a child, she was academically gifted but painfully shy.

"During parent-teacher meetings, my teacher would always say: 'She is a very good student, but I wish she would speak up,'" she recalls.

The turning point came in Grade 2, when knowing the answer to a question but seeing no other raised hands, she finally summoned the courage to participate.

"My arm felt so heavy when I was raising it up. But the teacher said: 'Good job, that is the right answer.' Ever since then, I felt: 'Oh, speaking up is not that difficult."

That early lesson in courage set the tone. While others played it safe, she broke the mould. She chose Shanghai High School over her mother's alma mater. It was a boarding school far from home but bursting with diversity, and that mattered more.