Chapter 34

Chapter 35

The summer of 1994 was the summer of stocks.

While directing the studio to buy large quantities of original-issue shares with its eyes closed and wait for them to multiply in value, I had Zhang Xiaotong teach my parents to trade stocks with a little money. Stock trading back then did not require the penny-pinching precision it would later. As long as you understood the general trend and had someone who could get you original-issue shares, you could pretty much make money. It even spawned a special occupation: queuing outside the Stock Exchange for other people.

Stocks were hot in 1992, but few people participated. The 1993 film Crazy for Stocks only offered a rough depiction of certain people in big cities hoping to hitch a ride on the stock market. In reality, stocks did not have much impact back then. It was not until 1994 that traders were truly everywhere and people slept outside exchanges in small cities.

I had no intention of making my parents rich during this special period. I only hoped they could escape the shadows cast over them by tradition and their times as soon as possible. In the twenty years leading up to the year 2000, far too many of the world's standards and truths had been overturned. The world had changed so much that I did not even want to say much about it.

Throughout human history, one standard had always been revered: freedom above all else. Whatever era a person was born into, as long as he had ideas ahead of his time, stirred things up, and took actions proving that his free, independent behavior was right, he was not far from leaving his name in history.

Unfortunately, most people could not understand what sort of era they lived in, much less know how they should develop or forge bravely ahead. They did not know what they wanted-or rather, they had never even considered what they ought to want. They simply grabbed at whatever lay around them. If they got something, fine; if not, forget it.

Most people had little courage to pursue so-called freedom and independence. Their innate rebelliousness would gradually be constrained by their surroundings and education until it disappeared entirely.

Of course, I was not advocating that everyone fight for freedom and independence, let alone go out and cause trouble, because throughout history, troublemakers who did not understand things had outnumbered those who did. I merely felt that a person should at least understand what he ought to do, look a little farther ahead, and think a little more. It was like going to a restaurant: you could eat anywhere, but only a restaurant with a theme and something distinctive qualified as a good one, a place where you felt your money was well spent.

Only a life with some ideas of your own was a good life, one that made wasting time and life feel relatively worthwhile.

At the very least, I hoped my parents could prepare somewhat for the upheaval to come and develop more ideas through experience. An era of earth-shattering change separated us. I could not directly instill my views in them; I could only hope they would gradually come to feel things for themselves through the changes around them.

If someone felt unhappy merely because he lacked money, having money would not necessarily make him happy. I only understood that much later.

Nothing forced brought happiness. Taking things step by step was what really counted.

Through Zhang Xiaotong and Lu Wei, I tactfully told the trading team we had hired not to hold any stocks currently on the market for too long. When it was time to sell, sell, without hesitation. To borrow a once-popular song: "Little sister, boldly march on ahead, don't look back"... In any case, the supreme directive was to cash out as soon as there was a profit, make several more rounds, and never get attached to the fight.

The traders were quite obedient, probably because nobody else paid commissions as high as ours at this stage. They followed my instructions to the letter.

I just could not understand how stocks back then could rise so outrageously. Were these companies Microsoft or Google? Oh, right, I was the one providing Google's venture capital...

For the rest of the summer vacation, I basically did nothing but listen to Zhang Xiaotong tell me every few days how many times our pitiful stock-trading capital had multiplied, and how wonderfully the futures market was doing... Because I knew the classic futures case of the 1994 South America Cold Wave, which killed countless coffee trees, my advance guidance to the traders resulted in unimaginable windfall profits from coffee futures. Prices rose from a little over seventy cents to 270 cents. At the time, we had concentrated almost all our futures positions there. After a long stretch of lonely waiting, we finally reaped enormous profits. Supposedly, during those few days, someone in the temporary office laughed so strangely every day that the people downstairs came up to complain...

In the summer of 1994, Brazil won the World Cup, and our futures investments earned close to US$170 million in profit. Morale soared throughout the company. Holed up at home munching watermelon, I breathed a sigh of relief too. Goddammit, I had just been worrying about not having enough money to spend, and here it was.

With chilled watermelon and a rattan chair, I tilted my head back to gaze at the grapevines and sighed. This was fucking faster than robbery...

After coffee, it should be Malaysian plywood. I figured the butterfly's wings in South America could hardly stir up a wind all the way to Southeast Asia, could they? We entered plywood before its second explosive rise, at a correction point of forty yuan. After establishing our position, we waited quietly and closed it at fifty-seven yuan. By then, only a little over ten days remained of my leisurely summer vacation. Even the additional ninety million and change did not make me particularly happy.

Still, at least we had some breathing room. Presales for Sun Homeland's first phase were, as the advertisements put it, "in full swing." The money coming back had already reached forty percent of the original total budget. By the looks of things, at least we no longer had to consider whether to put up battered cars and old buildings as collateral for loans.

There was a lot you could do with money.

First, repay the loans. Throwing tantrums and refusing to pay the banks and government was out of the question. We had to leave a good impression, at least.

We also had to increase our investment in the two pairs at Stanford. They would certainly burn through money over the next couple of years... We had to secure as large a share as possible and wait to ride their coattails.

Buy Microsoft stock in large quantities. A revolution in desktop operating systems was just around the corner. Taking them on head-to-head would certainly get us nowhere, but waiting for stock splits and dividends should be fine, right? We could also use this opportunity to extend our feelers abroad and see what we touched. Sooner or later, our focus would have to shift overseas. This would lay the groundwork.

We also needed to expand our real estate investments. It was a free ride-why not take it? Wouldn't that business be the same with or without me?

Most importantly, it was time to do something else I had always wanted to do.

With ten days left before school started, I called together Lu Wei, Cai Qing, Liu Mingyao, Xu Jun, Yu Chunrong, and Sun Changlu, who was working on the overall plan for the restaurant chain, to discuss something.

Third Brother attended this meeting too, which brought us to nine, including Zhang Xiaotong and me. We were another step closer to King Arthur's league.

Lu Wei and Third Brother were acquainted. They exchanged smiles when they met, and she introduced him to the others as Mr. Shen San, who was responsible for the newly established transportation company. The others rose to shake his hand. After a round of weather talk and laughter, we got down to business.

The people before me all knew that when I called them together, it was generally to make decisions rather than discuss things. They were here for a show of democracy: hear my views, offer suggestions, then find somewhere to enjoy a good meal, eat and drink our fill, and work out the dividends.

The round-table meeting essentially served as a periodic review for Sun Group, though it was still not quite formal enough.

"Everyone, how have the last two months felt?"

"An aching back, sore shoulders, cramped legs, and a headache all over." Liu Mingyao swayed his head and made a show of pounding his own shoulders. "Even making money shouldn't be like this... I've been so busy I don't know whether I'm in heaven or hell..."

Remembering the way he had poured sand behind his executive desk, I laughed. "Here, let me introduce you to some new work. Once you've done it, I guarantee your back won't ache, your legs won't hurt, and you'll walk with a spring in your step. You'll even score a hundred on all your schoolwork..."

Liu Mingyao collapsed onto the table with a thud. "Can you pretend I never came today?"

"Sure." I gave a whistle of the sort Zhang Xiaotong loathed. "I was going to give you a game design proposal, but let's pretend you weren't here..."

"No, don't... I was wrong, all right?" Like a grasshopper startled out of playing dead, Liu Mingyao sprang up and raised his hands in surrender. "I'll do anything you want. Fuck it, let the spring winds blow and the war drums roll! Who have I, Liu Mingyao, ever feared?"

Then he thought that was not quite right and added, "Actually, I am a little scared of you..."

Everyone laughed at that. Smiling, I said, "Don't be scared. It's nothing much. I want to start a school."

"Start a school?"

No wonder everyone was surprised. They all sold things for a living. Suddenly being told we were starting a school was a little hard to get their heads around.

I nodded. "That's roughly the idea. Since we're already investing in real estate, we might as well get into private schools too. Of course, I'm thinking of more than simply opening a private school. I'd like to invest in building two schools at once: one private school and one charitable school offering completely free education."

The free charitable school was, of course, my main objective. But I could hardly tell these people, whose money-making had gone far too smoothly, that I planned to open a school that would lose several million or even over ten million a year, could I? The compromise was naturally to open one that made money and one that lost it. At least we could balance the books and leave nobody anything to complain about. Even if we lost money, we would lose less. It would also make a show of democracy.

Everyone understood the disparity between rich and poor. Some children rode to school in Mercedes-Benzes; others wanted to run more than a dozen li along mountain paths to school but did not even have the opportunity. The private school would make money from the rich and use it to educate those unable to attend school. This was not patriotism. I regretted that so many people in this world wanted things they could not obtain. Everyone ought to have a basic minimum standard of living and access to education.

Too many people thought their immediate surroundings were the world, were everything. But had they ever looked into every corner of the world? How could they know that hardships, thorns, pain, and setbacks hurt when imposed on themselves, yet deserved no attention when imposed on others?

All these questions of right and wrong...

There had been an inscription for Project Hope in 1990, and in 1991, the big-eyed girl Miss Su's "I want to go to school" had shaken the world. I did not know precisely how effective this largest and longest-running charitable campaign in modern Chinese history had been, but I knew having such a thing was far better than not having it. In an era when many people had already begun discussing how to integrate with the world, there were still so very many corners forgotten, whether carelessly or deliberately. Chiung Yao had once said she had not known Taipei still had child prostitutes who could not afford medical treatment. I did not think there was anything good about that kind of "not knowing."

Mount Everest had been the world's highest peak even before it was discovered. Some facts were simply like that.

"I don't want to explain too much," I said. "If you think there's a problem with this decision, you can raise it now. I'll say it plainly: I want to use one school's income to support another school, and I intend to build more in the future. This is a money-losing venture, but I think it's very meaningful."

Sun Changlu was the first to state his position. "I support you."

Liu Mingyao was second. "Give me the game design proposal. It's just building things, right? I know that business."

Lu Wei and Cai Qing exchanged a smile. "We'll find the teachers. We're a little more familiar with that."

Yu Chunrong touched the documents on the table. "I think we could buy old factories and convert them. Cheap and convenient. Old Xu and I have some experience with that. We can help advise."

Xu Jun stared at me for a long while. "I really can't figure out how that brain of yours developed. How did you even think of Project Hope?"

I had prepared for this and tossed over a collection of Peking University sociology graduation theses from the early nineties. "Reading it got me fired up. I wanted to do something."

The first paper in that book was a survey of rural China. Even by the standards of the present, its figures and reports were rather shocking. They passed it around, and everyone fell silent after reading it.

I shrugged. "What's written here isn't even bloody enough. Go see it in person, and you'll understand."

I was telling the truth. In 2002, I had conducted market research in Guangdong and accompanied a friend from a magazine to interview a fairly well-known student living in extreme poverty. Bear in mind, this was 2002, and in Guangdong at that. The student's bare-walled home reminded me of countless works of documentary literature I had read as a child and assumed were exaggerated many times over. Only at the moment I encountered it firsthand did I truly feel that it was all real.

In 1994, a child from a destitute Hong Kong family had been hit by a car and appeared in a gossip magazine. Only then did all of Hong Kong learn that families that poor still existed there. Donations poured in from all quarters, totaling over a million. The family was so accustomed to poverty that they did not know how to spend it. When reporters visited a few months later, they found their lives had not changed at all.

So giving money was not the point. Let people understand more, and they would naturally make choices, work hard, and seek change.

Education was the foundation, the source of every path... Since I disliked traditional education, I might as well do it myself. If I botched it, I would have nobody else to blame.

My gaze slowly swept over the people attending the round-table meeting. "Then it's settled? For locations, I suggest Sichuan for the private school and Anhui for the charitable one. Lu Wei, Cai Qing, handle all the public-facing business. Our two factory directors will have to put in some work too. Let's keep publicity as low-key as possible and wait for busybodies to dig up the news themselves. We won't say anything."

Liu Mingyao gave a cold chuckle. "Crafty. Fucking crafty..."

The others laughed too. They had all experienced my various publicity methods. This was not the first time I had struck such a pose. They knew the drill.

In the end, we settled on buying and converting old factories. That left Liu Mingyao with little to do, and he began begging me for the game design proposal.

I knew that four months later, Japan's Sony would release the Playstation and SEGA would release the Sega Saturn, while Panasonic's 3DO would enter its grave. The next generation of console gaming would truly arrive. Meanwhile, computer gaming would see the famous The Legend of Sword and Fairy ignite the famous Wuxia RPG craze. With real-time strategy games also beginning to rise, gaming's golden age was drawing closer.

I also knew that the famous RPG Final Fantasy VI, released this year, would become a heavyweight title remembered in gaming history, and the concept of the cinematic RPG would gradually take shape.

I further knew that, even so, after 1994 many games requiring little technical sophistication would still dominate portions of the market at various stages through their unique ideas. Electronic Pets, for example, or the Dance Mats seen everywhere.

At present, we had virtually no technical talent and could only make money from ideas. Fortunately, I knew several games that required little technical sophistication and were particularly suitable for bundling with personal computers. Everyone was hungry for games right now anyway and would play whatever was available. That could buy us some breathing room.

The first proposal I gave Liu Mingyao was for a "Home Electronic Pet" to be sold bundled with computers.

One final word: since private schools began appearing in China in 1992, very few had made money. This venture was guaranteed to lose it.