Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built pdfdrive com

To Get Rich Is Glorious
In 1992, Deng Xiaoping undertook his famous “southern tour,” immortalized
5
in
his pronouncement that “to get rich is glorious.” For the country’s entrepreneurs,
relegated to the margins of society, Deng’s endorsement was an unambiguous
invitation to return to the fold.
But Jack was not yet an entrepreneur. Upon graduating in 1988, with a
bachelor’s degree in English, he had become a lecturer in English and
international trade at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering. While
his fellow students were all assigned to teach English in middle schools, Jack
was the only one among five hundred graduates to be assigned to teach in an
institution of higher learning. But he had started to think of a future beyond
teaching. Jack recalled the lesson he drew from Deng’s southern tour: “You can
be rich; you can help other people be rich.” Although he was keen to serve out
the remaining two years of his contract, Jack began to pursue opportunities
outside his school.
After his day job at the institute, he started teaching English classes at the
Hangzhou YMCA. According to Chen Wei, who first attended a class in 1992,
Jack’s English classes were popular because he spent little time teaching
grammar, vocabulary, or reading out texts. Instead Jack preferred to pick a topic
and engage in conversation. His students came from a wide variety of
backgrounds, from high schoolers striving to study overseas, to college students,
to factory workers and young professionals. Jack would often spend time with
them after class, “drinking tea, playing cards, and chatting.”
Hangzhou had a regular “English corner,” a gathering of local residents
keen to practice their language skills on one another, which met every Sunday
morning in the Six Park beside West Lake. Jack would take along his students
from night school, but as they were eager to go more often, he decided to launch
his own English corner. His sessions were held every Wednesday night, with
Jack finding that the anonymity that darkness conferred made his students less
self-conscious in practicing their imperfect English.
But Jack’s teaching days were coming to an end. Swept up in the
enthusiasm that Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour had fanned, he resolved to
launch his own business before he turned thirty. Working part-time on his new
business, after class, he named his first company “Hope.”

---

Chapter Four