Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built pdfdrive com

The Morley Family
Armed with his improving English, rich knowledge of the history of the
area, and a knack for storytelling, Jack embraced the opportunity to show more
foreign tourists around the sights of West Lake. He relished visiting Hangzhou’s
teahouses, where locals would play Chinese chess and cards and recount “tall
tales.”
Jack would often accompany his grandmother to Buddhist temples to burn
incense and worship the gods. He developed a passion for tai chi and reading
The Water Margin,
a classic Chinese tale that features 108 heroes—the number
of employees he later would set as an early head count target for Alibaba.
But by far his favorite works are those of Hong Kong author Louis Cha,
who writes under the pen name Jin Yong. Born in Zhejiang Province in 1924, Jin
Yong cofounded in 1959 the Hong Kong newspaper 
Ming Pao,
which published
many of his early works. In total, he authored fifteen novels, all in the 
wuxia
genre, which blends historical and fictional tales of martial arts and chivalry. Jin
Yong is highly popular in the Chinese-speaking world. Worldwide sales of his
books have topped 100 million copies. There have been more than ninety
television series and film adaptations of his work.

---

One of Jack’s childhood pen pal letters to David Morley. 
The Morley family
Set between the sixth century BC and the eighteenth century, Jin Yong’s
works contain strong elements of Chinese patriotism, pitting heroic peoples
against northern invaders such as the Mongols and Manchus.
Yi Zhongtian, a well-known writer and a professor at Xiamen University,
summarized the popular appeal of traditional stories and martial arts as follows:
“In traditional Chinese society, people have three dreams. The first is a wise
emperor. People hope to have a good leader so that they can have peace in the
country. The second dream is clean officials. If there are no clean officials, then
comes the third dream, chivalrous heroes. People hope that the heroes could
stand for them, kill the greedy officials, and bring justice back to the society.
However, if there are no heroes, people can only seek comfort from martial arts
fiction. That’s why many Chinese people like kung fu novels.”
Jin Yong’s writing is suffused with traditional elements of Chinese culture
and arts, as well as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Jack found
inspiration in Jin Yong’s legendary warrior Feng Qingyang. Feng was a teacher.
His martial arts moves were never performed to any set plan.

---

In his own practice of martial arts, Jack was trained in tai chi
2
by a woman
in her seventies who, according to Chen Wei—a former student of Jack’s who is
now his personal assistant—was so skilled that she could defend herself against
two or three younger men. Every morning she would close her eyes to meditate
before practicing tai chi, “listening to the sound of flowers blooming.” Today
Jack often travels with a personal tai chi coach.
But these skills were of little use against one of Jack’s earliest foes: math.
In China, all high school students hoping to go on to higher education have to
pass a merit-based national higher education entrance exam, commonly known
as the 
gaokao,
literally the “high test.” The 
gaokao
takes place over two or three
days. Math, along with Chinese and a foreign language, is mandatory.
The 
gaokao
is widely seen as one of the most challenging in the world,
requiring a huge amount of preparation and memorization. Today there is
growing criticism of the exam’s negative social consequences, including
depression and suicide.
Jack took the 
gaokao
but failed badly, scoring 1/120 in math. His hopes
crushed, he took to menial labor delivering heavy bundles of magazines from
printers to the Hangzhou train station on a pedicab, a job Jack managed to land
thanks only to his father’s connections. Jack was rejected from numerous other
jobs, including as a waiter in a hotel. He was told he was not tall enough.
Chen Wei relates in his biography of Jack,