(Chinese Version)

Editor’s Note:
Not long ago TMTpost’s editor Chen Zheng spent three days with young CEO Xu Ke experiencing her very daily entrepreneurial life, and that’s exactly what our first issue of TMTpost Photo Gallery and also the following galleries will focus on. TMTpost Photo Gallery aims to record interesting individuals that are shining in their own respective fields: entrepreneurs that have just found their spot in the startup scene; star investors that walk through different conferences; programmers who spend hours of time writing codes in front of the computer screen; Internet operators who devoted much of their time to work; geeks who bury themselves in developing cutting-edgetechnologies and even delivery guys who go around the city under the glowing sun. All these people’ lives are deeply influenced by the Internet, and their fractured moments of life are worth capturing.

This time we turn our cameras towards the Inno Way of Zhongguancun, an area full of cafés that serve entrepreneurs and investors in Beijing. Supported by the national Mass Innovation and Mass Entrepreneurship campaign, the startup scene in China is undergoing tremendous changes with every passing hour. TMTpost aims to record stories that readers seldom see on other media platforms. In TMTpost Photo Gallery, we offer readers another chance of looking at the world of entrepreneurs.

Two Newcomers At The Inno Way

In Beijing, you can pretty much expect to hear heated discussion about financing, projects, entrepreneurial stories, and gossips about the Internet industry when you are having a cup of coffee in a café, especially so around The Inno Way area. Here people feel this is the closest place to legends, even the center of time. Even if people will eventually leave this street, more people will come. TMTpost Photo Gallery records the stories of two different entrepreneurs who have just come to this street. In our galleries, we don’t intend to impose ideas on readers about these people and we didn’t capture their hardest time on purpose. All we want to do is record their stories and spread them to our readers.

The old guy who sleeps on the couch in a café

On November 4th, 70-year-old Wang Xiuyu sat for 9 hours on the train from Jiaozuo to Beijing. After arriving in the very capital of China, he went straight to the Inno Way located in Zhongguancun.

He’s looking for investment, so that he could practice his research on wind and water energy. Up till November 16th, he has already spent many sleepless nights on a couch in some café at the Inno Way. Every morning he wakes up and only has a bowl of instant noodles for breakfast. After the quick breakfast, he will go to universities, energy companies, and investment organizations at the Inno Way to promote his research. At night, Mr. Wang will return to the café he’s staying in and talk to different people about his project.

“I learned from CCTV news that this is the place where I could find investors,” Wang said, seemingly disappointed since so far he hasn’t found any one. According to Wang, he used to work in a bank managing loan services and later went to study wind and water energy for 20 years after retiring. He believes the new power equipment he developed could sparkle a revolution within the power industry. To realize his dream, he hasn’t given up yet. During this process he had bought tickets back home for multiple times but ultimately cancelled them.

“Some professors in universities like my idea. It gives me confidence in what I am doing,” Wang finally has some good news after staying in Beijing for 12 days.

On November 11th, Wang Xiuli introduced his project to other people in a café at the Inno Way. During these days in Beijing, he spent hours talking to other people about his project. He went to an investment organization with his patent materials the first day he came to this street . But unfortunately the organization's respondent told him that his project didn’t suit their field and therefore there wouldn’t be any cooperation. The failure disappointed him more or less.

In the café, an entrepreneur heard about Wang’s trouble with finding investment and decided to read his palm. After examining Wang’s hand, he told him that as a 70-year-old man, Wang was very unlikely to get any money. “You have to read the sutras three times a day and quit eating meat. Then you might have some chances of getting investment,” this is the suggestion that he gave Mr. Wang.

Mr. Wang was supposed to pay only 30 RMB for staying one night on the couch of this café. Wang Xiuli has spent 12 nights here, with his belongings, including a backpack, a paper bag, and a kettle, on the desk.

He waked up at around 7 am every day, and then washed his face in the café’s bathroom.

He took 17 bags of instant noodles to Beijing for breakfast and dinner. For lunch he would go to some small restaurants outside. After he had eaten up all the instant noodles, he then went to small stalls on the street and bought a few pancakes. He didn’t have much money, and therefore he wanted to save as much money as possible.

In Beijing, besides looking for investors at the Inno Way, Wang Xiuli also tried to find universities, institutes, and enterprises that also conduct studies on energy. He believed his work could bring a revolutionary impact on the current energy studies. “My wind energy project can increase the power production by 50% and lower the cost of equipment by 40%,” this is what makes him so confident that he decided to come to Beijing all alone.

Wang was not familiar with Beijing and relied merely on buses to move around the city or just walk around. He was taking the 114 bus to North China Electric Power University to meet some professors.

He said he didn’t sleep much last night. The ride took an hour and he took a snap in his journey.

At the gate of the university, Mr. Wang expressed his worry that some professors in the university might not want to talk to him since we’re following him, and said that he wanted to meet them alone. When Wang walked out of the campus, he was happy. He told us that he couldn’t meet the project leaders in the lab, but the lab assistants promised him to hand in his materials for him and they would contact him later. He looked quite excited.

He cancelled the train ticket to home next day and decided to stay in Beijing to wait for answers from professors.

After two days Wang still didn’t get any replies. Then he packed his stuff and decided to go to the university again. “If I still couldn’t meet the professors, I would stay in a hotel near the school,” he said.

This time Wang Xiuli met a professor who studied wind and water energy, and later expressed appreciation about his work. “He told me that I need to build a sample first, and it is going to cost around 300,000 RMB. He advised me to find investors and then buyers. Then it’ going to work,” Wang told us after 30 minutes of discussion with the professor.

Wang was happy about the result. He received recognition from a prestigious professor and it’s definitely a great boost of confidence for him. He decided to buy a ticket home first and figure out the rest at home.

An entrepreneurial drifter who found his partner through chess games

Entrepreneurial drifter is used to describe people who are fighting for their entrepreneurial dreams in a completely different city.

Wang Xiaosheng, who’s in his 30s, has tried many different ways to have an entrepreneurial journey in recent years, including taking some odd jobs, opening his own shop, and running an shop on Taobao, but none worked out for him. He likes to play basketball. And at one time it occurred to him that he could have developed an app on which users could ask other users out for a game. He wanted to make an app that could fill the gap where other similar apps failed to, and especially, he wanted to use his hobby as an entry point to the Internet sector. This idea grew stronger gradually and eventually he said goodbye to her girlfriend and came all the way from Chongqing to Beijing on November 7th. On the plane he wrote down he framework and basic ideas about his product and the operation model. After arriving in Zhongguancun, he found a place to stay near the CBD and then went to different cafés at the Inno Way and set up a chess game everyday there in hopes of finding people who share the same goal with him. Surprisingly, he actually found one after 4 days of trying.

According to Wang Xiaosheng, he would stick to the Internet sector, and that’s why he chose Beijing as the start and this Inno Way in particular.

He learned from the Internet that cafés at this area were full of entrepreneurs, and therefore he believed he had found the place that he could find people who share the same goal with him in the cafés.

He set up three chess games that were in the final phase of the game in the café and put his WeChat’s QR code near them. According to Xiaosheng he chose this way to meet people because he also loved playing chess.

Wang Xiaosheng has spent three days at the café, and during these days many people had come and played the game with him while some discussed projects with him. But most people were attracted by his sign near his chess games, which read “one against three”. After a few rounds of chess games, some entrepreneurs would talk to him about stories of success and opportunities, and invite him to visit their company. However, Xiaosheng later realized that they were just finding some naïve entrepreneurs to play trick on, similar to pyramid selling.

Everyday he would walk a few miles from the café to his place. But he had never lost hope and never thought he’s in a bad situation.

The place he’s staying in is a room with bunk beds rented together with four people. It cost only 50 RMB one day and he shares the room with students from nearby colleges.

In his days at the Inno Way he would also browse through the advertisements on the wall that were posted to look for partners, investment and projects. Everything seems to be promising and hopeless at the same time.

On his flight to Beijing, Wang Xiaosheng wrote down his ideas about his sports O2O project on his notebook.

He said he really wanted to make this happen, and when he made it happen and everything’s on the right track, he would take his girlfriend to Beijing. At present, Xiaosheng’s girlfriend works in the clothing business. “She works so hard. I give her a videocall every morning to wake her up,” he said.

After a few days of trying, Wang Xiaosheng finally met somebody that wanted to be his partner in his entrepreneurial journey. “We played a few rounds of chess and we talked a lot during that process . At last, we realized we had a lot in common.” Xiaosheng said. “Then we had dinner together and decided to work together. Now we are writing a business plan and will soon execute our plans.”

TMTpost Photo Gallery

Aiming to record the individual entrepreneurs in the Internet industry

Photos don’t lie, but they don’ tell the whole truth

Photos are free, but also full of traps

This is an Internet age, and we want you to discover stories with us together

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @fliesslaughterhouse, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.