The Five Brothers' Dream

Three years earlier, after Yide returned from his inspection trip to America, he did not first go back to the mainland. Instead, he landed directly in Hong Kong.
When the plane descended into Kai Tak Airport, the clouds outside the window hung very low, the sea was gray-blue, and the city seemed squeezed between mountain and water. The aircraft skimmed close past the buildings. Looking down from the cabin window, Yide saw tightly packed windows, laundry poles, neon signboards, and narrow streets. For an instant, he felt almost dazed. American cities were large, most of them spreading outward in all directions; Hong Kong, however, was like a machine compressed to the utmost. Buildings stood on the hillsides, buildings stood by the sea, the roads were so narrow they could hardly breathe, yet people moved within them at astonishing speed.
It did not have New York’s cold hardness, nor San Francisco’s clarity. Hong Kong’s air was damp, carrying a little of the smell of the sea, gasoline, milk tea from cha chaan tengs, and money. When it rained, the streets were full of umbrellas; when the sky cleared, sunlight slanted down between high-rises, dazzling upon glass curtain walls. Dragging his luggage out of the airport, Yide thought in his heart: this place is not large, yet it is like an iron abacus filled with gambling chips, every bead snapping loudly.
Third Uncle Ma Gaohui sent Boss Xu to receive him.
As soon as Boss Xu saw him, he still wore that oily bright smile. “Young Master Yide, welcome to Hong Kong! Uncle Gaohui instructed me: you are not a tourist. You are here to open a battlefield.”
Yide laughed. “I only just got off the plane, and Boss Xu already wants me to fight a war?”
Boss Xu opened the car door for him. “In Hong Kong, if you do not fight, you pay rent. Paying rent is even more miserable than fighting.”
This sentence made Yide laugh loudly. The car drove into the city, and buildings on both sides pressed in like walls. The glass of office towers in Central gleamed; the crowds in Causeway Bay surged like tides; signboards in Tsim Sha Tsui piled layer upon layer; boat shadows came and went across Victoria Harbour. Hong Kong was not like mainland cities, where there were still many empty spaces in which one could imagine. Everywhere here was crowded with reality: rent, banks, law firms, freight companies, newspapers, accountants, travel agencies, trading firms, real estate shops, cha chaan tengs, and pedestrians forever in a hurry.
Yet the more Yide looked, the more excited he became.
The idea he had brought back from America suddenly found a shape in which it could land here. Zhide at Stanford had said that the “location” of the internet was not beside the road, but at the information crossroads people passed through every day. Hong Kong was precisely such an information crossroads. Here there were Hong Kong merchants, foreign trade, finance, intermediaries, lawyers, accountants, customs brokers, freight companies, immigration, education, real estate, and countless people wanting to enter the mainland, go overseas, find clients, find relationships, and find opportunities. In the past, all this information had been scattered among Yellow Pages, white pages, newspaper advertisements, business-card boxes, and the pockets of banquet tables. If it could be moved online, it would be like gathering the street numbers of an entire city into a new map.
After Ma Gaohui listened to his idea, he asked only three questions.
“First, who will put up the money?”
Yide said, “Third Uncle invests one sum first, and I will put in a part myself. We begin small. We do not burn big money.”
“Second, who understands the technology?”
“Zhide is in Silicon Valley. He will be responsible for the technical architecture and program guidance. I will find several people in Hong Kong to do local data entry, editing, and sales.”
“Third, who will pay you?”
Yide paused for a moment and said, “First, put the Hong Kong industrial and commercial Yellow Pages and institutional white pages online. Basic information will be free, so enterprises can see the effect. Value-added portions will be charged: company introductions, product photographs, English pages, priority rankings, online inquiries. Later, we will do e-commerce and match buyers with sellers.”
After hearing this, Ma Gaohui slowly lit a cigar. “The idea sounds like American goods. But when it lands, it must be calculated by Hong Kong prices. Hong Kong people are shrewd. If you speak of the future, they ask what use it has today. If you speak of websites, they ask how many customers it can bring. If you speak of e-commerce, they ask where the cheque is to be collected.”
Yide smiled. “That is why I need to make a sample first.”
“A sample is fine.” Ma Gaohui exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “But remember, Hong Kong is not a place that talks stories. Hong Kong is a place that talks accounts. No matter how well you tell the story, if there are no orders after three months, the office rent will scold you on behalf of the market.”
Yide nodded. “I understand.”
Very soon, he rented a small office in Sheung Wan. The building was old, the elevator slow, and from the window one could see half a strip of sea and a dense patch of signboards. Inside the office, they first placed several desks, several computers, a fax machine, two telephones, and a whiteboard. On the whiteboard were written several lines:
Industrial and Commercial Yellow Pages.
Institutional White Pages.
Corporate Homepages.
English Directory.
Online Search.
Mainland Gateway.
Zhide sent a technical plan from America, and also called across the ocean late at night. Because of the time difference, it was often already deep into the night in Hong Kong, while Yide still sat in the office, listening to his younger brother on the other end speak of servers, domain names, databases, search functions, and page structures.
Yide listened until his head ached. “Do not explain it too deeply. Second Brother only wants to know one thing: when customers click in, can they find the telephone number?”
Zhide laughed. “Finding the telephone number is only the first step. In the future, they must be able to find products, prices, inventory, contacts, and even place orders directly.”
Yide slapped the table. “That is what I want! Hong Kong people looking for mainland goods, mainland people looking for Hong Kong agents, overseas Chinese looking for Chinese manufacturers—we will build the line in between.”
Zhide reminded him, “Do not be too greedy at the beginning. The data must be accurate, the pages must be fast, and customers must trust it. The internet is not finished once you move paper onto it. The hardest thing is updating.”
Yide listened for a long time and finally said, “You are responsible for making sure the machine does not lie. I am responsible for making people willing to pay.”
The two brothers laughed at both ends of the telephone line.
In the first few months of the startup, the work was far more trivial than Yide had imagined.
So-called putting Yellow Pages and white pages online sounded fresh, but in practice it was dull labor. Employees had to go through telephone books, industry directories, chamber-of-commerce materials, exhibition manuals, and newspaper advertisements, entering company names, addresses, telephone numbers, fax numbers, contact persons, and industry categories one by one. If one character was entered incorrectly, the customer might come scolding. If a telephone number was missing one digit, the salesperson might make a trip for nothing. Several young data-entry staff sat before computers typing until their eyes ached. Yide walked back and forth in the office every day, one moment urging the pages forward, the next checking categories, and the next personally calling chambers of commerce and hometown associations, asking them to provide lists.
Boss Xu also helped introduce clients.
He brought Yide to meet trading-house bosses, freight companies, jewelers, electronic-component merchants, and representatives of garment factories. Boss Xu introduced him with great exaggeration: “This is Ma Yide. He has just returned from America and is doing the internet. In the future, the whole world will look for business inside computers. If you do not enter now, later you will have to line up.”
A garment factory boss heard this and was half believing, half doubtful. “My clients all come through fax and trade fairs. What use is this webpage of yours?”
Yide did not hurry to speak grand principles. He only asked, “How much do you spend each year printing promotional brochures?”
“At least more than a hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars.”
“How many people read them after you send them out?”
The boss laughed. “That I do not know.”
“A webpage costs from several thousand to several tens of thousands a year. Customers in America, Canada, and Australia can see it even in the middle of the night. When you are asleep, it opens the door for you. If a brochure is sent to the wrong address, it is gone. If a webpage is wrong, it can still be changed.”
The boss rubbed his chin. “That sounds somewhat reasonable.”
Boss Xu immediately added the finishing blow. “Not somewhat. Very reasonable. Buy a basic version first; Mr. Ma will make it beautiful for you.”
In this way, the first batch of customers slowly arrived.
Some bought company introduction pages. Some bought English versions. Some asked to display product photographs. Some asked to enlarge their fax numbers. Some asked whether they could be ranked ahead of their competitors. Yide very quickly discovered that the so-called internet, once in the hands of Hong Kong merchants, immediately became a business of “position.” A slightly higher ranking cost money; more photographs cost money; English polishing cost money; links to overseas directories also cost money. The virtual world was not virtual at all. In the end, it was still shopfronts, signboards, human flow, and bills—only the shopfront had moved onto the screen.
There were actual results too, though they did not come violently.
Several trading companies really did receive overseas inquiries through their webpages. An electronic-component merchant received a fax from a Canadian customer, saying that he had seen the information online. A jewelry-accessory merchant, because its English page had been done beautifully, was asked by an Australian buyer to send samples. Yide treated these cases like treasures and immediately printed them into promotional leaflets to show the next customer.
“Look, others already have inquiries,” he said.
The customer asked, “Then has there been a deal?”
Yide smiled. “An inquiry means the door has sounded. Closing the deal means you must open the door yourself.”
This sentence later became the salespeople’s catchphrase.
Of course, more customers were still watching. Some felt computers were too mysterious. Some thought going online was troublesome. Some asked, “I do not even have a computer. How would my customers have one?” There were also bosses who frowned as soon as they heard “e-commerce.” “If business is done without seeing the person, how do we collect the money? If the goods go out and the other side does not admit the account, what then?” Yide patiently explained: first do information display, then matching, then credit and payment. But in his heart he understood that this road could not be walked through in a single day. Though Hong Kong was fast, and merchants were shrewd, they were also the most realistic. Anything new that could not yet show cash flow would always have to pass through the gate of doubt first.
But Yide was not anxious.
What he wanted was a sample, a flag, a signboard that could be brought back to the mainland. No matter how small the Hong Kong operation was, as long as it could prove that industrial and commercial information could go online, that enterprises could display themselves online, and that overseas customers could contact them through webpages, it would be enough to show the future direction. The mainland market was larger, the information more scattered, and enterprises needed exports and investment attraction even more. If this Hong Kong net could be woven, the next step would be Canton, Shenzhen, Ruizhou, Dongguan, Shanghai, and Beijing. First, the Hong Kong Industrial and Commercial Yellow Pages; then the Chinese Industrial and Commercial Yellow Pages. First, institutional white pages; then enterprise portals. First information, then transactions.
On an evening after rain, Yide stood before the office window and looked at the streets of Sheung Wan.
Downstairs, a tram moved slowly past, its bell ringing ding-ding. Steam rose from a cha chaan teng by the roadside. White-collar workers, shop clerks, delivery workers, foreigners, and Hong Kong merchants were squeezed into the same narrow street. In the distance, Victoria Harbour was gray-blue, and several boats moved slowly in the dusk. Hong Kong’s weather changed quickly. In the morning, sunlight might still be dazzling; by afternoon, rain would suddenly fall. Once the rain stopped, the city seemed wiped bright again, neon, glass, sea surface, and wet asphalt all shining together.
Yide suddenly thought of the six characters he had written in the little garden in SoHo, New York:
Hong Kong.
Internet.
Mainland.
Now he was truly standing in Hong Kong.
Third Uncle had money and connections. Zhide had technology. He himself had courage and a feel for the market. When these three things came together, they might not immediately become a great undertaking, but they were already enough to open a crack. Yide knew that behind this crack was an age not yet fully seen.
That evening, Ma Gaohui came to the office and looked around.
He saw young people typing on keyboards, saw the industry categories on the wall, saw the list of mainland cities on the whiteboard, and smiled. “The place is small, but the tone is not.”
Yide said, “Third Uncle, Hong Kong buildings are small too, but the rent is not.”
Ma Gaohui laughed loudly. “If you can talk back, it means you still have strength.”
He walked to the window and looked at the lights outside, then suddenly said, “Hong Kong people do business by speed, precision, and money. Mainland people do business by relationships, opportunity, and courage. If you can connect the two sides, there will be something to do. If you cannot connect them, then it is merely a pile of telephone books moved into a computer, and no one will look.”
Yide nodded. “What I want to build is not a telephone book. It is an entrance.”
Ma Gaohui turned to look at him, and there was a point of brightness in his eyes. “The word entrance is good. Only by guarding the entrance does one have the right to collect toll.”
That night, the Hong Kong wind slipped through the cracks of the window, carrying the smell of seawater and neon. The computer screens in the office gave off a faint blue light. The fax machine rang from time to time. Young employees were still entering the information of one company after another. Yide sat at his desk, turning through the list of the first batch of paying customers. In his heart there was not the grand speech he had felt in New York when he imagined ringing the bell, but there was a more solid heat.
America had given him imagination.
Hong Kong gave him the abacus.
And the true battlefield still lay in the mainland.