Internet 20: Why Yinghai, China's first internet company, failed

Since April 20, 1994, China has been connected to the world through a 64k international special line, and this country is inevitably involved in a new change that covers the work, life and politics of the Chinese people. And now Chinese Internet entrepreneurs are taking part in the country's transformation with a more disruptive technology and a more assertive subversion, such as Internet finance.

"Blog World" to "China's internet, what will happen in the next 5,000 days?" In this topic, "Blog World" Interview the "Wired" magazine former editor Kelly and the Chinese Internet 5 important entrepreneurs, they try to experience from the theory and the individual two logic to understand the Chinese Internet trends and original power, explore the future direction. Titanium Media Authorized editor published this series of articles a total of six, this is the second, before the article "Kelly: China's firewall will disappear, the public will monitor the government."

Now, 50-year-old Zhang has rarely come to the company, and she is still the chairman of the Board of Directors of United Express Investment (Holdings) Limited. The investment company was founded in 1999 by Zhang, the English name is "Genesis", meaning the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis. The first word of Genesis is "God created heaven and earth" at first. Zhang's office also has a Cervantes avatar, the Spanish writer who created a famous fantasy, challenging the windmill of Don Quixote. Such furnishings fit Zhang past experiences and endings-a crackpot who drubbing after creating the first world of Chinese Internet.

19 years later, she was able to retain some of the Yinghai in 1995 when she founded China's first Internet company to provide Chinese-language information, but was hard pressed to find out in 1998 that she was forced to resign from Yinghai when she was in disagreement with the big shareholder ZTE Group.

"Nothing in business is worth your pain. "Zhang stood in the spotlight under the photographer's placement, slightly lifting his chin, accustomed to quiet life, she inadvertently exposed the sharpness of the year."

President of China Poetry Society, Chairman of Student union, journalist, planner, internet entrepreneur, investor, the role of Zhang has been changing. Today, however, few people will be able to connect this sexually-informed woman to the "China Internet First person", and her employees rarely see her in the office, even the company's analysts don't know the female boss's past. Zhang's secretary told me that Zhang had been less involved in the company's operations and that she had been traveling around the world for the past 6 years.

Zhang confirmed the secretary's statement, and now she is a "idle person". 6 years ago, she handed the company's day-to-day operations to her partner, who had "read thousands of books, walk the Road" life. Liangwendao, Xu Zhiyuan, weiping are all guests in her private wine cellar. It's not much like an entrepreneur's circle of friends. Many of her friends did not know much about her history with Yinghai.

Accustomed to a quiet life she did not want to talk about the past, she said to those outside the label to disagree: "You are looking for the Zhang, not now I." "The day of the meeting, the financial writer Wu Xiaobo as the first person in the" big loser, "the woman entrepreneur in a good mood, she lightly described her first internet company founded in China Yinghai Wei's failure experience:" I am just a stepping stone of China's Internet. " ”

She was only in the intermission of the world, and occasionally returned to the office, which was full of her daughter's paintings. There are a variety of books on the shelves of politics, history, geography, and the Internet. In the photo, she just graduated as a reporter when the green Touch, the establishment of investment companies in Iran during the business trip photos, as well as participate in Alxa League and other public welfare activities of the photo. But there was no mark of her founding Yinghai.

Pioneer Zhang is an idealistic windmill rider who tries to create a perfect template

Just as God created heaven and earth in the Bible, he destroyed it with his own flood. Zhang created the first Chinese Internet demo (Template: Refers to the display, demonstration functions of things).

She said: "At the beginning of the world, I imagined everything, where to plant trees, where to grow flowers, how the tide rises, where the soil is, I think in my mind." ”

Even after standing in 20 years, the original picture of Zhang's design for the Chinese internet world was filled with bold and wild-looking Don Quixote.

She designed a spite internet world. Login Yinghai Granville Company's Internet client "Yinghai time", you can enter the world, people can use the "forum", "Post Office", "Coffee House", "Game City" and many other services. 1997, Yinghai Granville also made a name "News Night Center" project, the collection of the day of the major newspaper news, its form similar in 1998 years before the rise of the Zhidong of Li Fang Online (Sina predecessor) as well as Charles Zhang, Ding later opened Sohu, NetEase and other news portals.

She even wants Yinghai to develop electronic shopping, and predictably released the earliest fictitious currency "credit point" for online transactions, when Mr Ma has not yet started Alibaba, and until today China's Internet finance is still caught in the interest-sector criticism.

This is indeed a precocious and failed template. Some say it's because of the timing. Those who are good at depicting human nature also ascribe failure to Zhang's character, which is indeed a woman of idealism over realism.

In the interview, Zhang 4 times to mention Yinghai's failure because "it's too early." 1995, China's Internet and international standards just over a year, when the Chinese public on the internet is still widespread ignorance. Zhang began to promote the Internet to government officials and people, when she did a thing with the artistic color of the act-a famous billboard was erected 0 kilometres south of Zhongguancun: "How far is the Chinese from the information highway?" North 1500 meters. ”

1500 meters north of this billboard, is the Yinghai Granville Science and Education Museum, when the main role of the Science and Education Museum is to let the Chinese experience "surfing on the Internet" fun, and to the visitors to sell "Yinghai time" This software, a bit similar to the current Apple Experience Museum.

April 6 Noon, I came to the Weigongcun junction southeast of the Yinghai Wei Science and Education Museum site. Now, this is a Zhejiang restaurant called "Liu Jia Xiang", opened in 2005. The salesgirl at the front desk never heard of a yinghai. All she knew was that before the restaurant opened, it was a post office--and Zhang himself had never imagined that Yinghai's site had been occupied by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications system, which was intricately related to itself. Similar to the diners who are now in and out, the people who came here more than 10 years ago were equally hungry, but they were looking for new Internet technology and Internet experience.

1997, "Digital Survival" author Negroponte first visit to China, won the 220,000 U.S. dollar investment in Sohu founder Charles Zhang took the opportunity to fire a. But many people do not know, all the expenses of this activity is borne by Zhang. It was an official seminar, at which time the Gao Hongbing, who served at the information Office of the State Council, participated in the contacts and arrangements. Zhang that this kind of activity is done, is an official endorsement of the internet signal.

The same summer, when Yinghai into the capital chain crisis, Zhang also specifically persuaded Yang in selling computer fashion modems, Lenovo "1+1" made Lenovo "1+net", the results Yang did not understand, he asked Zhang: "I sell computers to sell computers, why do I have to install the network?"

On that day, Zhang used a metaphor to illustrate her dilemma with Yinghai: "We were supposed to sell bread, and then we had to start with the wheat." But the profit of bread cannot bear the cost of wheat. ”

June 1998, Zhang has not yet been able to personally complete her design for the Chinese Internet demo, he left his own yinghai, and allowed the torrent of time to wash away the first prototype of the internet world she had created, and later internet entrepreneurs were more likely to be the ones who had come into Noah's Ark by God's mercy, Finally stepped on the "stepping Stone" lady's shoulder to create the current Chinese internet world.

China's internet is driven by information control and political control

"The 20-year development of China's Internet has been deformed. "Zhang does not approve of Kelly's internet self-growth theory. She argues that, unlike the US internet, which is a twin tale of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, largely driven by technology and capital, the Chinese Internet is still driven by political control and information control.

She explained to me how control drives the development of China's internet-where there is control, there is a backlash, there is a need to break control, there is demand there will be a market, and then there is room for development.

The trend of China's internet also confirms Zhang's observation: The popularity of "Weibo" corresponds to the Chinese thirst for real information, and one of the background of Internet finance is that the banking system under the state monopoly is poorly serviced and inefficient. In Zhang's view, the deformity of China's Internet is that, in civil society and many things have not been developed and transformed, China has the Internet, where you can see the 15th century things, you can see 21st century things.

She said: "China's social form is the 1688 before the promulgation of the Great Charter, and Internet technology is synchronized with the world." You see, on the first day of the incident, the Chinese knew the information through the Internet. ”

Zhang's first touch on politics was an unpleasant experience at the age of 66. "Ashes" constituted her initial impression of "politics," and in 1978 she saw her father's vindication.

"His black material is so high. "That afternoon, Zhang, sitting on the Big red couch, opened his arms to me and said," when his black material was burnt to ashes from such a high, he turned from bad to good. "Her statement has a dramatic sense of absurdity.

Not liking to deal with politics but the constant encounter with politics, this makes Zhang from childhood to political fear toward adulthood when dealing with politics is sophisticated and skilled. As the first person to bring the internet to China, she has had to devote a lot of effort to explaining the benefits of the Internet to government officials at all levels to reassure them about the Internet. She remembers that at Yinghai, she had participated in a meeting of news office, MOC, Ministry of Public Security and other departments. The focus of the meeting is to sell things online do not pay taxes, online publishing inappropriate comments, Yinghai to be responsible. Zhang told me that the "Wenzing" in the Internet forum was her first creation.

At that time, Yinghai's office would suddenly come in. A lot of people, ambitious investors and worried government officials, they all let Zhang explain what is the Internet.

"One day my office came in and the security minister. "I tried to convince him that technology was a double-edged sword," Zhang said. There are White House on the Internet, why can't there be Zhongnanhai on the Internet? I'll show you the river. "This is 1997 years, Zhang in Yinghai a big big-" online Yanan "project's original intention. The project was later used as an example of Zhang extreme neglect of market demand and business logic. And Zhang defended what she had to prove was that the internet could be a positive force.

The decree of the State Council issued on February 1, 1996 stipulates that all personal access networks must go to the Public Security Bureau for filing. Shisun, who was president of Peking University at the end of 80, was a client of Yinghai, who was already 70 years old and dissatisfied with the rule. But in an interview with The Washington Post, Zhang said: "Good, there are rules, it can do, there is no regulation, China may never have the Internet." Zhang felt that her attitude was always positive and constructive in dealing with government and policy.

Just when she thought that in a benign interaction with the government, Zhang, who only made constructive comments, was defeated by China Telecom, which was both referee and athlete. In 1996, after receiving 50 million RMB capital injection from ZTE Group, Zhang tried to challenge China Telecom to monopolize the network access price by constructing the physical network. But in the face of telecommunications with strong national backgrounds and monopoly resources, Zhang's attempt to build a closed physical network is like "Don Quixote vs. The Windmill".

Wu Xiaobo in "big defeat" in the evaluation, Zhang behavior may be idealistic, but not wise, Yinghai finally drubbing and return, Sheng extremely and decline.

Today, she confessed to me that many of her ideas were false. But she denies that the entire industrial environment has caused the failure of Yinghai. "In fact, the first does not matter, Bezos also come today." It is they (China Telecom) to use their strong policy to overthrow you. "Zhang said.

20 years later, the Chinese Internet is still showing the story of Zhang, resistance and control in parallel. On the one hand, the development of Internet technology has begun to subvert the previous power relations, with "micro-letter" as the representative of the OTT (refers to internet companies over the operator to provide network application services) applications, so that telecom, Unicom and other operators on pins and needles; On the other hand, Because of the impact on the traditional financial institutions of the interests of the structure and the current financial regulatory mechanisms, emerging internet finance is facing the pain.

Those are all good and good, but I just want to be myself

Zhang, who claims to be idle, is returning to beginner. When he left the business, Zhang said, "I never want to see people I don't want to see, eat food I don't want to eat, and say what I don't want to say." Zhang told me that for 6 years she had done it.

But she thinks she's still an internet person today. Now her most interesting question is: "How will the Internet subvert the psychological structure of people?"

Zhang to the present life condition is very satisfied: "Someone once said to me, you could have become Ma Yun, become who." But I think carefully, who I do not change, they are tens of thousands of times times more money than me, I only want myself. ”

Zhang, who is interested in historical research, has also launched a review of Eastern history with Xu Zhiyuan, Shen Zhihua, a magazine book that rejects fragmentation and simplifies understanding history. Xu Zhiyuan recalls that the first time she saw Zhang was 2001, when they talked a lot about the Internet. More than 10 years later, when Xu Zhiyuan was taken by Zhang's daughter to the Zhang's cellar, the two men began to talk extensively about travel and history.

Xu Zhiyuan told me that the birth of the Oriental Historical Review magazine came from the consensus of several editorial editors on history: that history is a reference to the status quo and an alternative to the inability to talk about reality.

Zhang does not participate in the magazine's specific editors, but in the early days, she has an important influence on the design of the architecture and the direction of the magazine. She is also the convenor of the occasional editorial board meeting. Xu Zhiyuan The Zhang as a bridge between the cultural circle and the business circle, and she has a wide network of historians and entrepreneurs.

Born in 1963, Zhang spent his college life in the 1980. She said that it was an era that was thought to be full of idealistic passions, and a time when social values had been radically reshaped. China, which has been closed for more than 30 years, has begun to reconnect with various Western philosophies and scientific ideas.

"I went to college and I studied Nietzsche, and I read Sartre. Then the most fashionable is writing poetry. It was the age of Enlightenment in China, and the Age of Enlightenment was to ask God questions. "Zhang said.

In the journey around the world, Zhang will occasionally emerge from a variety of peculiar problems, she slowly returned to the original Chinese Internet demo of the epoch-making state, all new, unknown things filled with curiosity and questioning.

In the Office at 19/F, 1 east of the Oriental Plaza, Wangfujing, Beijing, she copies the book she was reading from the bookshelf, one of which was "around the world by the Beagle", and after reading, she had an unusual interest in two questions-what kind of ambition did the Daying Empire measure the world? Why Spain was the richest country in the world, Did not make the contribution of the world civilization like the Daying Empire? As the afternoon approached dusk, she turned to me and asked, "Isn't that the question we should be asking today?"