Restart life

Chapter 335 0332 [Kuafu's Sun Chasing Plan]

In December and January, various annual lists and data are released.

The number of Chinese internet users announced this time is alarming, reaching 2.1 million by the end of 2007—compared to only 1.37 million the previous year.

No wonder HaiNei.com's user base is growing so fast!

Chen Guiliang obtained Professor Pan Aiming's phone number through a graduate student. After speaking with Professor Pan Aiming on the phone, they arranged a time for Chen Guiliang to come to the university to meet him.

Chen Guiliang took the opportunity to go back to his school dormitory; he missed his roommates whom he hadn't seen in a long time.

Li Heng wasn't there; I heard he went to participate in a student council activity.

Tong Zhihong was playing World of Warcraft in his dorm room, complaining as he played that participating in guild activities was like going to work. He was exhausted, but had no choice but to go online.

"Where is Jiang Junlai?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tong Zhihong said, "I'm looking up information in the library. I've been writing a paper lately. I don't even understand the title of the paper. It's something like 'Study on the Long-Term Behavior and Singularity of Solutions to Certain Nonlinear Wave Equations'."

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "I don't understand either."

Jiang Jun enrolled in many courses during his freshman year, reduced the number slightly in his sophomore year, and mainly studied mathematics and physics in his junior year. He claimed that he wanted to be recommended for graduate studies at the same university, but it is unknown whether he succeeded or not, although he is already working as a handyman in a professor's research group.

Chen Guiliang set his alarm and lay on his bed in the dormitory for a while when he suddenly heard Tong Zhihong shout with relief, "Finally finished! Time to go home!"

Chen Guiliang said, "You're so tired, why are you still playing?"

Tong Zhihong said, "You don't play World of Warcraft, so of course you wouldn't know. Guilds are full of brothers and sisters, and there's a deep bond between them. Even if you don't participate in guild activities, no one will actually call you to fight, but you'll still feel guilty."

Damn, Warcraft really is a social networking app.

Tong Zhihong chatted in Warcraft for a few minutes, then quickly logged off and logged back into Future Era, running to the map updated on New Year's Day to form a random team to run dungeons.

"It's still more fun grinding here." Tong Zhihong vented his frustration by frantically hacking and slashing at monsters.

Chen Guiliang was both amused and exasperated.

World of Warcraft is the legal wife, and you need to live together in mutual respect. Future Era is the concubine, right? It's all about sex right from the start, and once it's over, it's done and gone.

Tong Zhihong said, "We also have a girl in our guild who's a celebrity, her name is Wan Qian, and she has a really beautiful voice. She even has an account on HaiNei.com, and I specifically went to see her photos. She's extremely, extremely, extremely beautiful!"

"Wan Qian? She is indeed beautiful," Chen Guiliang agreed.

Tong Zhihong said, "You don't know, she's really amazing. She's even led a 40-person raid. Most people can't handle that."

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "With so much time spent playing games, she probably won't get any film or television roles."

Tong Zhihong said, "She's got roles in TV dramas and movies, and she's also a singer; she released an album last year. A lot of the guys in our guild bought her records. Damn... why is the boss so hard to beat?"

"Nonsense, you're running the latest Abyss dungeon," Chen Guiliang said irritably.

The alarm on his phone went off, and Chen Guiliang got up and said, "Goodbye."

"Goodbye... Ah, I'm going to die, I'm going to die..." Tong Zhihong hurriedly drank the life-saving potion.

Chen Guiliang rode his bicycle all the way to Pan Aiming's office.

In two days it will be final exam week, and most departments have already finished teaching for the semester.

When Chen Guiliang arrived at the location, Pan Aiming was sitting in front of a computer, guiding a graduate student in writing their graduation thesis.

"Please sit down for a while," Pan Aiming said.

“Okay. Professor Pan, you go ahead with your work,” Chen Guiliang said.

After waiting for a full twenty minutes, the graduate student took his leave and said goodbye to Chen Guiliang.

Only the two of them remained in the office.

Pan Aiming asked with a smile, "You seem to be graduating from your undergraduate program soon. Are you thinking of applying to my graduate program?"

Chen Guiliang said, "Professor Pan, please don't joke around. I've only studied Advanced Mathematics E, and I'm willing but unable to switch to computer science."

"Then how come you have time to come here and chat?" Pan Aiming asked.

Chen Guiliang didn't mince words: "I want to invite Professor Pan to come out of retirement and work on smartphones."

Pan Aiming was taken aback upon hearing this, then shook his head: "I've never worked with smartphones, so I don't know anything about them."

"But you are an operating system kernel expert, a master of embedded systems, and proficient in drivers and hardware abstraction layers. You are especially good at system-level performance optimization..." Chen Guiliang told him everything he had found out.

Pan Aiming shook her head: "You should find someone else. Teaching is great, it doesn't require much brainpower, and I'm very satisfied with my life right now."

In the 90s and early 2000s, Microsoft Research Asia was a group of madmen; the research environment was like a shot of adrenaline. Especially with new departments and new tasks, everyone automatically worked overtime, and more than one or two people were exhausted to the point of collapse.

Pan Aiming's health couldn't handle the strain, so she stopped doing direct development work and instead provided technical support to other developers. However, her poor health made her increasingly anxious when faced with problems, and she fell into a state of depression. In the end, she simply resigned and went to teach at Peking University.

He felt lingering fear whenever he recalled those days. Although he really wanted to start R&D again, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to handle it. Chen Guiliang said, "As long as Professor Pan is willing to come, the company stock options can be discussed in detail, and Professor Pan can recruit the team members himself."

Pan Aiming just said he didn't understand smartphones, but now he says, "Making smartphones is very complex and requires a very strong hardware team. Especially since good hardware architects are hard to find, and there are also baseband, radio frequency, power management, sensors, touch, audio..."

Chen Guiliang said, "We're poaching people."

"It's not easy to dig," Pan Aiming kept making excuses, but no longer directly refused.

This is a contradictory mentality: resisting change while simultaneously eager to try it out.

A top expert like him has been on hiatus for several years, during which time he has continued his theoretical research. Who wouldn't want to return to the field and put their theoretical research into practice?

Chen Guiliang said, "No matter how difficult it is, someone has to do it. Doesn't Professor Pan want to personally create a smartphone designed by Chinese people?"

Pan Aiming said, "I'll think about it some more." She added, "You can go back now, don't try to persuade me anymore. And don't mention annual salary or anything like that, this has nothing to do with money."

Chen Guiliang hesitated, then said, "I'll come to visit another day."

After Chen Guiliang left, Pan Aiming sat alone in her office, smoking in silence.

Pan Aiming's style is "only talk about technology and not personal matters." Let alone managing a company, even just managing a research and development team would be a challenge for him in terms of interpersonal skills.

Therefore, the R&D team tried to let Pan Aiming build it himself.

If Chen Guiliang had recruited a group of experts to work with Pan Aiming on research and development, they would probably have started having conflicts within two or three months at most.

After smoking in silence for a while, Pan Aiming made a phone call: "Old Chen, how about we work on a smartphone together? Bring your whole team of PhD students on board."

Professor Chen Yu from Tsinghua University laughed and said, "You're doing so well as a teacher, with degrees from both Peking University and Tsinghua University, why did you suddenly decide to make smartphones?"

“Someone came to invite me, and I was really eager to do it,” Pan Aiming said. “Making smartphones is a complex project, and I definitely can’t handle it by myself. I’ll have to ask you to come out of retirement.”

Chen Yu asked, "Which company invited you?"

Pan Aiming said, "Chen Guiliang from ByteDance."

"Is that the Peking University student who managed to take his company public?" Chen Yu confirmed.

Pan Aiming said, "Yes, it's him. Didn't he raise a lot of money in the US? His game company is making a fortune. There shouldn't be any problem with funding, it's just that he lacks a technical team."

Chen Yu thought for a moment and said, "Why don't we bring Zhang Chao from the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences into the project as well? Let's have teams from Tsinghua University, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences work together!"

"You agree?" Pan Aiming asked.

Chen Yu said, "Why not? It's rare to find a sponsor willing to invest. We, along with a few graduate students, can translate theory into practice and overcome one obstacle after another. It's an exciting prospect. Success goes without saying, but even failure will provide valuable experience. To put it bluntly, we're not the ones losing money."

Pan Aiming laughed and said, "Haha, that makes sense."

The two chatted for a while, discussing the details of the collaboration, and then hung up the phone.

Pan Aiming didn't put on airs or deliberately keep him waiting. He called Chen Guiliang directly and said, "I plan to bring in Professor Chen Yu from Tsinghua University and Professor Zhang Chao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to do research and development as well. You just need to fund the establishment of project laboratories at Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We'll work together with other professors, doctoral students, and graduate students. We'll recruit more people when we need them."

Chen Guiliang asked, "How much money do you need?"

Pan Aiming said, "Professor Chen Yu and I roughly estimated that the total investment in the three universities' laboratories during the preparation period was about 3.5 million yuan. The most expensive part is the need for venues and equipment."

3.5 million?

Chen Guiliang knew that making mobile phones was expensive, but surely not this much? And this was just the initial cost of setting up the lab; further investment was needed.

Meizu definitely didn't spend 3.5 million.

Just how big of a gamble are these professors planning?

Pan Aiming laughed and said, "What? Are you scared? Haha, don't worry, for such a big project, especially since it's about developing smartphones, we can apply for national policy support. We can apply for 863 and Core High-Tech Base projects. We can get project subsidies, equipment tariff reductions, and local policy support... This whole process can save tens of millions of yuan, and the policies will be expedited all the way."

Damn it, these professors are always up to something big.

I jumped in as a sucker and threw money at them, and they took the opportunity to set up a whole bunch of stalls.

"I've voted!" Chen Guiliang said through gritted teeth. Actually, he was thinking, "What the hell am I voting for? I need to see what they're going to do with all this money."

Pan Aiming was even happier: "President Chen is so generous. With so much money invested, President Chen should personally come up with a code name for the project."

Chen Guiliang thought for a moment: "The Kuafu Plan."

"What a great name! It's like Kuafu chasing the sun – either succeed or die trying!" Pan Aiming praised.

Chen Guiliang said, "Success is enough, don't talk about dying for the cause. If the project fails, I'll be the only one who dies, and the losses will be enough to bankrupt ByteDance."

"Hahahaha!" Pan Aiming laughed heartily.

These days, there aren't many entrepreneurs willing to spend money on professors to play with.

(End of this chapter)