Restart life

Chapter 360, Section 0347: [Having Dinner with Li Yanhong]

Graduation ceremony on July 3.

The students who enrolled with Chen Guiliang were all wearing graduation gowns. Some were leaving campus forever, while others were going to pursue further studies.

However, more than ten people continued their studies into their fifth year. Chen Guiliang was among them.

He has earned enough basic credits, but he still needs to complete a graduation thesis.

Chen Guiliang was unwilling to compromise or plagiarize, so he wrote at his own pace. He would check the materials every ten days or so, organize them, put them in a folder, and continue writing whenever he remembered.

This year's graduation ceremony invited many people.

Dozens of principals from key high schools across the country were invited, indicating an increased effort to attract students.

They even invited Li Yanhong to be the alumni representative...

Fortunately, Chen Guiliang did not graduate this year, otherwise he would definitely have given a speech as a graduate representative, going on stage one after the other with Li Yanhong to boast.

"I have two greatest fortunes in my life: finding my wife and having a job I love... Many people focus on one wife, but many people enjoy multiple different jobs..."

"In 2001, an engineer from Baidu approached me and earnestly said he wanted to do online shopping, but I rejected him, and he left Baidu because of it..."

"It's hard for ordinary people to imagine how many temptations a company with 200 million users faces every day. Baidu could have done 100 things, but in the end we only chose one. And we've been doing it for eight years, and we'll continue to do it..."

Chen Guiliang was dragged by a group of classmates to attend the graduation ceremony, and he almost burst out laughing when he heard Li Yanhong's speech.

At the beginning of last year, Baidu was already preparing to enter the e-commerce market. For the entire following year, it mobilized significant human, material, and financial resources, pouring them into the e-commerce sector in an attempt to capture market share.

Three months later, Robin Li even declared that he would "defeat Taobao within three years".

Today, Robin Li came to Peking University to mislead the younger students, saying that Baidu focuses on search, and even gave an example of an engineer who left Baidu because he couldn't do e-commerce.

Robin Li's speech continued, and although he didn't say it explicitly, he implied that the Baidu executives who left in the past two years did so because they weren't focused on the search business.

“Where did Li Yanhong say something wrong? I noticed you were trying to suppress a laugh the whole time,” Jiang Junlai asked.

Chen Guiliang said, "Our senior colleague keeps saying he's focused on search. But the IT industry started criticizing Baidu last year, saying that Baidu is copying Tencent and trying to get involved in every business. If we're talking about a lack of focus, Baidu is second to none, only Tencent dares to be number one."

When he said that, several classmates around him laughed.

Chen Guiliang commented: "The central idea of ​​his speech was quite good, which can be summarized as: making choices, focusing and persisting, and broadening horizons. Standard success theory: whoever can do these things can succeed. Correct, but nonsense. If I were up there, I would probably say something similar."

"You also spout correct nonsense?" Jiang Junlai asked.

Chen Guiliang said, "With only ten minutes for a speech, he could only spout correct nonsense. However, when he used examples to illustrate his points, he was a bit... talking nonsense and throwing in his own agenda."

They've frantically ventured into various businesses, even drawing criticism from the industry, yet here they are, talking to graduates about focus. They even claim they only want to work in search, treating it like a religious faith, and subtly implying that executives left because of a lack of focus.

The graduation ceremony concluded with the playing of the national anthem.

The graduates all lined up to participate in the tassel-turning ceremony. Chen Guiliang was invited to dinner by Dean Zhu, and he was specially seated at the same table as Li Yanhong.

The school leaders probably wanted to mediate the conflict between him and Li Yanhong.

We're all alumni, there's no need to make things so unpleasant.

Of course, the school is merely providing them with a way out. Whether or not they choose to reconcile, and whether or not they choose to accept that offer, is entirely up to the two parties involved.

"Hello, Mr. Li."

"Hello, junior brother."

Chen Guiliang and Li Yanhong both had smiles on their faces, as if they had never had any conflict.

It's just that they call each other by different names...

At a school dinner, someone deliberately avoided calling out to their senior classmates to keep their distance.

One person, while keeping their distance from the other, deliberately addressed them as "junior brother" to show off their seniority. They didn't even include the other person's surname.

The leaders pretended not to understand and continued chatting and laughing.

Li Yanhong's dislike for Chen Guiliang stemmed not only from their previous verbal battle, but also from the fact that ByteDance's websites had been blocking certain keywords from Baidu searches since March of this year.

The number of these blocked keywords is increasing!
A school leader remarked, "Online shopping has become increasingly popular in the past two years. My granddaughter is only 11 years old, and she already knows how to shop online. Kids these days are really amazing."

Another school leader followed up the conversation by asking, "Is Baidu also going to get into e-commerce?"

Li Yanhong nodded: "Yes. Baidu's e-commerce website is already in the testing phase and is expected to go live in another two or three months."

“Mr. Li’s business is growing bigger and bigger. With Baidu’s user base, it can definitely rival Taobao!” said another school leader.

Li Yanhong was pleased to hear this, but he remained very humble: "Taobao has a wealth of experience and is not easy to defeat. Baidu just needs to focus on doing its own thing."

Neither the school's top two leaders sat at this table.

The two highest-ranking school leaders at the table didn't need to curry favor with anyone. However, those with slightly lower ranks were intentionally or unintentionally flattering Li Yanhong.

Chen Guiliang ate his food quietly, not trying to steal the spotlight from others.

"Xiao Chen, is your game really popular?" Dean Zhu asked, trying to start a conversation so as not to leave Chen Guiliang out.

Chen Guiliang replied, "It's not just games that are hot; this year, any IT company that's competitive is experiencing a surge in users. This is because computer and broadband prices are dropping, and more and more ordinary people can afford computers and internet access." Whether it's CPUs, GPUs, or hard drives, prices have been drastically reduced this year.

Especially memory; a 1GB DDR2 memory stick used to cost several hundred yuan in January. Now the price has been halved, and it may even drop to a few dozen yuan by the end of the year.

As for internet fees, major operators like China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Broadband are directly engaging in price wars to grab users. They've even introduced annual data plans.

This also drastically reduced the cost of opening an internet cafe.

It doesn't matter if the relevant departments don't issue licenses; at worst, they'll just be fined when they're inspected. Countless illegal internet cafes have sprung up all over the country.

This has led to a price war among internet cafes, with more and more offerings like 1 yuan internet access and 200 yuan free for every 200 yuan recharged.

Official data shows that the number of internet users increased by more than 4000 million in six months. If you include the internet cafe users attracted by cheap prices, the number could easily double.

Chen Guiliang's phone rang. He took it out, checked the text message, and said with a smile, "At 12:30 pm today, 'Future Era' updated its expansion pack, and the peak concurrent online users just broke 2 million. It has become the second game in China to break 2 million."

A school leader asked curiously, "With a peak of 200 million online users, how much revenue can you generate in a month?"

Chen Guiliang said, "The peak concurrent users for 'Future Era' last month was 193 million, with revenue of 1.26 million yuan. Our operations are still very conservative, and we try to take a long-term view. If it were another company, the number would definitely be more than that."

All the school leaders at the table wore expressions of shock.

Li Yanhong was somewhat tempted by what he heard.

Baidu started making games last September, but it's developing a game open platform, similar to Chen Guiliang's Youke platform.

To be honest, it wasn't very well done.

Tencent and Youke are both building platforms, and Lianzhong is almost driven to the brink of collapse. How can Baidu possibly grab market share?
Baidu's gaming platform has been struggling for 10 months and is now barely surviving. Management is already discussing whether to abandon it, and some have even suggested simply becoming a game operator.

Some leaders started offering cigarettes, and everyone lit up.

Li Yanhong endured the pungent smell of smoke and refused the other person's offer: "Sorry, I don't smoke."

He continued to consider the feasibility of becoming a game operator.

Developing games in-house is too risky; perhaps we should start by distributing them.

We'll recruit professionals from other game companies to thoroughly evaluate new games, both domestic and international. We'll also leverage our own platforms, such as Baidu search, Baidu Tieba, and hao123, to drive traffic to games distributed by Baidu.

Especially on Baidu Tieba, regardless of the type of forum, they all insert a Baidu Games ad in their thread. Driving traffic like crazy!
The more Li Yanhong thought about it, the more feasible it seemed.

Provoked by Chen Guiliang's words, Baidu is likely to shift from a game platform to a game operation platform ahead of schedule.

After the dinner ended, Li Yanhong rushed back to the company and called several senior executives together to discuss: "In the domestic game platform market, there are three giants: Tencent, Lianzhong, and Youke. We've been working on it for 10 months with little to no results..."

"As far as I know, the online gaming market is booming this year, with more than ten games doubling their player base. It's just like the e-commerce industry last year... We can definitely leverage our existing resources to distribute a game to drive traffic..."

Two-thirds of the executives were eager to try, while the remaining third hesitated to speak.

He seemed hesitant to speak, but had already decided to resign.

Baidu's wave of executive departures, which has lasted for over a year, is still ongoing. Moreover, internal strife is intensifying, with new talent and veterans locked in a tense standoff, causing immense hardship for middle-level managers.

As a result, a wave of departures among middle managers also occurred.

Chen Guiliang also returned to the company, took a nap, and then went to inspect the temporary mobile phone R&D center and the construction site where the land had been leveled.

After his inspection tour ended in the evening, he suddenly received a call from Xie Yang: "You've become a student with extended graduation. There's a rumor going around that you don't have enough credits, and normally you can only get a certificate of completion, not a bachelor's degree. But you've pulled some strings and can study for an extra year at Peking University."

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "It's not entirely a rumor."

Xie Yang said, "You offended the Southern Media Group and KDnet before, and KDnet is still closed for rectification. They will definitely seize this opportunity to smear you. They are saying all sorts of things, and some are even accusing Peking University leaders of taking money and engaging in favoritism. They are trying to bring up the topic of educational fairness, saying that ordinary undergraduates cannot extend their graduation, and only people like you who have connections and spend money can."

"Since we've brought up educational equity, there must be a lot of ordinary netizens who've been misled into criticizing me, right?" Chen Guiliang asked.

“A lot,” Xie Yang said. “Your HaiNei.com account’s comment section is in an uproar again, it’s a complete mess.”

Chen Guiliang leisurely returned, copied the teaching system of Yuanpei College from the Peking University website, pasted it into his personal account, and posted it on social media. This was to indicate that he could potentially complete his fifth or even sixth year of undergraduate studies.

He also included information about similar departments at Fudan University, such as Fudan College, to show that Peking University is not the only institution with a similar teaching model.

As a result, Fudan University was also criticized.

The critics, along with a group of indignant netizens, vehemently condemned this teaching model as unfair to ordinary students.

The old news that Chen Guiliang was admitted to the New Concept Writing Competition with a lower score was brought up by the haters, and a large group of netizens rushed to the Mengya Forum to hurl insults.

Hu Weishi, an editor at Mengya, whom Chen Guiliang hadn't contacted in a long time, called him and said, "What have you done to offend someone again? You just came here two months ago. And you're here again this month?"

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "Sister Weishi, this is a perfect opportunity to promote the New Concept Writing Competition."

"Sigh, let's give it a try," Hu Weishi sighed.

As night fell, the students of the 04 Yuanpei Class had their farewell dinner, and Chen Guiliang rushed over to drink with his classmates.

Slightly tipsy, Xu Fengyin sent a text message: "Yasuo is finished."

(End of this chapter)