Reborn in 2005, starting with repairing mobile phones

Chapter 169 If I can, so can you.

Applause erupted.

Thousands of eyes were fixed on the young man in a dark gray suit standing to the side of the podium.

Lin Dong took a deep breath and walked onto the podium.

The sunlight was a bit too bright, so he squinted as he stood behind the podium, looking down at the audience.

Thousands of young faces, some curious, some bewildered.

The camouflage uniforms were neatly arranged, like a green ocean.

He cleared his throat and placed the speech on the table.

He wrote that manuscript until 2 a.m. last night, and went through three versions.

The first version was too verbose, the second version was too sentimental, and the third version was too much like a self-help book.

Dissatisfied with everything, he finally threw the manuscript away.

When I woke up this morning, I only had one thought in my mind: to tell the truth.

"My name is Lin Dong, from Shenzhen University, class of 05, majoring in Electronic Information Engineering." He spoke, his voice not loud, but steady. The corners of his mouth were slightly upturned, carrying a hint of a smile.

The audience fell silent.

"At this time last year, I was sitting on this playground just like you. Wearing camouflage, basking in the sun, listening to the leaders speak, and hoping it would end soon." He smiled, his eyes narrowing, as if he remembered something interesting.

Someone in the audience chuckled.

"Back then, I never imagined that a year later, I would be standing here." His smile faded, and his gaze swept across the audience.

The sunlight shone on his face, clearly illuminating his features.

The thousands of eyes in the audience could see him very clearly.

"I came to Shenzhen not because my family is rich. It's because I'm poor." His voice lowered, and he pursed his lips.

The audience fell completely silent.

Thousands of eyes were fixed on him.

"You might be thinking, how is that possible? My senior was able to get into Shenzhen University and even start a company, how could his family be poor?"

Lin Dong gave a wry smile and shook his head.

"My family has been in debt for ten years. I am even poorer than many of you. When I was a child, I had a serious illness, and my family spent all their savings to treat me, which also left us with ten years of debt."

"So my dad works in a hardware factory, standing for twelve hours a day."

He has a bad back, so he has to bend down to rub it every now and then before straightening up and continuing to stand.

My mom sews dolls at home, earning a fee for each one she sews. She sits by the window, sewing from morning till night, her eyesight getting blurrier and blurrier with each stitch.

"It was all to pay off the debt, and even to save money for my college education. I am very grateful, and I know that I can't let them continue to suffer like this."

He paused for a moment.

"So when my mock exam scores were good enough for me to get into Shenzhen University, I thought about how my family couldn't afford the tuition when the acceptance letter arrived."

My dad was smoking in the living room, one cigarette after another, all night long. My mom was washing dishes in the kitchen, crying as she did so.

His voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear.

"So later I came up with a solution and came to Shenzhen on my own without asking my family for a single penny."

A thin girl in the front row, wearing black-rimmed glasses, had red eyes.

She remembered that her parents were also working in other places, and the crumpled money she had clutched in her hand when she came to Shenzhen to register for work.

"I visited Shenzhen once during my senior year winter break. It lasted for a month."

He held up one finger and pointed it in the air.

"That month, I only had 1500 yuan that my parents had scraped together for me. I stayed in a hotel that cost only 15 yuan a day. I don't know if anyone has ever experienced that, but there wasn't even a toilet."

Because I know how to repair mobile phones, I work in Huaqiangbei. I repair a dozen or so phones a day and earn a few hundred yuan. I squat on the ground, the soldering iron burning my hands, working from morning till night.

I worked incredibly hard because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it, so I worked even harder and cherished the opportunity.

He squatted down for a moment, then stood up again and patted his trouser leg.

"So often, opportunities and the future emerge in our lives, as long as you observe them carefully. After the college entrance examination, I came back. This time I didn't go back, and I've stayed until today."

He straightened up, walked to the front of the podium, and placed his hands on the edge of the table.

"You might ask, how did I turn that 1,500 dollars into a company? I can't give you a standard answer. I can only tell you what I did."

Some people in the audience stood up straight.

A boy standing in the third row, who had been looking down, raised his head when he heard "one thousand five hundred yuan".

The girl sitting next to him nudged his arm and whispered, "Listen." He nodded, staring at the stage.

"Back then, I repaired mobile phones in Huaqiangbei. I worked from morning till night, repairing more than a dozen phones a day. They were Motorolas. At that time, I thought, these mobile phones are all made by foreigners, when will we be able to make our own?"

A girl with a ponytail wrote this sentence in her notebook.

Her roommate peeked over, then turned back to stare at the stage, her eyes shining.

"So later, I started a company. At that time, I was thinking, should I continue to do mobile phone repair business, or should I do refurbished or counterfeit phones like the vendors outside?"

"I've always felt that this isn't the path I should be taking."

He paused, gazing into the distance as if recalling something.

"Until my dad said something to me."

He turned his gaze back to the audience. "Once a person has established themselves and gained the ability, they shouldn't just focus on filling their own bowl."

"Can you make things a little better, even just a tiny bit? So that users will complain less and find things a little more convenient."

His voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear.

No one spoke. Thousands of people stood there quietly.

"It was that sentence that made me decide to make mobile phones. Not knock-offs, not rebranded phones, but phones that I developed from scratch."

"So later, in order to raise funds for developing mobile phones, I went to San Francisco."

I was at the port of San Francisco, sitting at a table with a group of businessmen decades older than me, discussing the sale of a batch of aerospace-grade aluminum.

Some of them are Hong Kong trade tycoons, some are capital representatives from the Middle East, and some are local bullies.

I was alone, eighteen years old, and my English was passable; I sat among them.

He paused.

"The deal is done. That batch of aluminum is now in the factory in Dongguan, waiting to be used to make the frames and casings for our mobile phones."

The chubby guy on the left side of the middle had a stern face; he had been dragged there by the counselor and hadn't been very happy.

His expression relaxed slightly when he heard "Huaqiangbei mobile phone repair".

He stood up straight when he heard "San Francisco".

When he heard "1,500 yuan", he looked down at the basketball shoes he was wearing that cost more than 1,000 yuan and remained silent for a while.

"Later I went to Stanford again. At Stanford's Technology Week, I competed against a PhD student in radio frequency and beat him. After the competition, the university invited me to give a speech on stage, and Steve Jobs was waiting for me backstage and we chatted for fifteen minutes."

Someone in the audience whispered, "Really?"

"These are all true. You can search for them online; the news articles are still there."

He paused, then said, "I'm not saying this to show off. I'm trying to tell you—what I can do, you can do too. I just started a step earlier than you."

The girl with black-rimmed glasses gripped the pen tightly in her hand.

Her family lives in a rural area of ​​Hunan. Her parents work in Guangdong and only come back once a year.

When she arrived at Shenzhen University, she only had a little over a thousand yuan with her, which she had saved up while working at a milk tea shop in town during the summer vacation.

She initially felt miserable, believing she was inferior to everyone else here.

She was stunned when she heard Lin Dong say "1,500 yuan".

When she heard him say that his family had been in debt for ten years, her nose tingled and tears welled up in her eyes.

She lowered her head, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then raised her head again, staring at the senior in the dark gray suit on the stage.

He was radiant. Not because he succeeded, but because the way he stood there seemed to be saying to her, "You can too."

"Dongfang Technology is my company that makes mobile phones. Not counterfeit phones, not rebranded phones, but phones that I developed from scratch, with full touchscreens and no keyboards."

He spoke slowly, and each word was clear.

"You might ask, what is a full touchscreen phone?"

I'm telling you, it's just that you pick it up, tap it with your finger, and the screen follows you.

Click on it, and it will light up.

Swipe to turn the page.

You don't need instructions; you're born knowing how. That's the essence of design—not about having many features, but about making them simple.

He gestured in the air with his hand, as if swiping a screen.

Thousands of eyes followed his hand.

The girl with the ponytail was writing rapidly in her notebook: "Tap wherever, and it will light up. Swipe to turn the page."

She drew an exclamation mark and a star on the back.

A boy sitting behind her saw it, leaned forward, and tried to see what she had written.

"This phone will be released on December 25th."

The flagship store in Futian CBD is over 2,000 square meters, located at a crossroads corner, with three glass curtain walls.

I would like to invite all of you to attend this press conference.

No tickets or reservations are needed; just come and be there.

"You've arrived; you're among the first people in the world to see this phone."

"The first batch of engineering units is only 10,000. On the day of the launch, it's first come, first served. Let me be clear beforehand, once they're sold out, that's it, and the next batch will be two months away."

Some people in the audience laughed.

The chubby guy standing in the middle on the left chuckled and turned to his roommate next to him, saying, "This senior is pretty arrogant."

My roommate said, "They have the right to be arrogant."

He didn't refute it, and turned his head to continue looking at the stage.

"I know what you're thinking—is this senior trying to fool us?"

He leaned against the podium, his hands resting on the table, looking down at the audience.

Thousands of eyes were also watching him.

"No. I'm serious. You can ask your counselors, your department heads, and Principal Wang when you get back."

Is Dongfang Technology real? Is that store real? Is that phone real?

The audience fell silent.

No one spoke, no one moved.

"Why did I come here today? Because Principal Wang told me that students at Shenzhen University need to know that there are people doing something completely different from what they are doing. He said that I am standing here to tell you—you can do it too."

The girl with the ponytail stopped writing and stared at Lin Dong on the stage, lost in her own thoughts.

She ended up at Shenzhen University because she didn't perform well in the college entrance exam, and she's always felt resentful about it.

Now she suddenly felt that maybe Shenzhen University wasn't so bad after all.

Isn't this senior also from Shenzhen University?

"I'm not a successful person. I've just been seriously doing one thing: making good mobile phones."

While repairing the phone, I was thinking about how to fix it faster.

When I'm negotiating business deals, I'm thinking about how to make the negotiations more stable.

When I was writing code, I was thinking about how to write it better.

When I was making mobile phones, I was thinking about how to make the user experience comfortable.

That's how I got here, step by step. There were no shortcuts, no secrets, just hard work.

His voice wasn't loud, but every word struck the ground and resonated in the ears of thousands.

The girl with black-rimmed glasses said to herself: Four years from now, I will stand on the stage and tell my juniors, "If I can do it, so can you."

Her tears finally fell, streaming down her cheeks.

"Let me say it one last time. December 25th, Futian CBD flagship store, Oriental Technology press conference. Everyone is welcome to come."

He paused.

"Thanks."

The audience fell silent for a second.

Then applause broke out.

Li Hu was the first to clap his hands in applause. One, two, three—hundreds of people, thousands of people, the applause echoed across the playground, lasting for a long time, as if it would turn the sky upside down.

Lin Dong stood on the stage, looking at the people who had stood up below, without saying a word.

The sunlight shone on him, on his dark gray suit.

His shirt collar was slightly damp with sweat, but he didn't pay attention.

He looked at the young faces below the stage, at the light in their eyes.

He recalled that a year ago, he had been in the same audience, watching the people on stage speak.

He never imagined that he would be standing here a year later.

He wasn't anything special; he just kept doing things, one thing at a time.

After finishing this one, move on to the next.

As I kept doing it, I ended up here.

He lowered his head and bowed deeply.

long time.

It was long enough for the applause from the audience to gradually subside, for the playground to quiet down, and for him to be able to hear his own breathing.

Then he straightened up, turned around, and walked off the podium.

His leather shoes made a crisp sound as they stepped on the steps.

He didn't turn around.

He doesn't need to look back.

He knew that thousands of eyes were still watching him from behind.

They didn't remember his suit, his company, or even his cell phone.

What they remembered was the phrase, "If I can do it, so can you."

As he walked down the steps, Li Hu was the first to rush over and hug him tightly.

"Fourth brother, you're amazing!" Chen Long walked over and pushed up his glasses.

Xu Zang stood behind, a smile playing on his lips, and handed a bottle of water to Lin Dong, which appeared in his hand at some point.

Lin Dong took it, unscrewed the cap, and took a big gulp.

Principal Wang walked over from the other side of the podium and patted Lin Dong on the shoulder. "Well said."

Lin Dong looked at him. "I'm telling the truth."

Principal Wang smiled. "I know. The truth is what moves people." He paused, then continued, "Go on, your students will come looking for you."

Lin Dong was stunned for a moment.

Principal Wang gestured towards the audience below with his lip.

Lin Dong followed his gaze.

Dozens of freshmen were running this way, and someone was calling out "Senior Lin Dong".