William Zhu: The other side is only for the car

William Zhu likes cars, especially sports cars and sport sedans with strong acceleration performance and an eye-catching appearance. He said that he had owned more than a dozen cars of various brands and series since he was a child, but almost all of them belonged to these two types.

Police car

Zhu William's blood is full of restless factors that pursue excitement. At the age of 21, in his third year of the UCLA law department, he was determined to find the most reasonable way to release these factors. "Being a police officer has always been the biggest dream of my childhood." He chose to do a one-year community service intern police officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. An important reason is that he wrote "to protect and to serve" (protect and serve) )'s Chevrolet police car is handsome and "legally fast."

As a result, a short police career left him an indelible memory - a deep scar nearly ten centimeters long on his left wrist. "I was chasing a drunk driver on the San Diego to Los Angeles freeway. My car overtook all the other cops. I rushed to the front, and the speed was 130 mph. The two cars collided from the side. He died at the scene. My car flipped over the bridge, the airbag saved my life, but my left hand was almost completely broken."

Professional Track

Sitting in a sunny cafe in Shanghai more than ten years later, Thirty-four-year-old William Zhu recalled this terrifying past event and calmly seemed to be telling someone else's story. In 1994, two years after the crash, he left his birthplace, Mission Viejo, a seaside town in Southern California, USA, and returned to his parents' hometown of Shanghai to start his own business. Now, it seems difficult for this suave-looking IT elite to equate him with the male protagonist in "Police and Bandit Chase".

In fact, as long as you look at William Zhu's entrepreneurial record of frequently changing runways, you will know that he is still a very restless person. His current position is the president of Tianlian Century, and he is planning to send the company, which operates sports online games, to Nasdaq by the end of this year. And he is better known in China as the founder of Chinese original literature website Banyan Shuxia, the founder of China's first DM advertising company Lianmei China, and the vice president of Shanda Network who has just resigned. “I only plan on doing two years in each new position. It’s like driving, the few seconds I enjoy the most are going from 0 to 100km. Also, twenty to forty years in life, it’s like From 10,000 kilometers to 50,000 kilometers in a car, it’s a prime time to experience more scenery.” He used cars to make two analogies in a row.

Exciting games

Because of the pursuit of "excitement", most of the cars he drove before the age of 20 did not end well. "My father often said that he has to fasten two seat belts in my car." William Zhu laughed at himself.

At the age of fifteen he got his first car as a birthday present, a white BMW 318i. He still remembers the excitement, excitement and half a year of waiting for this gift - California stipulates that a driver's license can only be obtained at the age of fifteen and a half, so for half a year after receiving the gift, he can only go to the garage after school every day When I checked in, I researched from top to bottom, from inside to outside, and even wanted to disassemble the engine to take a look, but I couldn't drive it out for a drive.

Once the ban is legally lifted, don't miss the chance to be handsome. "It was raining after school that day. I came out of the school's parking lot and wanted to have a nice high-speed tail-flick, but the front of the car didn't stabilize and hit a poplar tree next to it. Hundreds of classmates watched." Ling Zhu William's extremely embarrassing scene was frozen and recorded in the middle school yearbook. On the second page after the principal's annual speech, the title was "William Crashes a BMW".

The crash that made him "popular" didn't teach William Zhu much of a lesson. In the following two years, he crashed a BMW 325i and a Ford Mustang in two smashes, because "as long as you hear the engine of the car next to you, you can't help but jump up with it". Then came the crash that nearly killed him.

Accompanying pets

If a car is the most exciting toy in the eyes of young people, then now, Zhu William, who has learned to respect life, thinks that a car is more like a toy His "pets" should live in harmony with each other. His favorite pets include the Porsche 911, which accelerates from 0 to 100 km in 4.3 seconds, the BMW M5 with a 3.8-liter six-cylinder engine that can reach a top speed of 270 km/h, and the Mercedes-Benz SLK230, the originator of the hardtop convertible.

"The more the car travels with me and the longer I spend with it, the deeper my affection for it." Soon after returning to China to start a business in 1994, William Zhu made a special trip to take a black BMW M5 from the United States Ship to accompany yourself. This sports car has accompanied him to Mexico and Canada. Later, he was often used to pick up and drop off different network writers during the period under the banyan tree, and he made many friends.

From the Lianmei advertisement, under the banyan tree, to the Shanda Internet period, the car that has followed William Zhu for the longest time is the SLK230, which even became a symbol for the outside world to introduce him. The connection with this car is quite dramatic. During a haircut, he flipped through a report on the world's latest car trends, and he took a fancy to it. "The top speed is 240km/h, which is not the fastest. But its hardtop convertible can be automatically retracted within 30 seconds," William Zhu said about it today, still elated: "This function was the first in the world at the time, and I was cutting my hair while I was doing it. Call the car dealership immediately to book, it is the first one in China." The fiery, passion and publicity of the red SLK230 will undoubtedly resonate strongly with a young entrepreneur.

The other side of managers

A few years ago, especially during Shanda's tenure, he had to work overtime until after 12 o'clock almost every night. Zhu William was driving this red sports car late at night Fly back to the villa in Jiading from the company in Pudong. In 2002, his fines amounted to seven or eight thousand yuan. "It's all about speeding. Sometimes the electronic police at this intersection photographed me, and 40 seconds later, I was photographed by the electronic police at the next intersection." Zhu William did not shy away from being a person who loves to drive fast. , he said: "Only the car can see the other side of me." He believes that he is not an extroverted person. He always tries to maintain a gentleman's demeanor in front of his subordinates and colleagues. People often evaluate him as "mild". And when he's upset or angry, pulling the sports car at high speed for an hour is the best solution for him to calm himself down.

However, William Zhu, who loves sports cars, changed to a BMW 730Li with a stretched RV this year, and asked a driver to drive it by himself. That SLK230 has been sitting in the garage for over half a year. When I asked him why, it was perfunctory at first: when I was old, I still felt that it was not stable enough to drive a sports car. After further questioning, he smiled generously and said that his mother in the United States had fortune-telling for him, stubbornly thinking that he should not drive this year. So now, he can only go home and play PS2 racing games every day, and he is looking forward to coming soon next year.