Chapter 27 I wrote "10.5 Billion Legend - Huang Guangyu and His American Empire"

"10.5 Billion Legend - Huang Guangyu and His American Empire" was published in the Mainland by CITIC Publishing House in April 2005.In the next three months, the traditional Chinese version of Taiwan and the traditional Chinese version of Hong Kong and Macau were launched one after another.According to the CITIC copyright department, booksellers in Taiwan and Hong Kong highly respect the "internationalized" style of writing this book. In the past, when Taiwan imported copyrighted books from the mainland, it often required a large number of textual revisions to the manuscript.But the modification of this book is very small, because they see that the way the story is told in this book can be understood by Taiwanese.

It can be said that this book, which was operated in a very hasty situation, can get such affirmation, which is a point of relief to me. Just as the book came off the assembly line of the printing factory and before it entered the market, a central newspaper published a full-page report about the biography of the company.The reporter of the report, after learning a little bit of information about the book, swiped his pen and classified the book as a "corporate imperial book" for moral criticism.These categorizations and criticisms aroused great reactions on the Internet. As everyone knows, this careless reporter should not have classified this book in this category.Because unlike some other corporate biographies that appeared at the same time, the author of this book was commissioned by the publisher to conduct independent interviews to write this book, rather than being commissioned by the company to write corporate history.

By chance, I became the biographer of Huang Guangyu, the founder of Gome Electric, who was the richest man in the 2004 Hurun edition of China's 100 Rich List.When Huang Guangyu won the title of the richest man in October of that year and was widely hyped by the media, as a financial reporter who had the longest contact with Huang Guangyu and knew the basics, I naturally considered the possibility of writing a biography of Huang.But what really made me make up my mind was in the process of interviewing Huang Guangyu again in late November and writing a manuscript for the magazine "Global Entrepreneur" where I was at that time.Shen Yin, the editor of this manuscript (and also the guest editor of this book), had been fighting for a day when she received my manuscript at midnight, and she was exhausted, but the description of Huang Guangyu in my manuscript still cheered Shenyin up.In the ensuing MSN discussion, he excitedly suggested that I write a biography of Huang Guangyu.And he was responsible for finding a publisher for my manuscript.

Two people have suggested me to write a biography of Huang Guangyu before.But I doubt whether Huang's story will really interest the public, and I have not been able to make up my mind.Shenyin promised that I would not have to worry about anything other than interviewing and writing, which gave me confidence and interest.The next morning, after only three or four hours of sleep, I got up and wrote the outline of this biography on paper.There are about 13 chapters in total.The story content of each chapter is implemented on paper.Facts have proved that this played a key role in quickly operating Huang Guangyu's biography in the future and ensuring a certain quality.Later, when writing, I basically followed the original writing frame design.

In the past 3 years or so, I have conducted many interviews with Huang Guangyu and other Gome personnel. I was the first reporter to conduct in-depth interviews with Huang Guangyu. There are nearly 40,000 words.Among them, a large number of vivid materials are impossible for other reporters to ask from Huang Guangyu.After all, as he became famous, it was impossible for him to open his heart to the media as he did in the early days.In the early days, he was an extremely low-key figure, known for not giving interviews.Very few people interviewed him.I was destined to be the author of such a book because I pried open the mouth of Huang Guangyu, who was still hiding behind the "behind the scenes" of Gome more than 3 years ago.

As a biography, how should I reflect the story of Gome? Based on my understanding of Huang Guangyu and Gome, I have a general framework in mind.But a lot of new interviews are needed, because there are a lot of insider stories, and the specific plot of Gome's early development, which I didn't cover much in the previous interviews. The writing outline provided me with a map to follow.Where there was a weak link in the story, I tried to find someone with inside knowledge and persuade him to accept my interview.In this way, a complete story of Huang Guangyu and Gome was gradually enriched and perfected in my interview recordings and notes.The interviews with several key people have contributed a lot of new content to this book: Li Juntao, the founder of Gome and known as "Little Li Feidao", Huang Guangyu's mother, Huang Guangyu's eldest sister Huang Xiuhong, Hua Tian, ​​a senior executive of Gome , He Yangqing, He Ju, Liu Xiufen, Chen Xiaomeng, etc., who have left Gome's early entrepreneurial stage.Those who have left provide me with a more objective and comprehensive recollection.

Of course, in terms of providing new content specifically for this book, Huang Guangyu himself joined in later.Because when the publisher signed a book writing contract with me, Huang Guangyu declined my request to write a book in his usual low-key way.Therefore, this is a biography that has been operated without Huang Guangyu's authorization.At the end of the "peripheral interview" of the manuscript, in order to ensure the authority of this book in terms of materials, I once again asked Huang Guangyu to cooperate with the interview.Seeing that the arrow was on the string and had to be launched, Huang Guangyu agreed to the operation of this book.In the process of reading the manuscript, he recalled some things, which made the book further grasp Huang's early entrepreneurial history.

How to write a biography of an entrepreneur?In the Chinese book market where business biography books are in the ascendant, everyone has his own way of understanding.Some people will be influenced by the previous "reportage", manage biography as a half-documentary and half-creative literary work, and strive to elevate the image of the biographer.And more people will be influenced by the current hot management science. In their view, since it is about the enterprise, it should extract a certain management model, corporate culture perspective, and try to learn from the majors of strategy, culture, and management. From a high-level perspective, to deconstruct and restore a company from a high-level perspective, writing a biography is not only a true representation of the development of a company, but also a way for the author to "make a statement".For example, "XX Bureau", "Interpretation of XX", and "XX Model" mostly contain the author's efforts to give some professional color on top of popular biographies.

For me, I'd rather go the easiest way.This way is storytelling.There is no need to construct so many professional metaphysical things, and there is no need to make biography seem to have a theoretical research level.Biography, according to my understanding, is a meaningful and interesting description of the development process of a thing.First of all, a biography is to possess a large amount of various materials related to the subject of writing, and try to make the materials reflect the characteristics of the subject at each stage of development.For a businessman, how did he start his business, what kind of good idea did he grasp, in what kind of environment, what efforts did he make, what challenges did he encounter, and how did he overcome the developmental obstacles? Obstacles, how to gather all kinds of forces to make the business bigger, what new ideas have been produced during the development of the main business, how to strengthen the team, and behind the bright side, what are the negative and dark aspects? thing.Of course, as a biography, what is very important is the personal growth background and personality characteristics of the subject?And how the master's personality dominates and affects the development of an enterprise.Biography is to find a lot of first-hand materials to restore these things, and describe them in easy-to-understand language to arouse readers' interest in reading.

I have a deep interest in reading biographies, and I have read no less than 20 biographies of Western business giants.A common feature of these biographies is that around the subject's personality, life and business development, the author uses often hundreds of interviews and investigations to tell a coherent and rich story that contains a lot of details. Objectively, three-dimensionally, richly and deeply restore the life of the subject, or every stage of his business. The authors of these biographies are mostly media reporters or writers.They often have a lot of in-depth research and understanding of the biographer because of their professional relationship, and rely on their own large number of targeted interviews to write in-depth and detailed biographical works on this basis.

In my opinion, at the present stage in China, there is still a lack of such a professional class for writing biographies, and such standards for writing biographies have not been fully promoted. "The Legend of 10.5 Billion" is my first book. What makes me happy is that I can apply the ideas and experience I have gained from western business biographies to my interview writing as much as possible.The storytelling based on the investigation as deep as possible is the biggest feature of this book.It can be said that this biography is a popular book without any reading barriers.In my long-term career as a financial reporter, I have studied and pondered excellent western biographies and business reports, so that I still feel relatively handy in the application of international storytelling methods. Such a biography is aimed at those who are concerned first with the spirit of wealth creation, and second with those concerned with the retailing of home appliances and Gome.Unlike biographies that seek a professional readership, this one hopes to find readers in a wider group.After all, like Huang Guangyu, who had nothing and worked hard nearly 20 years ago, became a billionaire with tens of billions of assets. He is also a model of wealth creation and a wealth hero for the public. Of course, in the concept of western biography operation, independent investigation and three-dimensional writing are an important factor and the soul of biography.The biographer can express his affection and appreciation for the subject, but he will definitely describe his personality and gains and losses in a more three-dimensional way.Some unseemly stories of the hero are often fully displayed in the biographies.This kind of independence and three-dimensionality is probably also the result of market-driven. No one wants to read a book that only writes positive stories but does not fully reflect the life of the protagonist. The operation of "10.5 Billion Legend" also adopts the concept of independent investigation and three-dimensional writing.What is shown in the book is not all the positive side of Huang Guangyu as a wealth creator.Huang was originally a person with a relatively complicated personality. Some extreme management methods he adopted in the development of Gome in recent years also led to a certain degree of "betrayal of relatives" and Huang's "original sin" of being suspected of selling smuggled electrical appliances in the early days of his business. There are quite descriptions in the book.However, businessmen are a powerful class in China. During the publishing process of this book, Huang Guangyu forcibly deleted some unsatisfactory plots in the book.This is a kind of helpless compromise, because if there is no compromise, this book will not see the light of day under the oppression of powerful forces.Fortunately, such deletions did not harm the overall appearance of the book, but in some situations, the book lost a bit of vigor. Due to the urging of the publishing house, it took less than 2 months from conception to completion of writing this book, and within these 2 months, I have to take on the heavy responsibility of a magazine reporter.After completing the work of the magazine during the day, I quickly revolved around this book at night.The rush of time and the lack of interviews (which cannot be compared with the "routine" of Western journalists who need to spend 2 years to write a biography and interview 200 or 300 people) have left some inherent shortcomings for this book, but as far as it has been realized Judging from the results, I am quite satisfied.I think the quality of this book is enough to become an authoritative source for people to have an in-depth understanding of the development history of Huang Guangyu and Gome.Of course, without the contact and attention to Huang Guangyu over the past three years as a basis, I would not be able to complete such a book at all. The most worth mentioning is that this book is a book that can basically reflect my idea of ​​biography writing.I think this uncomplicated concept will definitely have great vitality in the future Chinese biography publishing market.