Chapter 81: Exchange

Xia Jianwu went to Yuncheng for a two-day inspection during the Spring Festival, returned to Jinling on the sixth day of the first lunar month, and rented a factory building in the Economic Development Zone. He then recruited over twenty core employees, covering everything from finance to management, and production to sales. As long as the money was in place, they could immediately... resign from Panda Electronics.

At noon, Di Ye had a meal with these people to get to know each other and exchange ideas. After the banquet ended, on the way to Jinling University, Xia Jianwu said helplessly, "They are all people who won't scatter the eagle until they see the rabbit. Although state-owned enterprises don't pay high wages, the benefits are good. Without real money being thrown down, it's very difficult to get them to resign."

"I've said it before, money is not a problem."

This time, Di Ye didn't sit in the passenger seat but acted like a boss in the back row, saying brazenly, "Come to me for money once you've thought out the company's development route. If we cooperate with Panda Electronics, I'll put up 2 million for a 20% stake. If we build a new brand independently, I'll put up 5 million for a 45% stake, and the remaining 5% will be given to those people just now as equity incentives."

Xia Jianwu glanced at the rearview mirror and asked, "Your video disc rental chain shares only sold for 2.55 million. Can you come up with 5 million?"

"Didn't your sister tell you that she went to Pujiang with me for a few days a while ago?"

Xia Jianwu had a sharp mind; he understood immediately, slapped the steering wheel hard, and asked, "You went to speculate on the 327 Treasury Bond? Did you use the funds from Yingfeng to speculate?"

Di Ye smiled and said nothing.

Xia Jianwu held the steering wheel with his left hand, raised his right thumb, and gestured backward, sighing, "You really are a born gambler! You clearly have a bright future, yet you only do unreliable things. Opening a video disc rental shop to raise funds was crazy enough, but you actually dared to take the raised funds to speculate on futures. It's simply like the God of Longevity hanging himself—you're tired of living."

"You know this, I know this, heaven knows this, and earth knows this. Don't tell outsiders."

"Such an outrageous thing, even if I told outsiders, no one would believe it! You took such a big risk to speculate on the 327; how much did you earn?"

Di Ye didn't hide it and directly reported the figure of 23 million, saying, "The domestic financial market is not mature enough, and the pool is too small. It's boring to play. I want to transfer some funds to Hong Kong to exchange into US dollars to speculate on US stocks or foreign exchange. Do you have any connections?"

"How much do you want to transfer out?"

"About the equivalent of 1 million US dollars."

Xia Jianwu mentally calculated the exchange rate and found it was over 8 million in funds. He shook his head and said, "This amount is too large; it's quite troublesome to transfer it out. I'll help you ask around later."

"It doesn't necessarily have to be transferred out. I can use the RMB as collateral in the mainland and borrow US dollars from Hong Kong for a period of time, then pay it back once I've made money."

"Listening to your tone, it seems you're about to make another big gamble. What have you set your sights on this time?"

Di Ye chose to hide it this time and said, "Making decisions based on assumptions is called gambling; making decisions based on data is called investing. My information in Yuncheng is too blocked. I need to go to Pengcheng to use the internet to research some data before I can decide. Transferring money to Hong Kong is just a backup."

"Then let me know when you've finished your research, and I'll follow along to have some soup."

Xia Jianwu dropped Di Ye off at the main gate of Jinling University on Hankou Road. While parking, he asked, "If it were you, would you choose to cooperate with Panda Electronics or go independent?"

"I never struggle when doing things; flipping a coin or drawing lots works fine."

"Damn! That's as good as saying nothing."

Di Ye was telling the truth. Everything he did after transmigrating was following the trend—not struggling, nor forcing things. For example, the VCD Player: if Di Yongchang hadn't opened a shop selling parallel-import CD players, he wouldn't have proposed doing this, but might have cooperated with Di Yan to work on BB Pagers, or simply gone to Computer City to tinker with compatible computers.

Take the 327 Treasury Bond Incident as another example: if Fan Dazhi had been strict and not given Huang Ya the Public Seal, Di Ye wouldn't have misappropriated the funds but would have used his own 300,000 to speculate. Anyway, after the 327 Treasury Bond, there were still financial events like plywood, red beans, and 319; the 300,000 in funds could still expand to over ten million within a few months.

As for Panda Electronics, Di Ye mainly valued its deep foundation. It had technical accumulation in fields like electronics and communications, and would obtain the first batch of domestic mobile phone production licenses in 1999. But even without Xia Jianwu, he could still acquire it when Panda Electronics suffered consecutive huge losses in 1997 and 1998, with a sluggish stock price and being about to wear the ST hat.

"Do you want me to pick you up tonight?"

"No need. I don't know how long I'll be here. I'll go back to the hotel myself tonight."

Di Ye pushed the door open and got out, looked up to admire the main gate of Jinling University, and then saw Xu Chenye waiting for him on the side of the street. He walked over with his Notebook Computer bag and greeted him, "Senior Brother Xu, sorry to keep you waiting."

"Not at all, I just arrived a moment ago. Di Ye, you're amazing! You actually scored 493 points! It caused a sensation throughout the Graduate Student school, but I didn't expect you to stay at the school. Are you not planning to come over to study..."

Xu Chenye and Di Ye got along very well in Pengcheng and often left messages to communicate on Cfido. There was no sense of estrangement from not seeing each other for many days. On the way to the Computer College office building, he spilled out all the rumors about him from the past few days.

"Do you have any reaction to those Open Source articles of mine?"

"Many people have the same reaction as me; they feel your idea of linking the Selected Works of Mao with software development is quite novel. Professor Xu Jiafu even specifically called me over the day before yesterday to ask about those articles. He suspects you didn't write them. Guess why?"

"Why?"

"He said those articles have a very grand vision, not like something a student in their early 20s could write."

Di Ye's purpose in coming to Jinling University this time was not to explain why he wasn't coming to study as a Graduate Student, but to recruit talent for the R&D team. Now, hearing Xu Chenye say this, his heart stirred, feeling he could have a good talk with Professor Xu Jiafu about the Open Source philosophy.

Professor Xu Jiafu was born in December 1924 and had just turned 70 in 1995, but he kept his body and spirit in very good condition, so he still hadn't retired. He was very happy about Di Ye's proactive visit, personally brewed him a cup of tea, and then asked about the origin of those Open Source articles.

"Professor Xu, from my freshman to senior year, my academic performance was always at the top of the department, and I thought my level was quite good. It wasn't until the end of last semester that a teacher who returned from studying in Dongying introduced me to the Free Software Movement and gave me a disc for the 386BSD Open Source Operating Systems. After I saw the source code, I realized I was just a clown sitting in a well looking at the sky."

Professor Xu seemed to have never heard of 386BSD; he wrote it down on a blank piece of draft paper with a pen and then signaled for Di Ye to continue.

"The night the postgraduate entrance exam ended, I was bored, so I took out a set of Selected Works of Mao that my father collected. The very first sentence of the first chapter of the first volume made me think for a long time."

"Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. Is it this one?"

"Yes, but now it's a peaceful era, so what I thought about wasn't revolution, but learning—who is the enemy of my learning? Who is the friend of my learning? Then the conclusion I reached was that inferior textbooks and short computer access times are the enemies of my learning, while Open Source and practice are the friends of my learning."

Upon hearing this, Professor Xu showed a look of approval and commented, "Your line of thinking is correct. Computers are tools of productive forces, and practice is very important."

"Later, I thought about some other aspects, such as who is the enemy of our development and who is the friend of our development. Finally, I concluded that if the Chinese computer industry wants to quickly catch up to the world's advanced level, it can only do so by vigorously supporting the Open Source movement, turning programmers all over the world into friends, in order to resist the commercial aggression of multinational companies like Microsoft and IBM..."

The main content of those Open Source articles before the Spring Festival was pieced together by Di Ye having Xiao Honghua extract from classic works like "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Open Source Software Anthology". At that time, Xiao Honghua had just been born and was still in its infancy; its text editing ability was relatively weak, and the objects being pieced together were all written by foreigners, so it read a bit awkward and difficult to understand, not very grounded.

These days, based on feedback from netizens on Cfido, Di Ye had been refining those articles, deleting some unnecessary debates, adding some interesting examples, and enhancing readability. However, because he had to carry the banner of "Open Source," the articles had to be in a bilingual Chinese-English version, so he wasn't in a hurry to print them out, but was preparing to wait until he went to Pengcheng to research overseas feedback before finalizing them.

Now that a leading authority like Professor Xu was interested in the Open Source philosophy, Di Ye couldn't ask for more. He poured out all his thoughts and ideas from these days, seeking his opinions and suggestions to try to make his philosophy more perfect.