Page 130 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

phone or full-featured computer-like mobile phone that comes with navi-
gation software. A less expensive option is a WAP (wireless application
protocol)-enabled mobile phone that has both GPS and Web access to digital
maps. GPS also can be found pre-installed or portable in a growing number
of privately owned passenger cars. Young and increasingly affluent Chinese
consumers would never use printed maps or Yellow Pages directories to find
their way.

Map heaven

I arrive at Lingtu in a company car that picked me up so that I wouldn’t get
lost. The journey takes about an hour in heavy traffic from my comfortable
hotel in the new Wall Street-style financial district on the west side. Lingtu has
surprisingly contemporary headquarters in a high-tech office park. Entering a
spacious marble lobby, I climb the steps, passing a stark white interior
courtyard. Upstairs, there’s a couple of Ping-Pong tables in a corridor plus a
row of carpet samples laid out to select for the next office expansion—both
cultural relics of Silicon Valley in the booming late 1990s.
I’m here to interview Lingtu cofounder and former CEO Tang Ningzhe.
Tang’s assistant, Wenyan Chen, or Anny, a petite young lady whose tight
clothes show off her lean frame, leads me into a conference room, leaving me
waiting for 10 minutes before Tang bounds in with Anny in tow. Tang, 38
years old, is a round-faced man with uneven teeth, an impatient air, and black
hair that sprouts from his head in a bowl-like pattern. He seems nervous,
probably because venture partner Tse is supposed to be here. I decide to
plunge ahead with my questions, fearing that Tang may have only an hour. I
didn’t have to worry. We go for two hours before a break for lunch at a
restaurant in the complex.
Anny translates for Tang, one
of the few Chinese entrepreneurs
“My dream was to make life more convenient
for customers, to make my products and see I’ve met who doesn’t speak English.
customers using them. This is exciting.” That doesn’t stop him from
answering rapid-fire cell phone calls
Tang Ningzhe,
and simultaneously checking his
cofounder and chief strategy officer, Lingtu
laptop for e-mails as he sketches his
biographical details. The firstborn

104 SILICON DRAGON