Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

The driver stepped on the brakes, and the black business van stopped at the intersection of Fuzhou Road and Wenhua Street.

"Mr. Xu, do we need to drive in?" the driver asked, turning his head to look at the back seat.

Xu Cheng shook his head absentmindedly and looked towards the other end of Cultural Street. He had last been here three years ago. Back then, the street was much more bustling; bookstores were packed with people, and the roadside was lined with stalls selling pirated books and CDs. Tricycles carrying bundles of magazines shuttled back and forth. Now, several old shops had changed their signs, their shutters half-closed, displaying "For Rent" signs.

Xu Cheng told the driver he would go back by himself, got out of the car, stepped onto the sidewalk, and stood up straight.

He did this mainly because he knew Han Fei was a vigilant person. If the car had stopped directly in front of the publishing house, it would have seemed too formal and intimidating. Walking there, this more casual entrance, would have effectively prevented Han Fei from immediately going into a defensive state, creating a more relaxed environment for the subsequent conversation.

Furthermore, he didn't want to miss any information; the surrounding environment and the condition of the publishing house were the most direct and firsthand information, more authentic than any report.

Across the street stood a newly built office building, still vacant; the newspaper said it would remain empty for some time. The office building's windows reflected the three-story old building—Qingniao Publishing House—its exterior walls made of white square bricks popular in the 80s and 90s, most of which had yellowed. Next door was a stationery store; an old man in a vest sat at the entrance, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan. He glanced at Xu Cheng, then lowered his head again. Xu Cheng walked into the publishing house.

"Hey, President Han," Xu Cheng said, getting ready to climb the stairs.

Han Fei stood at the doorway at the top of the wooden staircase, waiting for Xu Cheng to climb the steps, panting. Han Fei didn't seem to have dressed up for this meeting; he was wearing a simple black T-shirt, jeans, and casual shoes.

"Director Xu, so punctual." Han Fei said, extending a hand.

"President Han, this building of yours has an even more vintage feel than I imagined." Xu Cheng shook hands with him. "After walking around here, I feel like I've met my exercise target for the month."

Han Fei smiled slightly: "I should have prepared a spot in the lobby on the first floor. But speaking of which, the air here smells of ink, which is probably more invigorating than the aroma of coffee in your office buildings. Would you like to take a look around first?"

"Great, I'll just have to soak up some of the intellectual atmosphere here. To be honest, after spending so much time in office buildings, I find these old buildings more interesting. It's like every brick is telling a story, much more vivid than glass curtain walls."

Han Fei led Xu Cheng into the corridor. The office doors on both sides of the corridor were slightly ajar, and the smell of ink and paper wafted out from the cracks. Xu Cheng found this authentic smell to be much better than the air purifier-laden odor in the office building.

They passed an office, and a young man emerged from the doorway carrying a stack of manuscripts, smiling and nodding as he passed. Xu Cheng saw a sign that read "Editorial Office," and inside sat four or five people. The fax machine hummed, constantly spitting out manuscripts. A middle-aged man was speaking into a telephone receiver, talking about restocking the bookstore or something similar. The others were engrossed in the mountain of manuscripts, their pencils scratching across the paper.

Across from the editorial office is the graphic design office, where two women sit with their backs to them in front of computers displaying the Photoshop 7.0 interface.

Xu Cheng followed Han Fei to the end of the corridor, arriving at the conference room door. He could hear voices coming from inside. Xu Cheng slowed his pace and peered inside. He saw four men gathered around two laptops, gesturing and discussing. Xu Cheng recognized the programming jargon they were using. A woman sat in the corner of the room, wearing a baseball cap, a mask, and large-rimmed glasses. Xu Cheng was willing to bet that her appearance beneath those coverings was nothing special. The woman was looking down at her documents, motionless.

"Technology Department?" Xu Cheng asked, stepping inside.

"I guess so," Han Fei said. "The publishing house doesn't have any spare offices, so they have to make do with working in the conference room."

"May I take a look around?"

"no problem."

Xu Cheng walked up to the computer. The four men stopped talking and turned to look at Han Fei.

"It's alright," Han Fei said. "Director Xu is an expert, he can give us some pointers. These guys are always bragging to me about how beautiful their code is, but I don't understand a word of it."

"President Han, although your technical team is small, the things you discuss are quite cutting-edge. I overheard something about database splitting, things that only big companies think about. It's really not easy for you to run business and build infrastructure at the same time in such a short period of time." Xu Cheng said, glancing at the computer screen casually.

One of the screens displayed a code writing interface, and he determined that this was a deep architecture with a caching mechanism by using the Memcached::get() call in the interface.

The other screen displayed the backend management system, with a navigation bar on the left and several sets of data charts in the main area on the right. The charts were presented using simple bar and line graphs with a plain color scheme, typical of a startup team. His gaze involuntarily lingered on the data set in the upper right corner of the screen: Real-time conversion rate: 14.5%.

Xu Cheng thought to himself, "14.5%. Qingniao's first-day conversion rate was 13.7%. If they keep pushing new numbers, then the number 14.5% means that their average conversion rate is still rising. It means that they are not just a flash in the pan, but have already stabilized their base."

Xu Cheng looked up from the screen: "This real-time conversion rate is truly impressive. I've seen many projects go viral on the first day, only to be halved on the second. Yours is just too stable."

"Director Xu, you flatter me," Han Fei said.

"Your tech team looks quite young," Xu Cheng said as he left the meeting room. "Were they trained internally, or recruited from outside?"

"Yes, our tech team is indeed young. We basically built it up ourselves from scratch. The core leader is someone I picked up from NetEase. He used to work on architecture there and felt it was a bit rigid. We happened to want to do something new, so we hit it off immediately. The others are all recent hires. They have good technical foundations, but they lack experience and are still getting used to each other. We're a small company like ours, so we can't afford to hire senior experts with backgrounds from big companies. We can only rely on young people to work hard, on their willingness to stay up late and delve into things. Fortunately, the system is running relatively stably right now, and they can handle it."