Sam, this exec BS doesn't look good on you. If Qi Lu is the "one of the most impressive technologiest" you have known then I would say you can be impressed pretty easily. Qi Lu is the guy who couldn't do a squat with Yahoo so he jumped ship to Microsoft. His main achievement there was to rename their product to "Bing". Finally not getting anywhere for almost a decade, he finally got pushed out and so he jumped on the…
When it comes to navigating China and your choices are Suit, Network, or Code, you take the Network every time. Alcohol tolerance is a plus.
YC China and Qi Lu
171–180 of 360 posts
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but it's still not honest to say you don't need to learn Chinese at all. I would say that you will need atleast 6 months to be able to live normally, 12 months to get respect in business meetings, 3-4 years to be understood and make it a comp. advantage.And I'm not talking about 上海。
I'm always shocked when I visit shanghai and the taxi drivers can actually speak English. Nothing like that ever happens in Beijing. Plenty of foreigners work in China having much less than 6 months of Chinese. Most of them weren't even at my level. They still got by. Business meetings held with foreigners are usually in English anyways, it is only the old guard (Xi's generation) that can't English very well. And tho…
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#173Interesting to see YC embrace someone who went on leave at MSFT due to injuries of a bike accident... or so the news claimed. Yet popped up at Baidu/etc. Next up YC will hire the Amazon Exec that puffed himself up and was fired before he joined Uber?
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#174Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#175I'm currently living in Shanghai and I want to work for YC China. Will YC China or Qi Lu post any job openings somewhere?
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
to live in China, one could get by with little to no mandarin; but to do business in China, mandarin is a must.
Considering that there are over 300 million, yes million, people in China who do not speak Mandarin, I'd say yes one could get by. I'd even venture to say many of these 300 million people also do business in China. But yeah, I know what you meant.
I don't think your numbers are right. Tibet has 4 million population. Xinjiang has 20 million, among which 50% are Han. Those are only 2 provinces where I can think of that doesn't require Mandarin to get by in certain area.
The rest of China, at least, could understand Mandarin without problems.
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
honestly i thought HN is better than this.
Why? Are you willing to elaborate? This type of comment really doesn't add value to the conversation.
Sorry I thought people had common sense
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#178YC China? Why would you even consider this? Sam has lost his mind.
Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#179Re: YC China and Qi Lu
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to make it in China then yea, you probably shouldn't be too hung up on human rights. It's not some universal concept that has applied throughout the world for our existence so it's quite rude to pretend like China has to bow to these systems of human rights we developed without china's input.
> It’s not some universal concept > it’s quite rude > we developed without china’s input It is hard to argue that detaining 1 million people for their beliefs[0] and then torturing them[1] is justifiable by cultural relativism. Or massacring people for that matter[2]. At that point you could argue for any atrocity. It’s not rude it’s basic humanity. It’s not just completely reasonable to ask a government in charge of…