"I am old, please spare me!" This was Ni Guangnan's reply after receiving Huang He's phone call.
His words were filled with a sense of desolation.
To avoid the embarrassment Chen Jin had experienced previously, Huang He had spent three full days thoroughly investigating Ni Guangnan's situation. He discovered that while the Ni Guangnan depicted in novels from his previous life was somewhat exaggerated, about 50% of it was indeed true, and his life story was genuinely legendary.
He was originally an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After developing a patent related to computers, he was approached by Liu Chuanzhi, who was still a young man at the time. Liu Chuanzhi produced this patent, made a substantial profit, and thus the Lenovo Group was born.
In its early days, Lenovo Group operated under a dual-star model, with Liu Chuanzhi responsible for operations and sales, and Ni Guangnan in charge of product research and development. Until around 1990, Lenovo was a normal company with two legs, its business thriving and many products developed.
However, starting from 1990, Ni Guangnan had a falling out with Liu Chuanzhi. The reason was Ni Guangnan's desire to develop chips, to completely change Lenovo's current state of being almost an assembly factory, and to make Lenovo an enterprise with complete autonomy in research, development, and production.
But Liu Chuanzhi had different ideas. He knew very well that developing chips required massive investment, which Lenovo at the time could not afford.
More importantly, even if they invested the funds, they might not achieve any results.
Even if they did achieve results, their products might still lag behind those of foreign competitors.
And even if the products were practical, they might face sanctions from foreign countries. Therefore, in his view, self-research and chip development were a losing proposition. It was better to import chips from abroad... no, import everything from chips to motherboards, memory, and hard drives. As long as they bought the components and assembled them, there was no need for self-research and such arduous production.
This was the origin of Lenovo's most famous debate between the "Technology Trade" and "Trade Technology" routes.
Ni Guangnan was defeated and pushed out of Lenovo. Later, Lenovo became the infamous "American Conscience." Many years later, Liu Chuanzhi's daughter caused a massive scandal by taking the travel data of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens from Didi to be listed in the United States.
As the ancients wisely said, "Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and mice beget holes." The "American Conscience" naturally gave birth to another "American Conscience."
But returning to Ni Guangnan, after leaving Lenovo, he never gave up his dream of the chip industry. He consistently gave speeches and advocated within the industry, trying to persuade the country to restart its chip strategy.
Ni Guangnan's efforts were not without impact. For instance, the recent 863 Program did indeed begin to launch a chip strategy. Simultaneously, a company named Founder approached Ni Guangnan in 1999, hoping to cooperate on chip production.
This was not an empty promise seeking subsidies. Two years after their collaboration began, in 2001, Ni Guangnan successfully developed Founder's first independently researched computer chip.
However, unlike traditional computer chips that were bound to the Windows system, Ni Guangnan, in order to break through Intel's technical barriers in Windows system chips, specifically chose the completely open-source and unrestricted Linux system as his target. He developed the "Founder No. 1" chip based on the Linux system.
To support "Founder No. 1," the state specially purchased 10,000 custom-made computers to be paired with it. However, within just one month, all these computers were returned, and "Founder No. 1" was naturally sent back. Not only did Founder Group suffer heavy losses, but Ni Guangnan also announced his responsibility for the failure of "Founder No. 1" and resigned from Founder, retreating to his small courtyard.
This was the second moment of great disappointment in Ni Guangnan's life, and his refusal of Huang He's request was therefore understandable.
"Teacher Ni!" Huang He said earnestly, "You cannot give up. If you give up, then China's chip industry will stagnate for twenty years. If you give up now, won't all your previous persistence become a joke?"
"What's the point of saying all this?" Ni Guangnan's tone on the phone was dejected. "The international trend is already set. Even if we are given twenty or fifty years, we won't be able to catch up in the chip industry. I will never see the dawn of the future in my lifetime. I have already caused a company to lose hundreds of millions. I don't want to waste more of entrepreneurs' money."
After speaking, Ni Guangnan didn't give Huang He a chance to continue and directly hung up the phone. He sat alone on his slightly worn sofa, his gaze vacant.
"Someone wants you to come out of retirement again?" Ni's wife asked as she wiped her hands, walking over curiously.
"No!" Ni Guangnan shook his head. "I'm too old, I can't keep up with the times. What retirement am I coming out of!"
"You're only sixty-three, you're not old yet!" his wife said with a smile. "Invite them to the house to talk!"
"I won't invite them!" Ni Guangnan shook his head forcefully.
"You're just being stubborn now. Give it a few months, and when you've calmed down and the frustration from the failure has passed, your dreams will resurface. Then you'll have to run around the country for projects, give speeches, and solicit investment just like before. Isn't that like slapping yourself in the face?" his wife chuckled.
"You think too little of me. How could I do such a fickle thing?" Ni Lao's face flushed slightly, and he retorted.
"No, old man, I know you better than anyone. You've never been fickle. On the contrary, your whole life has been deeply entrenched in the chip industry, and you'll never be able to climb out of this pit in this lifetime."
"You don't have much time left. Do you really want to waste it like this?"
"..." Ni Guangnan fell silent, but his eyes darted around, gradually filling with a flicker of light. He suddenly picked up the phone, about to dial back, but the other end announced, "The number you have dialed cannot be connected. Please try again later."
"Alas, I, this old man, has ultimately been abandoned!" Ni Guangnan lamented and sat on the sofa, continuing to stare blankly. His wife shook her head helplessly and went out to dance.
As time passed, Ni Guangnan gradually fell into a daze and then drifted off to sleep. He was awakened by a knock on the door. He slowly opened it to find a young man standing at the entrance, empty-handed.
"Don't order milk, and don't order newspapers!" Ni Guangnan said somewhat guardedly.
"Then do you order chips?" the young man asked with a smile.
"Who are you, coming here specifically to play with me?" Ni Guangnan said, slightly displeased.
"Elder Ni, you've forgotten. I called you this morning!" Huang He said.
"It's you!" A fleeting look of surprise crossed Ni Guangnan's face, then he darkened his expression. "But I didn't ask you to come to my house!"
As he spoke, Ni Guangnan stepped aside, even tossing a pair of slippers over. Huang He happily put on the slippers and entered.
"I'll give you thirty minutes. If you can't convince me within thirty minutes, you can get out!" Ni Guangnan sat down on the sofa in a commanding posture, throwing a small wooden stool to Huang He.
"Alright!" Huang He nodded repeatedly. "Teacher Ni, let me first tell you about our company. Our company, Jiangnan Group, is currently an enterprise whose main businesses are leather manufacturing, blind box sales, and internet products..."
"Wait... what did you say? Your company manufactures leather?" Ni Guangnan asked incredulously.
"Yes, until July last year, our company was the largest leather factory in the Wenzhou region. But not anymore. We've given up some of our leather production, so another company has become number one. However, we are the leader in China's blind box industry and a prominent player in the instant messaging software sector. We are about to become the industry leader!" Huang He boasted.
"You can go now!" Ni Guangnan said, his nose flared. In this day and age, a shoemaker dared to joke with him.
"Elder Ni, Nokia started with logging back then. Isn't a shoemaker like me more reliable for doing chips than a woodcutter?" Huang He said with a smile.
"Absurd reasoning!" Ni Guangnan muttered, but he didn't chase him away. Instead, he asked curiously, "I'm quite curious, why did you decide to get into chips?"
"Because servers are expensive!" Huang He sighed. "As I said, I have instant messaging software business now. This requires a lot of servers to support it. I'm planning to build an internet center in Cao County and went to buy servers from Compaq, but these guys refused to sell to me and told me to wait half a year. I was furious."
"Later, I thought about buying servers from IBM, Microsoft, or Oracle, but their prices were more than double Compaq's. All the hard-earned money I accumulated over half a year would be given to them, just to buy a few servers. I was unwilling to accept this!"
"So I wanted to buy domestic servers, but you, sir, know the quality and performance of domestic servers. I couldn't find any suitable ones. Although I wanted to, I decided that instead of giving the money to others, it would be better to use it to build servers myself. This way, not only could I buy servers at the lowest price, but I could also sell them in the future, and perhaps even put them into blind boxes. So I decided to establish a server manufacturing factory."
"And the most crucial component of a server is the chip, so I want to manufacture chips myself. That's why I found you, Elder Ni," Huang He said with a chuckle. "See? Why don't you come to our company to help me? We can spend a few years working hard together to develop both domestic chips and high-quality servers!"
"You're doing this for such a reason?" Seeing Huang He's smiling face, Ni Guangnan suddenly realized that his imagination was still too limited.