The People and Stories Behind the Public Account

I’ve been writing this public account for a long time, and I’ve only ever recommended Angela and Chi Da once apiece. Today, taking the occasion of a public-account recommendation, I’ll write about the stories behind several of my friends.

Angela

Without a word, Angela dropped a bombshell on me yesterday — she recommended me as the grand finale on her public account. We’d cross-promoted each other once before, and I was always riding on her coattails; this time was no exception. A brief introduction: Angela Zhu, the lovely Zhu Yun, known simply as Angela. She carries a lot of labels: PhD from Rice University, glamorous mom, Airbnb programmer, etc. The first time I went to Airbnb to meet her, I was disarmed by her magnanimity. She looked so very young, but after all she’s a Rice University PhD and a mother of two (I had only one child back then), so I lost most of my confidence and meekly called her “Sis.” A few days ago I was having skewers with Teacher Chi, and mid-meal he said airily: “You were born in ’82, right? Zhu Yun is younger than you — why do you keep calling her ‘Sis’?” Later we compared ages on WeChat, and oh boy — now what was I supposed to do?

I can’t change it now; anything else feels awkward. “Sis” is fine, actually — my skin’s dark, so you can’t guess my age from my face; perfect excuse to lean on seniority while playing the youngster.

Angela’s writing is a pleasure to read — like a caring big sister gently telling you a story. Take her recent pieces, for example: “Does an Elite Education Matter?”, “On Code Review,” “Musings on Databases,” and so on.

Chi Da

Chi Da is someone I deeply admire. As he worked along, he quietly downgraded a hefty salary into pocket money. If he quit his day job and seriously took on ads on his public account, ran events in his “Road of the Siege Lion” engineer community, and wrote for “Mai Tao Shuo,” he could absolutely live a life of “rich enough to be a good-for-nothing.” But the guy won’t do it. Working for money is so boring — working for ideals, that’s life! Sigh, look at me, picking my toes every day and tallying up firewood, rice, oil, and salt — how is it that people’s spiritual levels differ so much!

Teacher Chi’s recent writing centers on technology and the humanities. For example, the lesson from his latest piece: “If one cannot tell gold inlaid in jade, how can one be the hand that holds the brush!”

InfoQ

InfoQ really needs no introduction from me — I grew up reading InfoQ’s articles. In the early days of my career (2003–2010), the most nourishing online technical content in China came from InfoQ and IBM developerWorks. So when I started my company in 2011, I paid a hefty sum to attend QCon (Boss Huo even personally gave us a discount — that experience is in my book). At that year’s QCon I learned a great deal, from development processes to architecture experience; I also met a lot of people — the first batch of my key WeChat friends all came from that event.

In the days that followed, I didn’t have much to do with InfoQ — until last year’s AWS re:Invent. That’s where I formally met InfoQ’s Mickey, and afterward a series of my AWS articles (embarrassingly, only a few) were published on InfoQ’s website.

This time back in China, InfoQ arranged several events for me — live streams and interviews — practically pushing me toward internet-celebrity status. The more people I meet at InfoQ (and Geekbang), the more I feel this is a young team of boundless energy. After my last live stream, I took a quick tour of the office. The walls were plastered with 2016 plans of all kinds: the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (plus an eighth), the StuQ tech roadmap, and all sorts of other interesting, vibrant things.

Teacher Chen Liren

Teacher Chen Liren is my idol. Way back in the early Weibo era, his account was a must-read for me; at the same time, his “Dai Zi Gui Zhong” (Waiting in the Boudoir) had been one of my must-read public accounts ever since a friend recommended it — though later, because it was so brain-burning (sometimes I’d spend a whole morning just pondering how to solve a single problem), I reluctantly unfollowed. Gradually I stopped using Weibo and had fewer ways to keep up with Teacher Chen — until a few days ago, at a GGV event, I actually ran into him! A fan meeting his idol: naturally my heart raced, my adrenaline surged, and my brain short-circuited. After a couple of pleasantries, the brain cells I rely on for acting like an idiot went into overdrive, hijacked my language function, and blurted out, all casual but timid:

Teacher Chen, are you still at Baidu now?

…

Even so, Teacher Chen, with his good breeding, just said mildly that he was at a startup.

Later, back at my seat, the more I thought about it the more wrong it felt — he came out of Google, and it seemed he never went to Baidu… So I Baidu’d it (getting around the firewall on my phone is too much hassle), and then I just slumped into a full-on Ge You recline…

Kudos to Teacher Chen’s poise. As the grand finale, I recommend “Dai Zi Gui Zhong” (PS: I sincerely wish Teacher Chen would write about things other than exam questions — they’re too brain-burning and not suited to a general audience).