It’s nearly silent, but there’s a lot of money flowing through the office. I adore how much personality the game gives to these beloved characters (see Peach going through the five stages of grief when the other team scores), but there’s basically only one mode to play. Back then, China very much needed local copies of US companies, because US firms often couldn’t operate easily in China. Not so in China. It’s slick and simple, and now one-third of all movie tickets in China are bought via Meituan. It was a hassle, but now moviegoers can not only buy a ticket from the Meituan app, they can pick their seats. Suspended above dozens of coders is an LCD the size of a table for four that reads "8,309": the number of deals Meituan has broadcast so far today. I first wanted to do that with quartz, but then I realized quartz doesn't move that far and we switched to piezoelectric ceramics. Then you look on the other side. But by then he was seasoned enough to spot the flaws in the discounter’s business model. The big dragons provided role models, but even more significantly, they built the infrastructure crucial for today’s high tech boom, including the cloud services that allow any twentysomething to launch a business overnight and immediately start billing customers.

China’s tech boom in the late ’90s produced its own Web 1.0: search engines, email and blogging tools, news portals, and Alibaba’s sprawling online sales market. Even the market meltdown of this year doesn’t seem to have dented middle-class consumption: During China’s travel-focused Golden Week national holiday in October, box office sales were up 70 percent over the previous year, and overseas trips were up 36.6 percent, according to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch analysts. It’s aiming to reach $18.5 billion by the end of this year. It’s more than just the torture; after all, humans have done a fair bit of that, too. This can be a terrible waste of company time and money, therefore its worth spending that little bit extra in order to impress your clients and build brand awareness. Therefore, visitors here can enjoy the English culture that has been in existence for centuries. Non-profits come in all shapes and sizes, and chances are high that you can find an organization that matches your particular feel-good interest, like fighting poverty, supporting the arts or saving the environment.

Sporting high-end mobiles and elite fashion from Europe, they pull out their phones for nearly every purpose: using Alipay to cover a cab ride to a DJ’d party in the artistic outskirts of Beijing; opening WeChat and using its location-sharing function so their friends can find them; posting selfies on Meitu, a picture-sharing service with built-in beautifying filters. The government blocked many foreign sites by using a complex system of filters known as the Great Firewall of China. Ten years ago, for example, eBay tried to dominate in China but failed, partly because many small businesses-the places that might otherwise have used eBay to sell their products to the world-didn’t yet have computers or a connection to the Internet. Local firms had an edge anyway: They understood the particular demands of the Chinese digerati in the early ’00s, when Internet access was still scanty. For example, 80 percent of China’s hotel rooms are still booked offline.

It’s an adroit move, because service-and convenience-is what China’s urban middle class increasingly craves. Last year YY itself brought in $580 million, and three years after going public on the Nasdaq, its market cap tops $3 billion, even after the market gyrations of 2015. The next Silicon Valley has emerged-and it’s in the East. And people are eager for ecommerce not just because it’s convenient, but because it’s much less corrupt and opaque than brick-and-mortar businesses. One of the most successful in this second wave is Meituan, a firm that has become an ecommerce giant by enabling small merchants across the country to broadcast deals to nearby shoppers who have opted in, Maximum Distance on the web and within Meituan’s mobile app. He also began developing proprietary ecommerce tech. Tech fits the bill. In most cases, the coordinators likewise present vacation tours, exciting outdoor functions like playing golf and visiting historical houses around the area. As mentioned in the previous golf and chess article, Reka Sztaray is a high school senior, golfer, and US Chess Senior Tournament Director. Riding that first crest, firms like Baidu and Alibaba became the "big dragons" of Chinese high tech, minting millionaires much as Microsoft had in the ’90s.