Zhenggé co-founder Wang Qiang: He reads none of the new books
His reason: a book pursued by 100 million people today may be remembered by only 10 million next month—bestseller status itself is evidence of what time discards—so he reserves all his reading for old books tested across decades.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
Four life choices, each precisely timed with historical waves
Wang Qiang describes only a few pivotal decisions: switching to English after entering Peking University; discovering English wasn't enough and switching to computer science during his US studies; leaving Bell Labs to join New Oriental upon China's WTO accession; co-founding Zhenggé Fund during the 2011 mass-entrepreneurship wave. He credits luck—each step coincided with an era's needs—but emphasizes each choice recycled skills from the previous one rather than following a preconceived plan.
— Wang QiangFill your stomach before browsing the bookstore, because you'll stay until closing
He calls his practice "book hunting" rather than collecting—the hunter chases freshness, the collector stores for winter. He describes his ritual: eat until full before arriving, stay until closing time. Children once accompanying him learned to bring energy bars because they'd go hungry waiting. This near-ritualistic patience embodies his core principle that reading demands time.
— Wang QiangThe more people discuss a new book, the less he reads it
He has a bias against bestsellers: a book read by 100 million today may be remembered by 50 million next month, then 10 million the month after, nearly erased within a year. He lets others "test the path" first, keeping his reading time for what he deems truly important. The criterion isn't market fever but whether an author has been troubled by a question for ten or twenty years and extracted insight universal to humankind.
— Wang QiangAgainst aphorism worship: rereading, not reading, is the core of reading
He despises "golden quotes" because each one survives only through the sacrificed sentences and logical chain behind it; severed from that structure, the quote holds no weight. Reading itself isn't the point—rereading is reading's true core. A book read once leaves you untouched, a blank; you might as well never have opened it.
— Wang QiangWhat the AI era lacks most is not answers but questions
Any question now yields dozens of answers from AI in a second, but people forget the original question they set out to ask and whether AI's answers truly address it. AI's own evolution proves the same point: early AI was a black box yielding conclusions; the evolution toward showing complete reasoning chains happened because users trust only what they can spot-check. "Hallucinations" often appear when models quietly bypass or hide certain data to please users.
— Wang QiangToken burn transforms funding from staged rounds into simultaneous overlapping rounds
This AI generation of founders differs radically from mobile-internet titans—they carry no legacy constraints and immediately explore applications across different models, putting Chinese founders on equal footing with global peers on the full stack from model to application. But token consumption and compute demand hard currency; when compute can't reach model precision or apps can't scale knowledge scope, competitors crush you fast. A, B, and C rounds may now happen at the same node, not in sequence. The real danger isn't simultaneous fundraising but taking money and letting two years pass with no actual deployment.
— Wang QiangAction-based FOMO is acceptable, psychological FOMO is not
Facing the AI wave, he never worries about missing out—investors always miss something. He tells Zhenggé's team: action-based FOMO is fine—go verify, make contact—but not psychological FOMO. Psychological panic makes you ordinary; the real question is "Do you understand this thing? What did you do for it? Who are you?", not pure terror of being left behind.
— Wang QiangTranslating Alice without footnotes: letting Chinese itself replace the wordplay
Translating “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, Wang Qiang set himself an almost impossible constraint: zero annotations. When the White Queen asks what bread is made of and Alice answers "flour", the Queen presses: where did you pick that flower?—flour and flower homophone-linked in English. After months of thought, he found 白花花 (baihuahua), Chinese for finely-milled flour, naturally fuses "flour" and "flower" imagery, replacing English's sonic trick.
— Wang QiangIn their own words · checked verbatim
If I read bestsellers all the time—well, I have a bias against bestsellers. The newer the book, the less I read it. The more people discuss it, the less I read it.
如果我随时读畅销书 因为我对畅销书 有个偏见 就是说 越出来的新的 我越不读 越有人谈论的 我越不读
Wang Qiang24:18
So reading isn't important—rereading is. Rereading is the core of reading, not reading itself.
所以阅读 不重要 再读 才重要 再读是阅读的核心 而不是阅读
Wang Qiang29:21
In this dark age, what we most lack is not conclusions but questions.
这个上是现时代最重要的东西 在这个黑暗时代最缺的是问题 而不是结论了
Wang Qiang39:30
You can have FOMO, but not psychological FOMO—action-based FOMO instead.
你可以FOMO 但是不是心态上的FOMO 是行动上的FOMO
Wang Qiang1:07:52
If you rush past it, it's just a door. If you pause for a moment, it opens halfway for you. Push it yourself, and it opens fully.
你匆匆过去了 它就是一个门 你停留一下 它会给你开一半 你自己来推一下 会给你开开
Wang Qiang1:08:53
In Chinese, we describe this flour as ‘white-flower flour.’
我们在汉语中形容这个面粉 是可以用白花花的面粉的
Wang Qiang1:23:05
It's truly a sea of stars; and people increasingly recognize this sea of stars as necessary—not a poetic sea of stars, but a real person's sea of stars.
他真的是星辰大海 而且这个星辰大海 大家越来越觉得是必要性 不是星辰大海 不是诗人中的星辰大海 他是一个现实中人的星辰大海
Wang Qiang1:29:13
Figures
| Wang Qiang's retirement timeline | Age 65, October 2027 | 2:02 |
| Zhenggé Fund's tenure | 15 years | 56:44 |
Glossary
- FOMO
- Fear of missing out; anxiety produced by the prospect of missing opportunities or trends.
- brain rot
- Mental degradation resulting from prolonged consumption of fragmented content; Oxford Dictionary's 2024 word of the year.
- interdependence
- Wang Qiang's translation of the Buddhist concept of emptiness; the most precise English rendering of mutual dependence.
- mindfulness
- Complete focus of attention on the present moment itself.
How to listen
Office workers anxious about information overload and short-video addiction; investors tracking how AI startup funding logic is changing; anyone seeking a reading methodology.
The opening ~1 minute is a remix preview of later content; after hearing the full episode you'll find it repeats—you can skip it.