Beijing's 20 Most Interesting People: Zhang Xiaolong

We have a saying here at the Beijinger that even if nothing interesting could be written about 99 percent of Beijing's approximately 20 million people, there would still be 200,000 great stories remaining. To us, what makes a person interesting was not only their long-term presence in Beijing, but that they had done something of note within the last 12 months. Here is one of our picks, and you can always find more in our October issue, now out on the stands.

Zhang Xiaolong
Senior Vice President, Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Why he’s interesting: By all accounts a mild-mannered man from Hunan province, Zhang Xiaolong quietly started a revolution, developing a product that has help make his company, Tencent, one of China’s most important technology firms, and started people across the world talking and sharing pictures on their mobile devices, all for free: WeChat. Multi-lingual and cross-platform, WeChat has soared past rivals including Whatsapp and Apple’s iMessage. Tencent has put usage figures for the app at 236 million in China, and another 75 million overseas, numbers that show no signs of slowing down.

What he says: “When talking about development, most of us think of the technical side, but I say feelings are much more important, and most of us never pay any attention to them. There’s no girl you can take out on a date? The answer is definitely no, you just didn’t try asking any of them. At least you could buy a smartphone for less than RMB 1000 and then ‘Shake’ it.”

Photo: Wumii.com