Diary of a Chinese Startup

From Red Herring:

"In many ways, the 37-year-old Mr. Cao is the quintessential Chinese new economy entrepreneur. Like many of his peers, the native of Xi’an is a “sea turtle”—the word haigui is a homophone for “overseas returnee” in Mandarin—who received his graduate education in the States and worked for a number of U.S. companies before heeding the call of the China market and paddling homeward."

"However, Mr. Cao quickly discovered that the Chinese technology industry can move faster than he had expected. He originally assembled his team to do research and development for Search Party, a meta-search site that launched in May in the U.S., and was planning a similar site in China.

Mr. Cao was confident his company would enjoy a first-mover edge. “Originally I thought we’d wait until the end of 2005,” he said. “It turns out we had to move a lot faster.”

He was stunned when he learned that Qunar.com, another travel meta-search site headed by Fritz Demopoulos, a successful expatriate dotcom entrepreneur, launched in June."

Diary of a Chinese Startup Part 1 Part 2