奇速英语

张一鸣：小城“80后”成中国首富

On March 27, 2025, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, became the richest person in China.

Zhang was born in 1983 in Longyan, Fujian. His father was a civil servant and later started an electronics (电子器件) factory. His mother was a nurse. His parents loved new things and gave him a free environment for growing up. This made him interested in new things, too. When Zhang got into Nankai University in 2001, he studied Software Engineering.

At university, Zhang worked hard. He didn’t play computer games or watch DVDs. He wrote code (代码), read books, and fixed computers for others. He worked part time as a web developer (网站开发者). After graduating in 2005, he started his first business, but it failed.

Then, Zhang worked in several companies. At Kuxun, he became a tech manager because he was hard-working. In 2008, he went to work for Microsoft. But after half a year, he left because the pace of progress at Microsoft was too slow for him. Later, he joined Fanfou. There he learned a lot from his bosses. In 2009, he started 99fang, which became a success later.

In 2012, Zhang started Toutiao. It became popular very quickly. In 2016, he started Douyin. It is popular among people of all ages. Douyin’s overseas version, TikTok, is also loved by people around the world.

Zhang Yiming’s success isn’t by chance…