A short Chinese man seems to be the tallest in the world right now. Jack Ma (Ma Yun), 50, is executive chairman (董事局主席) of Alibaba(阿里巴巴) Group. On Sept 19, Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange (纽约证券交易所), raising $25 billion through an IPO (首次公开发行股票), the biggest in US history. Ma, a former English teacher, has become the richest man on the Chinese mainland.
Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Ma grew up as a happy kid. At the age of 12, he wanted to learn English. Every morning, he woke up at 5 am, cycled 40 minutes to a hotel near the West Lake where he could chat to foreign tourists. He did it for nine years, rain or shine.
In a 1995 trip to the US, Ma was showed the Internet for the first time. He searched Yahoo using the word “Beer”, and found that there was nothing in there about China. Seeing the chance, Ma returned to China and set up a website called China Pages without even knowing much about computers.
Four years later, 18 people including Ma, his wife and his friends founded Alibaba in Hangzhou. He believed in the Internet business potential (潜力) when few other Chinese did. Now, Alibaba has developed into the world’s largest e-commerce (电子商务) company, owning popular shopping websites like Taobao and Tmall. It makes more profit than Amazon and e-Bay combined.
We can tell from the first paragraph that _____.
A.Ababa Group is the biggest company in China |
B.Alibaba’s IPO has raised $25 billion |
C.Jack Ma used to be a math teacher |
D.Jack Ma is the richest man in the world |
When did Ma and his team found Alibaba?
A.In 1995. | B.In 1998. |
C.In 1999. | D.In 2014. |
Which is the world’s largest e-commerce company?
A.Alibaba. | B.Taobao. | C.Amazon. | D.e-Bay. |