(Ecns.cn)--China's "King of Fairy Tales" Zheng Yuanjie may have found the perfect successor！Zheng Yaqi, his son and business partner, a member of the post-80s generation who is now working to build a commercial empire based on the fictional characters created by his dad.
Zheng Yaqi has recently been engaged in a search for investors for his Beijing-based Pipilu Culture and Technology Co Ltd, where he serves as CEO.
He established the company in 2010 and obtained exclusive authorization from his father to develop and launch Internet products based on his fantasy stories, including educational children's games centered on characters like the naughty but kindhearted boy Pipi Lu and his little sister Lu Xixi.
Committed to building an interactive community platform to integrate learning with play for Chinese children and their parents, the company launched its Web community product "Planet Z" last February as the first stop for children to access the Internet.
At venture capital and private equity meetings, an introduction will often go something like this: "I am Zheng Yaqi. I dropped out after graduating from elementary school and then received education at home via textbooks created by my father. I became financially independent at 18 years old. After working for others for a couple of years, I decided to start my own company, carrying forward and further increasing the popularity of Pipi Lu (which is a registered trademark of Zheng Yuanjie)."
Though resembling his peers in appearance, Zheng Yaqi's experience growing up was very different. He dropped out after finishing the junior high entrance examination to be home-schooled by his father, who wrote a 200,000-word textbook containing essential knowledge of history, philosophy, law and finance, but in a novel way that appeals to children. For example, the 419 crimes included under the Chinese Criminal Law are rearranged into 419 fairy tales.
They had three classes every afternoon. At dusk, his father always took him for walks along the riverbank, where they discussed various topics from TV or books, according to Student English, an educational newspaper.
"College education tends to make simple things complicated and hard to understand. What we should do is teach our children the most essential and simple principles of life and ways to handle problems," pointed out Zheng Yuanjie during an interview with China Radio International (CRI).
According to Student English, Zheng Yaqi finished his six-year middle school education in three years. When he was 16, his father "warned" him, "I'll give you whatever you want before you turn 18. But after 18, I won't care much about you, and by contrast, you should give me whatever I want."
With his 18th birthday approaching in 2001, Zheng Yaqi began to consider finding a job. He finally got employed as an egg porter at a supermarket. Three months later, he found a job at a newspaper and was promoted to director of the network department in less than a year.
In 2005, he launched Pipi Lu, a comic magazine, with himself as editor-in-chief and Zheng Yuanjie as the only writer. This was the first cooperation between Zheng Yaqi and his father.
"He did not want to be a businessman, so I played the role," recalled Zheng Yaqi, who struggled to convince his father to rearrange his fairy tales into comics.
Though sometimes criticized as "making money by dint of his father," Zheng still proved to be a successful entrepreneur. His company won the title of "China's Internet Company of Credibility and Vigor" last August, the highest government-sponsored award for social responsibility and innovation by an Internet enterprise.
Ambitious and confident, Zheng Yaqi declared in recent months that his company is looking for the first round of investment and will launch more products themed on Pipi Lu in 2012. They are also planning to produce cartoons and films in the future.
Yet some critics have speculated that Zheng Yaqi may not easily win investor trust, as the father-son business is ostensibly dominated by the son, but he must nevertheless be granted authority from Zheng Yuanjie to develop related products.
