An Exhibition Revisiting 30 Years of Chinese Venture Capital | WAVE's Third Anniversary

"The great schools of fish have returned."

Curated by Waves Editorial Team

Along the freshwater rivers and streams of the North Pacific coast lives a fish called the chum salmon. Its name derives from the Manchu "daimaha" — meaning "the great schools of fish have returned."

This species possesses an instinct: the spawning run. It is the key to their survival, a miracle of adaptation and evolution in the natural world. More abstractly, the run encompasses both a response to external environments and an implicit iteration of their own constitution.

This mechanism shares the same core as China's venture capital industry, now three decades old.

Thirty years ago, the concepts of innovation, entrepreneurship, and venture capital arrived from the West. Today, when we speak of these words again, they are no longer confined to narrow commercial contexts — they have become a current of thought, a fashion, a kind of faith. The pioneers saw opportunity in them; those who rode the waves threw themselves into reshaping their lives; and people today invest them with even greater dreams of the future.

On March 11, 2024, at the second anniversary of Waves, we published the feature Farewell, A Decade of Venture Capital. But looking back was never meant to be standing still. Reviewing what was missed, regretted, detoured, and succeeded — and rediscovering the original intention from the journey here — is what holds more value for moving forward.

On the third anniversary of Waves, we invite friends to join us for an offline physical exhibition: The Run.

The original meaning of this verb describes "a periodic movement that repeats annually as the fish progresses through each stage of its life cycle." We hope to re-examine the thirty years of Chinese venture capital through the lens of dissecting biological evolution.

In those never-before-seen or long-forgotten old photographs, old products, old events, and old memories, there are the first sweet dreams and resolutions; there are difficulties encountered, difficulties solved, difficulties met again, and the continuing forward; there is the frenzy of growth and the fall; and there are those once-young faces.

In 1995, Chinese society connected to the internet, laying the foundation stone for the venture capital industry's development. In 2025, amid the narrative wave of China's new technology composed of companies like DeepSeek and Unitree, tides of innovation are forming once more.

The Run — let us trace back from the end of one era, and depart from the beginning of another.

P.S. Along with this invitation, we are also collecting objects, images, and materials related to venture capital from all Waves readers. You can submit to us by clicking Read More at the end of this article, and we welcome everyone to interact with us on Jike/Xiaohongshu by tagging @暗涌Waves and #暗涌三周年.

Image source: Unsplash / Waves Editorial Team

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