No matter how the world changes, *Dark Tide* turns three.

"Working with all of you to find the answers."

By Jing Liu

On our third anniversary, Waves put together an exhibition on three decades of Chinese venture capital. Some said we have a flair for ceremony. True — we've always been good at these little theatrical touches. On March 8, 2022, Waves published its first article. Our tagline, "Where the money flows, where fortunes rise and fall" — the VC industry we cover — had long ceased to be, in many people's eyes, a sector with outsized beta.

These past three years, the VC industry in most contexts has been teetering on the brink. We've written about this many times: "A Grain of Sand for the Era, a Mountain for Dollar Funds," "A Quiet Spring in Guomao"... Last year's "Goodbye, a Decade of Venture Capital" and "Reawakening China's Primary Market" spread like wildfire, each riding a surging undercurrent of the times.

If we were merely chroniclers, outsiders looking in, this would be fine. But as a publication bound to the industry's fate, every such article felt like smashing a boulder against our own chest in public.

As a business reporter, I have no natural affinity for the hardcore, undeniably important commercial mechanics. What draws me in are people and human nature. And the investment world is a natural observatory — what other industry sits so close to money and reputation? (Hollywood, perhaps.) Human desire becomes more tensile here.

For a while, whenever I shuttled between CBD offices, coffee shops, and hotel lobbies for interviews, I had a peculiar feeling: wasn't this just like Lesley M. M. Blume writing Everybody Behaves Badly? She documented the 1920s Paris Left Bank literary set; we were observing the crowd lingering along the Liangma River. One represented culture and ideas, the other money and opportunity.

Soon, I recognized my arrogance and anachronism.

In 2023, Waves' first anniversary, our editorial team fanned out to collect reader feedback. Most people, perhaps out of deference to "media folks," offered compliments. But one comment stood out sharply: "You're still writing about the internet? Still writing about dollar funds? Do you even know what perovskite is?"

Whether my colleagues knew, I can't say. But I certainly didn't. My only prior exposure had been an IR at a fund who, while hustling to raise capital from local governments and industrial parks, had crammed a list of buzzwords including those three characters. Her expression was wry and resigned.

To some, of course, this reads as arrogance: so only you internet investors, you dollar fund people, get to be fancy? And does fancy even matter?

Late last year, Waves ran a piece: "At the Crossroads: 96 Investors' Decisions for 2024." The title itself was a statement of intent. That's why, after "Goodbye, a Decade of Venture Capital," we planned this offline exhibition. We weren't just looking back — we wanted to inspire and face the future.

But how to face the future? Groping forward, Waves expanded its scope from the investment industry itself to state capital, AI, globalization. Our interview subjects came to include Wenfeng Liang, Xingxing Wang, and more young entrepreneurs. Wenfeng Liang sat down with Waves twice. These perhaps count as阶段性成果.

Not long ago, Waves interviewed Yu He of Black Ant Capital. The occasion was their lead investor role in the sole pre-IPO round for Laopu Gold — that "hottest ticket" on the Hong Kong exchange. The most memorable takeaway from the entire conversation: how a consumer fund managed to stay committed to consumer investing through the years when the sector was most despised.

He's answer was honest. He said he believed consumer would have its moment, but also that they had no edge in other sectors — even if those represented the era's bigger opportunities.

To believe in something, and hold fast unmoved: easier said than done.

Especially in venture capital, where sector rotation flows like water. New consumption was like this, new energy was like this, and now even AI — the great hope of the village — is too, though it's only just begun.

As for ourselves, today and going forward, we will be like everyone we observe and document: in constant groping and reconstruction, searching for a new self.

Last Sunday, the day we took down the exhibition, two new lines appeared in the guestbook at the entrance: "I'll be the golden story of VC's fortieth year!"

I don't know who "Sxd" is, but they must be young.

Below are selected records from Waves' third-anniversary exhibition, "Three Decades of Chinese Venture Capital." We hope this is a starting point — that these 225 photographs and dozens of physical artifacts, and the Chinese VC story they tell together, will travel much farther.

Exhibition Venue

"Return" was first mounted at Yuan Art Museum. Beyond 36Kr's connection to the Big Black Building, the architecture itself gave the museum a natural migratory circulation that dovetailed with our curatorial vision. Unexpectedly, we also found that a CVC investment team from a major steel group was permanently based in the museum's office space.

Quotes and Curatorial Handbook

Visible upon entry: words from Chengsu Wei during his 1987 trip to the US to study technical and economic evaluation of venture capital projects — "Without venture capital, building an innovation-driven country will be difficult to achieve."

The entire exhibition followed a migratory circulation through the museum, chronologically from beginning to end across five sections: Dawn in the East, The Birth of Giants, People in the Golden Dream, Out of Control, and Time Begins Again — corresponding to different eras in three decades of Chinese equity investment.

Wave Installation

The exhibition's most eye-catching feature: a wave-shaped art installation of rigid metal mesh, 3.5 by 4.5 meters. Light played across the undulating texture of the mesh, casting surging waves; walking inside, you could hear sounds filtering through — echoing the themes of Waves and Return. The piece was created by independent product designer Xiaochi Cai.

Bicycles and Shopping Cart

ofo and Mobike provided the exhibition's earliest inspiration; another installation was a shopping cart, which we filled with domestic new consumer brands during the exhibition. The years when the sharing economy and new consumption swept through ordinary people's lives — everyone remembers them vividly.

Old Televisions

In a narrow space in the gallery, three televisions from the 1980s and 90s looped programs: Boss Town from CBN, China Entrepreneurs, Fortune Life, CCTV's Meeting the Giants, and Nancy's Wealth and Wisdom — on screen, the youthful faces of industry titans long absent from public view. To help visitors discover this tucked-away space, we posted a prominent quote: "Today is cruel, tomorrow is crueler, but the day after tomorrow is beautiful. Most people die tomorrow night and never see the sun of the day after." Jack Ma, December 2005, answering questions after a speech at the China Economic Research Center.

The Belated Photograph

A photograph from Qitian Yu, formerly of Shunwei Capital, arrived only on installation day. It documented a June 16, 2022 business trip: "Had arranged to meet with an entrepreneur, but upon arriving at Nanjing South Station was notified I'd be turned back on the spot. In the gap between trains, I ended up speaking with the entrepreneur through a fence." We quickly added this to the "Out of Control" section, and it resonated deeply with many visitors.

Our VC memory collection channel remains open — we welcome more memory materials.

First Visitor and Last to Leave

Xi Cao, founder of Monolith and Lisi Capital, was our first visitor. He contributed his own VC memories for the exhibition: Kuaishou and Douyu's IPOs, the founding of Hongshan Seed, and a photograph of his daughter leaping as sunlight streamed into the Monolith office before they'd even moved in. We placed this photo between "Out of Control" and "Revival," signifying hope and the future.

Cao paused before his daughter's photograph, then wrote in the guestbook after viewing the exhibition: "A thousand sails pass by the sunken ship; ten thousand trees spring to life before the sickly tree." Later, industry friends who visited after him "replied" in kind: "Peach and plum blossoms in the spring breeze, a cup of wine; rainy night on the river, ten years of lamplight. (Yuan Liu)"; "The spring breeze greens the southern bank again — when will the bright moon shine me home? (Guan Shanxing)"

Many Waves partners came to the opening party; the space was一度热闹非凡. At closing, we took a group photo before the wave — the Waves team, collaborators and former colleagues, industry friends, and a cluster of socially ravenous post-00s.

Moments of Resonance

During the exhibition, we received a flood of spontaneous visit recaps on Xiaohongshu and Jike, along with third-anniversary wishes for Waves. Zhang Zhuo, founder of the WeChat account "Zhuo Jian," also wrote "People in the Golden Dream" after his visit, annotating the stories behind the photographs.

Exhibition Scenes

Image source: Waves editorial team

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Where the money flows, where fortunes rise and fall