The Meaning of Inward Exploration | 5Y Spring Festival Books & Film Recommendations
The new year approaches; wishing you spring's blessings.
The year 2020 was significant and extraordinary. The protracted pandemic, a world of increasing entropy and disorder — everyone went through a lot, and found the space to cultivate courage and agency.
Year's end is a good time for reflection and taking stock. We've selected some books and films that inspired us over the past year. Entrepreneurship and investing are about exploring the external world; reading and watching films are paths inward. It's this internal resonance that helps us more deeply understand what we've experienced, what we face, and what we hope for in life.
Not sure if we can pass these forces on to you. But at the very least, these works might help you spend a fulfilling Spring Festival holiday.
Here are 11 book and film recommendations from our colleagues at 5Y Capital. There's also a special surprise for you at the end — don't miss it.
The new year approaches. Wishing you spring's blessings.
P.S. Listed alphabetically by title.
01
How Google Works
Author: Eric Schmidt Publisher: CITIC Press
Recommended by: Yunhong Wei, Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
Though rooted in tech, this book offers insights for many industries — how do we keep pace with the times? How do we iterate culture? How do we innovate? What talent should we recruit? Google's approach is direct and bold: find solutions through technical insights, recruit core talent with creativity, perceptiveness, and customer intuition, and foster bottom-up agile autonomy to ultimately achieve 10x or greater innovation and improvement. What's particularly interesting is that its managers have long worked to build a company environment that doesn't collapse from risk or failure — deeply admirable.
02
Founder's Notes
Author: Ji Qi Publisher: Pruilli Culture · Hunan People's Publishing House
Recommended by: Ji Tong, Senior Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
An outstanding entrepreneur recounts three entrepreneurial journeys in the plainest language. In this book, we can learn not only about corporate governance, but also see how a "living person" understands and approaches life. May everyone find what they love — loving their career, their partner, their family, and life itself.
03
Creativity, Inc.
The Chinese title translates to "Innovation, Inc."
Authors: Ed Catmull / Amy Wallace Publisher: Random House
Recommended by: Hejia Zhao, Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
I've been thinking about content creation lately. The author, co-founder of Pixar, attempts to deconstruct how Pixar consistently produces works with vitality and emotional resonance, and how the organization provides an environment that supports creativity. If you get the chance, I also recommend visiting the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. Disney itself is an entrepreneurial story, outputting spiritual energy and positive values through storytelling again and again over nearly a century.
This book also appeared on Mark Zuckerberg's reading list. He wrote: "I love this firsthand account of how to build a great company like Pixar, and how to develop innovation and creativity."
04
The Great State, the Great City: Unification, Development, and Balance in Contemporary China
Author: Lu Ming Publisher: Shanghai People's Publishing House
Recommended by: Xiao Zhou, Vice President at 5Y Capital
This is a rare work of public policy research written with passion and deep feeling. The author explores urban development issues with fervor and empirical rigor. The first edition came out in July 2016; it's now in its 14th printing — testament to its popularity.
Steven Cheung once offered an explanation for China's economic miracle: the inter-regional GDP competition mechanism made every local government operate like a company, frantically competing for investment, like economic engines racing against each other. But this model is also terrifying, because policy design under this framework serves investment and construction, while the people who matter most become expendable. This development model is shortsighted, often tied to political performance and term limits, leading to redundant competition and resource waste.
Today, the flaws of this system are apparent. Less developed regions suffer from inefficiency, while coastal areas face留不住 labor, declining skilled workers, sky-high housing prices, and rapidly rising costs. There are massive distortions here, rooted in urban development strategy and model.
Lu Ming's book debates many conventional assumptions: Why restrict population in large cities? Why send migrant workers back to their hometowns? Over the years, there has indeed been much regression on these broad directions, largely unnoticed across various domains. The decisive role of market forces in resource allocation hasn't been truly understood; simplistic, intuitive logic prevails instead.
Many problems persist uncorrected, and many are actually quite simple to grasp. This is where reform space still exists. Improving efficiency through reform may not seem like an immediate fix, and may even require enduring some pain. But what matters is getting the direction right.
For me, one insight from this book is how to understand local government debt. A region builds and builds, amassing huge debt; now the problem has surfaced. What to do? The more backward the region, the higher the financing costs from bond markets — isn't this a vicious cycle? Are there ways to resolve it? This book offers answers.
05
Drive to Survive
The Chinese title translates to "Formula 1: Racing to Survive"
Netflix documentary
Recommended by: Ye Yuan, Partner at 5Y Capital
This is the luckiest profession in the world — the 20 best drivers on the planet competing globally. It's also the most brutal — even if you're good enough, only the very best few get to stand on the podium.
Everyone is the driver of their own life, feeling immense competitive pressure in tests that push you to the limit, where every second counts. This is also today's entrepreneurial landscape. CEOs are lonely, sensitive, competitive, resilient — in the ongoing contest between talent and diligence, a strong mind is essential for sustained excellence. Feel this state, put yourself in their shoes, and you'll gain energy.
06
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman
Author: Richard Feynman [US] Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company
Recommended by: Kaiyan He, Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
The book collects 13 of Feynman's most representative interviews and lectures, through which his rich and brilliant life unfolds — professionally, he participated in the Manhattan Project and won the Nobel Prize in Physics, his acceptance speech being "I already got my prize, and the prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out"; in life, he was witty and humorous, played bongo drums, painted, danced, and was also an expert at opening safes.
Feynman's love of life, intense curiosity, and persistent pursuit of truth are deeply inspiring. The book contains many accessible analogies and first-principles thinking that may offer you a new perspective on current puzzles, while also inspiring you to cherish the present.
07
Made in America
Authors: Sam Walton / John Huey Publisher: Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House
Recommended by: Haichuan Hu, Senior Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
Cross-border e-commerce is retail at its core. Sam Walton inspired countless retail professionals through this book.
08
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Chinese title translates to "Fury at Sea" (2013)
Director: Peter Weir
Recommended by: Qin Liu, Founding Partner at 5Y Capital
I love this underdog story about men — about cruelty, honor, strategy, courage, and victory against impossible odds.
Sailing is an adventure that particularly demands values. In the film, even the captain must sometimes submit to the collective will of the crew. A weak sailor is cast aside by them, and even the captain cannot save him — this is the dilemma of honor versus collective will. This film deserves careful study by any leader.
09
Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level
Author: Leander Kahney Publisher: CITIC Press Group
Recommended by: Daiwei Wu, Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
Read alongside Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, and you'll discover fascinating tensions and order — a tension between idealists and professional managers, an order of aesthetics and design.
Great companies must endure succession, experience starkly different contradictions, and maintain certain kinds of order. How exactly these evolve reflects each founder's unique imprint.
10
Modern Natural Language Generation
Authors: Minlie Huang / Fei Huang / Xiaoyan Zhu Publisher: Publishing House of Electronics Industry
Recommended by: Yunfeng Shi, Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
In 2020, large-scale pre-trained models kept breaking through, with OpenAI's GPT-3 being the most representative. I deeply look forward to AI generating code, poetry, music, and dance — this will bring a paradigm shift in creativity no less significant than smartphone cameras. This book provides an accessible yet thorough introduction to the ideas, models, and latest advances in modern natural language generation.
11
Soul (2020)
Directors: Pete Docter / Kemp Powers
Recommended by: Zhuyi Yan, Investment Manager at 5Y Capital
Soul contains this story: A small fish swims up to an older fish and says, "I'm trying to find what they call the ocean."
"The ocean?" says the older fish. "You're in it right now."
"This?" says the young fish. "This is water. What I want is the ocean."
What's your spark in life? It might be your first step onto a long-dreamed-of stage, the first bite of pizza when you're hungry, or a falling leaf you touch when you look up at autumn. Spark isn't the purpose of life — it's the moment you want to live, the things that give life value. Great people always explore possibilities beyond all known rules. I hope Soul can bring you a little warmth and touch in the depths of winter. "Good luck finding your spark."
If you've happened to read or watch any of the above, feel free to leave a comment. And if any book or film/series left a deep impression on you this past year, welcome to recommend it in the comments :) We'll give the full set of recommended books above to the three commenters with the most likes on their featured comments.
Note: The deadline is 6:00 PM, February 17, 2021. Winners will be notified on the first workday after the holiday. Please reply with your shipping information within 24 hours of receiving notice, or it will be considered forfeited.
5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Capital) currently manages approximately $3 billion across USD and RMB dual-currency funds. We believe that if the world starts believing in the crazy you that others see, the world will be a better place.
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