Ionce met Huang Guangyu, then China’s richest man, in his office perched high above Beijing. A putrid smog enveloped the building, rendering Mr Huang’s view – for which he was presumably paying top renminbi – about as impressive as if we had met at the bottom of a coal mine. He chain-smoked throughout (adding to the swirling fog) and fiddled distractedly with his mobile phone as he answered questions about Gome, the vast electronics retailer he had built from scratch.
黄光裕还是中国首富的时候，我与他见过一面，是在他那俯瞰北京城的办公室里。整个大厦为污秽的雾霾所笼罩，我们仿佛置身于一座煤矿底部，办公室的视野也就不那么令人惊艳了——据说黄光裕可是为此花了大价钱。采访期间，他不停地抽烟（萦绕的烟雾愈加浓厚），心不在焉地摆弄自己的手机。采访主题是他白手起家打造出的庞大电器零售帝国国美电器(Gome)。
Ten days after we met, Mr Huang disappeared. He emerged more than a year later, in April 2010, in a Beijing courthouse where, after a cursory trial held behind closed doors, he was sentenced to a 14-year prison sentence for bribery, insider trading and “economic crimes”. That could have been the end of it. But Mr Huang has not gone away.
我们见面后10天，黄光裕便销声匿迹了。又过了一年多，也就是2010年的4月，他出现在北京市一家法庭上，经过简短的闭门审理之后，黄光裕因行贿罪、内幕交易罪及“多种经济罪”被判处14年有期徒刑。至此，事情本可以画上句号。但是，黄光裕并没有就此消失。
Still the largest single shareholder of Gome (pronounced “guo-mei”), with a more than 30 per cent stake, he is fighting to maintain control from behind bars. Specifically, he wants to remove Chen Xiao, chief executive, who has overhauled the company since Mr Huang’s incarceration. Mr Chen invited Bain Capital, a US private equity group, to take a stake and has implemented a turnround plan.
他仍然是国美唯一的最大股东，持有超过30%的股份，并在狱中努力维系自己的控制权。他尤其希望罢免首席执行官陈晓。自从黄光裕被收监以后，陈晓对公司进行了全面改革，邀请美国私人股本集团贝恩资本(Bain Capital)入股国美，并开始执行一项彻底改组计划。