[Culture] Founded "Chinatown" magazine in 1992

Author: JEFFI CHAO HUI WU

Time: June 24, 2025, Tuesday, 1:59 PM

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[Cultural] 1992 Chinatown Magazine

"Chinatown" magazine was the first milestone in my entry into the business world.

It was 1992, and the streets of Sydney were bustling with traffic, with Chinese international students merely a highlight in the city. At that time, most students were still memorizing vocabulary, doing homework, and planning "where to go after graduation," while I had already chosen a different path—immersing myself in the marketplace, battling in the real tide of commerce. That year, I invested my savings into a magazine company called "Chinatown," founded by a friend, and officially stepped into the Australian Chinese cultural circle.

To outsiders, it was just a full-color printed Chinese magazine; but for me, it was the starting point of my upgrade in commercial understanding and an important node in the fundamental change of my life structure. For the first time, I deeply felt that the essence of the business world has never been the superficial buying and selling, but rather a game of information, structure, and control.

Our "Chinatown" is completely different from the mass-produced Chinese newspapers available at the time. It is a high-quality, high-investment full-color magazine that covers multiple dimensions including news, culture, studying abroad, business, and art. In Australia during the 1990s, there were almost no precedents for such a Chinese publication. What we aimed to do was not just to "publish a magazine," but to create a platform—one that allows the Chinese community in Australia to find a sense of belonging spiritually, and also lets the local society see the real us, to see the voice and strength that belongs to the Chinese in Australia.

However, ideals are rich and full, while reality is extremely lean. Soon, I discovered the huge contradiction hidden beneath the glamorous surface: **all the core processes are in the hands of others.** Printing, typesetting, design, logistics—each step needs to be outsourced, and each step feels like an invisible hand choking our throats. The printing factory charges exorbitantly, yet the quality often spirals out of control; each publication feels like a gamble, with submission, printing, and delivery all relying on the other party's schedule. A slight delay can disrupt the entire distribution plan. It was then that I clearly realized for the first time that the market is not the biggest threat to us; what truly "strangles" us is the instability of the supply chain and the lack of control over the core processes.

At that moment, a seemingly crazy thought popped up: why don't we build a printing factory ourselves?

As soon as this idea was proposed, almost everyone treated it as a joke. We had no background, no experience, no technology, and we hadn't even touched a printing press. At that time, people around me advised, "You don't understand printing; this is not something you can do." But I knew in my heart that if the core process was not in our hands, we would always be passive followers, with no choices and no voice.

So, I began a thorough "on-site learning" process. I started with the most basic printing technology, studying equipment configuration, learning about ink properties, analyzing the matching of different papers and colors, and breaking down each step in the printing process. During the day, I negotiated with partners in the office, pressed for cost reductions, and monitored progress. At night, I returned home to delve into materials, repeatedly recording, dissecting, and deducing the entire printing system. No one taught me; I learned on my own, dismantled things myself, and explored every link by myself.

Those days were extremely difficult, but also extremely fulfilling. Countless nights, I sat alone at my desk, drawing flowcharts with paper and pen, deducing the logic between ink, paper, printing machine speed, and color reproduction; during the day, I observed the machines operating in the printing factory, consulting and learning from the skilled workers. In this way, from zero to one, I gradually mastered the underlying logic of printing technology, laying a solid foundation for the future establishment of my own printing factory.

**The experience of "Chinatown" has completely reshaped my understanding of "entrepreneurship."** I realized that entrepreneurship is never just a game of ideas or concepts, but rather the ability to control the entire process. Only when you hold the core links of the industry chain in your hands can you truly respond to risks with composure and genuinely steer the direction.

Since that magazine, I have set a principle for myself: **relying on others is always a risk; mastering the core is the real confidence.** This principle has since been applied to every cross-disciplinary field I entered—whether in IT, logistics, information platforms, or the design and optimization of intelligent systems, I have never been satisfied with being a manager who merely performs surface operations; instead, I strive to be a creator of structural control.

Looking back to 1992, many people see a beautifully crafted magazine, but what I see is a path extending into the next thirty years. That path is destined to be full of challenges, yet it has allowed me to achieve one extreme evolution after another with each practice. And all of this began with that seemingly ordinary magazine, "Chinatown," which hides infinite possibilities.

Source: http://www.australianwinner.com/AuWinner/viewtopic.php?t=696496