When the thin man in the silver-coloured windbreaker walks on to the stage, a roar goes through the crowd. Then he starts singing: “Friends, we have walked together all our lives, but those days are over,” and the audience goes crazy.
But this is not a pop concert. The 40,000 people in the Yellow Dragon Stadium in Hangzhou on Friday night were Alibaba Group employees and their family, and the man on stage was Jack Ma, saying farewell to the business he founded that has now grown into one of the world’s largest ecommerce companies.
At 48, Mr Ma has handed the job of chief executive to Jonathan Lu, his trusted lieutenant and 13-year Alibaba veteran, and gone into semi-retirement as executive chairman.