Then there is digital technology: instead of arriving on the dot, you can send a text message apologising for being late (with nearly 25 billion messages sent in 2005, Germany is one of Europe's text-messaging champions).
The ever adaptable Ding founded NetEase as a software company in 1997 when that area was hot, listed it on Nasdaq three years later as an Internet portal during the dot-com boom, and then, after weathering an accounting scandal, tacked toward gaming.