Wang Jianzhou describes his three decades in telecom sector as exciting

On March 22 Wang Jianzhou retired from his work as chairman of China Mobile Communications Corp and the group's listed subsidiaries. He attended a farewell meeting in the morning and delivered a short speech. When he finished, thunderous applause broke out and Wang gave a deep bow to colleagues. The applause went on and on, so Wang stood up and bowed again.

Some people said they were deeply moved at that point. "I couldn't see his face but I had a view of an old man's back. I almost burst into tears because he had been with us for so many years," a China Mobile official, who declined to be named, said.

In his last exclusive interview during his tenure, which was with China Daily on March 9, Wang confessed he enjoyed every day of the past three decades working in the telecommunications industry. "The work was exciting. My biggest wish and pleasure is to see mobile technology innovations change people's ways of living, working and studying," Wang said.

Born in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province, Wang remembered he only called home once in three years when he lived in the countryside in the late 1960s.

It took him three hours to get through and hear his parents' voices. He had had to walk for half a day along mountain tracks to get to the nearest village's post and telecommunications office.

Things changed fast. China now had close to 1 billion cellphone users by the end of February. Even in rural areas, many farmers own mobile handsets. In big cities, some people have more than one cellphone. Wang carries five handsets every day, using them to test the quality of wireless networks.

China Mobile started to build up nine business bases in different Chinese cities from 2006, including a mobile video base in Shanghai. Shao Chang / For China Daily