Tian in Beijing with his grandmother, who raised him while his parents were working as ecologists in Gansu province. (Courtesy of Tian Suning)

One day in the university library he met a disaffected Englishman who had moved to China during the Cultural Revolution. He turned out to be a good English tutor, introducing Tian to John Lennon records and George Orwell's "1984." "He opened my eyes and opened my mind," Tian said.

While a graduate student in Beijing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tian dabbled in publishing. He published a translation of Lee Iacocca's book "Talking Straight" that was done in only four days by a team of 12 student translators to beat another Chinese publisher. One problem: how to translate "pick-up truck." Another problem: copyright.

With some money in his pocket, he and a friend took their girlfriends to the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel, the first major Western-style hotel in Beijing, for a drink. But it was 1985, and the hotel was trying to cater to foreign business people. Tian and his friends didn't look the part for such a hotel's clientele. In the lobby, they were asked for their passports and turned away.

"I was very humiliated," he recalls. "We were so angry. We had a beer in a small restaurant and my friend said, 'We have to make money and feel that we are something.' "

Eleven years later, after Tian came back from the United States, his friend called. The friend had made millions of dollars running a trading company that is now listed on a Chinese stock exchange. He said to Tian that they needed to go back to the Great Wall Sheraton.

"I said, 'This is stupid,' " Tian recalls. "He asked me what kind of car I had. I said, 'I drive a VW Jetta.' " The friend scoffed. "I said, 'We spend our money on computers instead of cars,' " Tian recalls. "He said he'd pick me up in his Mercedes 600." By that time, after the boom in the Chinese economy, the hotel was full of Chinese customers.

Tian and his friend were seated and treated like the other guests. But that wasn't good enough. "My friend called the manager and made a big fuss."

However, the earlier incident at the Great Wall Sheraton and some other embarrassing meetings with foreign businessmen convinced Tian that he needed to learn more about the West. So he took the standardized English test for foreign students and applied to schools in the United States.

And so, on to Lubbock, where he drove a pick-up for four years. In Lubbock, Tian said, the best hour of the day was sitting with a beer and watching public television's "MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour."

But some of that bromegrass got under his skin. He was concerned about the environment and felt that he should follow in his parents' footsteps and make it his career. He felt a responsibility to the people at Texas Tech who had invested time and scholarship money in him. So he went to work for a year for something called the Green China project in Washington, D.C., but it didn't click. He still feels guilty about it.

"There are lots of hopeless battles for people who want to do environmental projects in China," Tian said. "One reason is that China doesn't allow real nongovernment organizations. Another is that industrialization and economic growth are the country's top priorities. But if we continue the current growth pattern there will be no way to avoid environmental disaster."

The solution: What else? The Internet. "The only way is to alter technology and alter the economic growth pattern," he said. "One fundamental problem is that the economy is built on energy, not on information."

In China, however, information has been treated as political propaganda, not as a marketable commodity. So the same equipment that Tian sells to make the Internet work faster, is also being used by the government to block access to sensitive Internet sites. Only those adroit with computers can still find ways to circumvent the electronic barriers.

Tian compares the Internet to the invention of the printing press. "People were afraid then too that information would not just be for the elite," he said. "People could read Confucius and get the wrong idea." Tian himself is still full of wonder about the Internet. He had a business meeting in San Jose; he booked a beach house online. He couldn't get home for his daughter's birthday, so he sent flowers by connecting to www.flowers.com. He sent a note: "Your daddy is building the Internet in China and you got this flower."

Like Tian, AsiaInfo is a strange hybrid.

In the early 1990s, a Chinese American in Dallas offered to give Tian money to start a company on condition that Tian return to China. "I said, that's exactly what I want," Tian recalls. So he started a company in Dallas designed to do business in China.

Because AsiaInfo is American, it has good access to technology. Because Tian is Chinese, it often has an edge on American companies competing for contracts. AsiaInfo buys equipment from giants like Cisco Systems Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., and it buys from smaller American software companies that don't know the Chinese market. Tian's company also has 170 of its own programmers finding software solutions for Chinese firms.

"If we bid against IBM, what's the difference we offer? We're small and they're big. We're three years old and they're 70 years old," Tian said. But, he added, "China is our only market. And one thing we represent is a new generation of Chinese companies and a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs."

Is he Chinese or American? "I really consider myself both. China gave me my birth and early education. America opened my mind and gave me the opportunity to start a company very easily. And it gave me the confidence about what a young man can accomplish."

China's values, he said, have changed. "We used to be such an idealistic society," Tian said. "After the Cultural Revolution, however, we believed in nothing. We were like the Beat Generation. I was one of them. Materialism became the natural choice for us."

Tian says most people feel their best days were at university and that he's trying to recreate a campus atmosphere at his company. He pays people $500 to $1,000 a month, plus that much again in retirement benefits, good wages by Chinese standards.

"We very forcefully want to create a new culture," he said. "In this changing environment and society, you can't rely on anybody. Only on ourselves."

When Tian worries about the future, he's not thinking about unrest, protests or political instability. He's not thinking about Mao, broken eggshells or even bromegrass. Asked about his biggest problem of the future: "management," he said.

"The market is no problem. The market is tremendous. But can you find enough personnel? How do you manage a high-growth company in China. Can we manage a $200 million or a $1 billion company? How can we transform from entrepreneurs to managers? That worries me."