Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s 6 most extravagant moments – including starring in a kung fu film with Jet Li
Jack Ma is “the most flamboyant tech founder on the planet,” Business Insider's Sinéad Baker recently wrote.
To celebrate the end of his 20 years leading the online marketplace, Ma recently celebrated his retirement with a 60,000-person party in an Olympic-sized stadium.
The days of seeing one of the top executives of Alibaba (the Chinese e-commerce company that owns the South China Morning Post) act in a film and officiate weddings may be over, however. Ma's successor, Alibaba Group Holding CEO Daniel Zhang, keeps such a low profile that an employee’s parent once mistook him for a janitor in Alibaba’s headquarters, according to Bloomberg.
Keep reading to learn more about the most extravagant moments of Jack Ma’s time at Alibaba.
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Every year, Ma officiates a mass wedding for Alibaba employees in May
At celebrations for “Ali Day” – the company’s annual extravaganza in honour of the company’s employees and their families – Ma always “marries” 102 couples that work for him, Business Insider previously reported.
The 2019 event was live-streamed on Youku, a video-sharing service owned by Alibaba. Ma drew criticism after encouraging the couples to have lots of sex and bear children.
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The wedding isn't a legal ceremony, but rather a celebration of all the Alibaba couples who were married over the past year.
At Alibaba’s 2017 annual party, Ma put on a performance while dressed as Michael Jackson
Ma danced to a medley featuring clips from Billie Jean and Dangerous while wearing Jackson’s iconic Dangerous costume, a video of the performance on Twitter shows.
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Mid performance, Ma removed his mask to reveal his identity to the audience, who went wild.
He also took to the stage at a music festival in October 2017
He and Chinese singer Li Jian performed for the audience. As Business Insider's Joe Ciolli reported in 2017, the festival was part of the Alibaba Cloud-hosted Computing Conference. Ma took to the stage in jeans and sunglasses and sang a combination of duets and solos.
The performance was a surprise to the audience, Business Insider previously reported.
He starred in a kung fu film
Alibaba produced a kung fu film in 2017 – Gong Shou Dao or The Art of Attack and Defence – and Ma starred in it with Jet Li.
In the 20-minute film, Ma battles eight attackers with his tai chi skills, Business Insider previously reported. More than 100 million people watched the film online.
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He threw a party in an Olympic stadium
And then, of course, there was Alibaba’s 60,000-person party in September, which simultaneously celebrated Alibaba's 20-year anniversary and Jack Ma's retirement.
The party was held in an Olympic stadium and featured a procession of employees reminiscent of the Olympic Games Parade of Nations, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Ma performed a rendition of Josh Groban’s You Raise Me Up with a group of senior executives on a portable stage that was pulled around the arena, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He gave surprise bottles of wine to all his employees
After the party, Ma gifted each Alibaba employee a bottle of wine featuring a hologram of himself.
According to The Drinks Business, every employee – including interns – was given one of these bottles.
The bottles came from Ma's winery in France – a close look at the bottle’s label in the video above shows the winery’s name.
To activate the hologram, recipients scanned a QR code on their phone and then slid the device into a drawer in the box to make the bottle light up with a hologram of Ma, a video of the gift posted to Twitter shows. Ma delivers a brief message before dissolving into flames.
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From officiating employee weddings to performing Michael Jackson dances on stage, Jack Ma has led a colourful and unpredictable life