Who is Cheng Wei, the man who defeated Uber’s Travis Kalanick in China? The 33-year-old founder of ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing Technology Co. keeps a quieter profile than many of his fellow tech entrepreneurs. Yet an old blog titled “With the Wind” that Mr. Cheng wrote in his pre-fame years provides insight into one of China’s new business stars.

He never counted on Didi’s massive success

In his first blog post after founding Didi in the summer of 2012, Mr. Cheng gave a sober assessment of his startup’s chances.

“The likelihood of success for entrepreneurs is extremely small, while failure is inevitable. We see the brilliance of the extreme few who succeed, but we don’t see the bleakness and desolation of the countless numbers who fail.”

He wrote that back in 2004, Chinese startups survived on average 3.7 years, and that the number dropped to 2.9 years by 2011. Mr. Cheng concluded that for a startup to have a chance of success, it needed to catch a rising industry wave the way Chinese smartphone-maker Xiaomi did.

What he did in the weeks before founding Didi

Mr. Cheng’s last two blogs before Didi was founded were posted on April 6, 2012 and recounted the simple life in his hometown in Jiangxi. He wrote about spending the morning helping his mother pick out a new smartphone to replace her four-year old handset.

“When I think of my mom using it, with its pink flip cover, I’m full of happiness.”

He then spent the afternoon sitting at a local Buddhist temple reading a book from his grandfather’s collection and quoted some classical Chinese verse about cherishing the things around you.

Reading

Mr. Cheng is a voracious reader. He wrote in 2011 that he had developed a habit of finding a quiet corner in the same bookstore to curl up in on Sundays, with a book and a cup of tea. In Oct. 2011, he wrote about enjoying his “only big vacation in all these years” by staying at home with family and devouring the 10-volume, 1.2 million-word fantasy adventure series “The Tibet Code” by Chinese author He Ma. The popular novels follow an expert on Tibetan Mastiffs who gets drawn into the intrigues of ancient Tibet. (Later when Mr. Cheng was seeking to convince high-profile banker Jean Liu to join Didi, he took her on an impromptu road trip in remote Tibet with his team.)

Philosophy

Over the years, Mr. Cheng grappled on his blog with questions like, what is the root of happiness, and what is most important in life? In one post in 2011, he recounted his musings on happiness while walking to work in the morning in Beijing.

“One can practice turning off the brain and opening the soul to enter another state. This is perhaps why on this familiar road, I can experience beauty today.”

In 2008, he recalled a conversation with a friend on why the shoulder is the most important part of the body.

“The most important thing in the world is not to gain anything, but to provide friends and family a shoulder to lean on when their heart is in pain.”

The Alibaba years

Mr. Cheng worked at Alibaba for most of the four years covered in the blog. His work during this period was low-key, but he approached it with seriousness and devotion. One major project that Mr. Cheng was in charge of was the launch of an Alibaba subsidiary in the northern Chinese city Langfang in 2008, an event timed to coincide with an international furniture expo. After weeks of preparation, the launch went off without a hitch, with one exception: they had purchased expensive “Brazilian rainbow butterflies” to release into the air as live confetti. To Mr. Cheng’s dismay, dozens of the butterflies ended up crushed underfoot by reporters in the conference room.

Ideas on management

Much of Mr. Cheng’s blog is devoted to management strategy, often with military analogies. “Training alone won’t make employees grow up,” he wrote in 2010.

“Generals can only be created on the battlefield, not in the military school.”

He posted a list of principles of good sales management, including, “The job of a sales manager is to create an environment where sales people are ‘forced to succeed.’” Mr. Cheng also reposted speeches from executives such as Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Baidu’s Robin Li and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. After climbing the Great Wall one time, he wrote about the importance of teamwork – a lesson he used in his delegation of powers at Didi:

“One person can walk fast, but only a group of people can last long.”

Food

Mr. Cheng’s blog chronicles many meals of simple fare, especially in his earlier years. His birthday dinner from 2008 (“It’s been so long since I celebrated a birthday, maybe three years, maybe four”) shows a home-style meal of a few stir-fried dishes and rice. That year, he had moved to Langfang as an Alibaba sales manager. Soon after the move, he wrote about walking around in the morning in search of breakfast and finding only an instant-noodle vendor. A few weeks later, the breakfast situation had improved: Mr. Cheng posted photos of steamed bread with sides of scrambled eggs and boiled eggs.

“Our breakfast is simple but cozy. I will never eat instant noodles again!”

--Eva Dou and Yang Jie