Li Lu

Li Lu (born April 6, 1966) is a Chinese-born American value investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of Himalaya Capital Management. Prior to immigrating to America, he was one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests. In 2021, he also co-founded The Asian American Foundation and serves as its chairman. Early life and education Li Lu was born and grew up in Tangshan, China during the Cultural Revolution. He was a survivor of 1976 Tangshan earthquake, one of the deadliest in recorded history. In 1985, he went to Nanjing University, majored in Physics but later transferred to Economics. In 1989, he participated in the Tiananmen Square student protests and became one of the student leaders. He helped organize the students and participated in a hunger strike. After the crackdown on the movement, he fled the PRC and went to New York City at the age of 23 because his grandfather had received his PhD at Columbia University. In 1990, he published a book about his experience in China titled Moving the Mountain: My Life in China. The book was the basis of a 1994 feature-film documentary, Moving the Mountain, produced by Trudie Styler and directed by Michael Apted, which probed the origins of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the consequences of the movement in the lives of several of the movement's student leaders. The book recounts a symbolic marriage ceremony on May 22, 1989, between Li Lu and his then girlfriend, Zhao Ming, at the Heroes' Monument. Students gathered at the wedding to congratulate the married couple and sang the "Wedding March," which gradually turned into "The Internationale." Chai Ling quotes Li Lu in her book as saying the marriage was meaningless . At Columbia, Li first enrolled in the American Language Program to learn English. He then studied in the School of General Studies and later transferred to Columbia College. He ended up joining the college, law school and business school over a six-year period. Li Lu was one of the first in Columbia's history to receive three degrees simultaneously: a B.A. in economics, a M.B.A. and a J.D. in 1996.