我坐在酒吧的凳子上，金属圆桌对面坐的是世界第二富比尔•盖茨，他一边喝着健怡可乐(Diet Coke)、拿手抓着薯条吃，一边向我介绍着脊髓灰质炎疫苗(polio vaccine)的来龙去脉。如果比尔•盖茨不再到处捐赠他的财富，他仍将是世界首富。在给比尔和梅琳达•盖茨基金会(Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation，主要资助卫生、扶贫和教育事业) 捐赠了280亿美元后，如今比尔•盖茨以个人财富540亿美元退居富豪榜次席。
尽管比尔•盖茨积累了巨额财富，但仍显得很谦卑。我们在他位于西雅图郊区科克兰德(Kirkland)的办公室里碰头后，一起步行穿过马路来到了开在伍德马克酒店（Woodmark，当地一家漂亮的酒店）内的沙滩咖啡屋（Beach Café，音译）。这是个很惬意的地方，可以眺望华盛顿湖(Lake Washington)的风光，但我猜测盖茨选在此会谈主要是图方便而非纯粹享受美食。我俩坐在远离其他用餐者的酒吧区。盖茨穿着一件带拉链的亮白色运动衫上衣与淡绿色衬衫，下身穿卡其布裤子，50多岁的他仍显年轻，只是沙色的头发隐隐约约有几根白发。
服务员走过来后，盖茨点了蛤肉杂烩浓汤(clam chowder)、夹干酪与碎牛肉的三明治(cheeseburger)，我也要了一份同样的三明治，还点了份蟹糕(crab dip)，然后我俩就开始聊他在西雅图的生活，他告诉我仍然喜欢开车在西雅图市里兜风。盖茨不喜欢招摇过市，我对此很感兴趣，于是我就问他有没有奢侈一点的爱好，他回答说没有，并说他的爱好就是打桥牌，况且“全部的‘行头’只需一副牌”。于是我就问盖茨他算不算个苦行僧呢？他立刻提出异议：“不不不……我有漂亮的办公室，还有漂亮的家……可见我本人并不排斥好东西，我只是恰巧没有奢侈的爱好。”但就在距我们几英里的地方，坐落着他那幢集先进科技于一身的豪宅，据称价值1.25亿美元，豪宅里还包括了一座图书馆，馆顶上就写着摘自《了不起的盖茨比》(The Great Gatsby)中的某句名言。
盖茨向我讲述了微软的创建经过，也基本上与钱无关。1975年，在从哈佛退学、全身心投入到运算后，他创建了微软公司。“我决定退学并创办微软公司，并非是因为这是个赚钱的行当。我与保罗•阿伦（Paul Allen，盖茨儿时的伙伴、微软公司的合伙创建人）只是痴迷于个人电脑，而且我们很惊讶当时并无他人涉足这个领域……我俩开始着手处理最感兴趣的问题，还招了一些特别棒的员工……我们就这样占得了先机。”正如盖茨所言，财富几乎属于歪打正着的副产品：“真的是这样，你如果开发出了好的软件，推销它就并非如想象中那样复杂……软件推销很简单；你竭尽全力地去做，回报肯定比付出多。”
我想盖茨的诸多竞争对手在听到他如此轻描淡写地讲述微软帝国的创建过程后，脸上一定会露出难以置信的神情。盖茨曾是出了名的“人见人打”的商人，而且在上世纪90年代中叶，微软被指控存在反竞争行为，最终在美国和欧洲被罚了几十亿美元。
我向他求证当时流行的说法——上个世纪90年代，高效而又无情的微软公司四处“打压”它的竞争对手苹果公司，即便苹果的铁杆粉丝仍坚信自家的产品设计得更棒。“我记不得它们被微软‘挤压’过，”盖茨哼着鼻子说。“我也不记得曾经发生过微软‘挤压’竞争对手这样的事。我们为它们设计相关软件，而且是在它们处境最艰难的时候。好好想想：到底是谁投资了苹果公司，让它们渡过难关？哼！那就是我们微软公司。”他轻蔑地笑着说。
上世纪90年代末，盖茨（当时他40来岁）开始把财富投入慈善事业，他的人生方向开始转轨，其咄咄逼人的形象也随之改变。“我记得有一年我捐了有160多亿美元。”他停顿了一下，随后含含糊糊（这可不是盖茨的说话风格）地纠正说，“我觉得应该是2000年：捐款可能甚至有200亿美元。”从那以后，他就不断地捐出个人财富，而且还全力说服其他一些富翁——甲骨文公司的拉里•埃里森(Larry Ellison of Oracle)，CNN的特德•特纳(Ted Turner)以及纽约市长迈克尔•布隆伯格(Michael Bloomberg)——把个人大部分财富捐出来做慈善。
盖茨若有所思地说：在如此年富力强的年龄就作出投身慈善的决定，有些人可能会接受不了。“他们会说出各种理由来推托，原因是：不管你是怎么赚来的钱，说明你曾经是赚钱的行家里手，对现在的行当也是轻车熟路……所以说转向一个全新的领域是相当困难的，而且这有点逼迫自己赶紧考虑身后事的感觉。”
就盖茨而言，他的家庭本身就有很好的慈善传统。他已过世的母亲玛丽就曾是国际联合劝募协会西雅图分会(the Seattle branch of the United Way International)的负责人，国际联合劝募协会是一家大型的慈善机构。他的父亲老比尔（如今已84岁高龄）也是一位热心肠的慈善家，目前正在华盛顿州四处奔走，呼吁向富人征收高税率。最重要的是：盖茨的妻子梅琳达（盖茨与她结识于微软公司，并于1994年缔结连理，他们共育有三个孩子）同样积极投身慈善事业。如今基金会墙上悬挂的各式匾额明白无误地诠释了什么叫“比尔和梅琳达•盖茨基金会”。
2008年，盖茨担任了微软非执行董事会主席(non-executive chairman)一职，如今他把绝大部分时间放在基金会。但他说，“我如今花在基金会上的时间，与我‘转行’做慈善前的10年里一样多。”他停了一会儿，然后接着说：“当然我现在呆在基金会的时间比不上我20来岁、30出头那阵子，那时的我没有任何休假，晚上也基本不回家，真到了痴狂的地步。”那几年，当亿万富翁、投资大师沃伦•巴菲特（Warren Buffett，如今是盖茨的密友、桥牌搭档以及盖茨基金会的主要捐赠人）想要拜会盖茨，刚开始微软的这位大忙人日程安排太紧，硬是没挤出时间来。“那时候我实在太忙了，会见巴菲特这样的事，我压根就没时间做。”于是我立刻暗示性地问他：你没有社交生活？盖茨纠正我说：“不，我记得曾有个周日晚上，我回家陪我父母，但我只是不去约见那些投资界的生面孔。”
（未完待续）
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035517
I am sitting on a bar stool. On the other side of a round metal table, the world’s second richest man is sipping a Diet Coke, eating french fries with his fingers and explaining the history of the polio vaccine. Bill Gates would still be the richest man in the world, if he didn’t keep giving his money away. Now, after donating $28bn to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – which funds health, development and educational causes – he is down to his last $54bn. For a man who has made such an incredible fortune, Gates seems to have modest tastes. We meet at his office in Kirkland, a suburb of Seattle, and walk across the road to the Beach Café in the Woodmark, a smart local hotel. It is a pleasant enough spot, overlooking Lake Washington, but I am guessing it has been chosen for convenience rather than cuisine. We are seated in the bar area, away from the other diners. Gates is wearing a brilliant white, zip-up sweatshirt over a pale green shirt and khaki trousers. Now in his mid-fifties, he still looks youthful, with just a hint of grey in his sandy hair. A waitress comes into view and Gates orders clam chowder and a cheeseburger. I also go for a cheeseburger, with a crab dip, and we get talking about life in Seattle. He tells me that he still drives himself around the city. Intrigued by his lack of ostentation, I ask whether he has expensive hobbies? Not really, his game is bridge and “all you need for that is a deck of cards”. So is he an ascetic? Gates demurs – “No ... I have a nice office. I have a nice house ... So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.” Just a couple of miles away, however, lies the hi-tech Gates mansion, said to be worth $125m, complete with a library with a quotation from The Great Gatsby on the ceiling. Gates’s account of the origins of Microsoft also has little to do with money. He founded the firm in 1975, after dropping out from Harvard to indulge his passion for computing. “When I decided to go and start Microsoft, it wasn’t because it was some lucrative career. Paul Allen [his childhood friend and co-founder of Microsoft] and I were just excited about the personal computer and it was something we were surprised nobody else was working on ... We got to work on the most interesting problems and hired incredible people ... We were in on the ground floor.” As Gates tells it, the money was almost an accidental byproduct: “Really, if you develop good software, the business isn’t that complicated ... The business side is pretty simple; you try and take in more than you spend.” I know that many of Gates’s competitors would roll their eyes at that rather artless description of how the Microsoft empire was built. Gates was a famously driven businessman and in the mid-1990s his firm was accused of anticompetitive practices and eventually fined billions of dollars in the US and Europe. I ask about the popular narrative that in the 1990s the ruthlessly efficient Microsoft had “crushed” its rival, Apple, even though Apple fans insisted that its products were better designed. “I don’t remember them being crushed,” snorts Gates. “I don’t remember them ever being crushed. We were writing software for them and in their lowest day, who [was it that] invested in Apple to help them out? Well, that was Microsoft. I see,” he laughs scornfully. In the late 1990s Gates, then in his mid-forties, began to change direction and his tough image changed with it, as he channelled his money into philanthropy. “I think there was one year that I gave, like, over $16bn.” He pauses and says with uncharacteristic vagueness, “I think it was the year 2000: maybe even $20bn.” Since then he has kept giving and has also devoted himself to persuading fellow billionaires – such as Larry Ellison of Oracle, Ted Turner of CNN and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York – to give large parts of their fortunes to charity. Gates muses that the decision to turn to philanthropy at an early age can be uncomfortable for some people. “There’s all sorts of reasons to put off doing it, because however you made your money, you were super-good at it, you know what you are doing ... So getting into something new is very difficult and also it kind of forces you to think about your death.” In Gates’s case, there is a strong charitable tradition in the family. His late mother Mary chaired the Seattle branch of the United Way International, a major charity. His father Bill senior, now 84, is also an energetic philanthropist, and is currently campaigning for higher taxes on the rich in Washington State. Above all, Gates’s wife, Melinda, whom he met at Microsoft and married in 1994, (the couple has three children) is passionately engaged in the foundation’s work. The plaques on the foundation’s walls say very firmly that it is the “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation”. In 2008, Gates became non-executive chairman of Microsoft and he now devotes most of his time to the foundation. But, he says, “I’m working as many hours now as I did in the decade before I made the transition.” He pauses. “I don’t work the hours that I did in my twenties and early thirties, when I took no vacations and didn’t go home most nights. That was true fanaticism.” In those years, when Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who is now a close friend, bridge partner and a major donor to the Gates Foundation, wanted to meet the man from Microsoft, Gates initially couldn’t find time in his diary. “I was too busy; I didn’t do things like that.” So, I suggest, you had no social life? Gates puts me right: “No, I socialised with my parents on a Sunday night, but I just didn’t go and meet new people who were involved in investments.” Gates may no longer be working like a fanatic, but he is clearly utterly gripped by the medical challenges that his foundation is taking on – in particular the effort to develop new vaccines for malaria and HIV and to eradicate polio through vaccination. The moments when he appears to be most enjoying himself are when he gets into the science, and as he talks, he folds his arms across his chest and rocks gently backwards and forwards. But his conversation is also punctuated by sudden bursts of laughter. He chuckles as he describes the British army officer in India, who first discovered that malaria was carried by mosquitoes – “You know, good old Major Ross was sitting out there in India, not really doing much, but he was part of the British military and he ... figured out, hey, this thing is not about the smell from the swamp, this is the mosquito biting them.” The passion for science and technology that drove Microsoft forward is now being channelled into the search for medical advances. I ask Gates whether he sees any parallels between the development of software and the development of vaccines. “Oh sure,” he replies, taking a sip of Coke. “It’s backing smart people to solve a problem you think is important.” The main difference, he says, is the patience required. “With software you know whether something is right or not in three or four years ... but a lot of the things we’re doing now are more in the five- to 10-year time frame, like this malaria vaccine work.” Gates talks at length and with great enthusiasm about all the various lines of research being pursued in the search for vaccines for HIV and malaria, but he has no medical training. I ask him whether he ever feels out of his depth, discussing the latest developments. He shoots me a slightly incredulous look and says, “No, because I read whatever it takes and I get to learn whatever I want to learn. And I get to spend time with people who work in the field and they’re very nice about educating me. So I’ve got to learn a lot about immunology, which is a super-interesting field,” he says, grinning with pleasure and taking a bite out of his cheeseburger. One striking feature of the foundation is the extent to which its work is focused outside the United States, particularly in Africa and India. There is a programme devoted to educational reform in America but the largest share of the money goes to health and development in the poorest parts of the world. Gates casts the decision almost as a matter of business efficiency. “You want to improve human life as much as you can sort of per-dollar, and the ability to do that in poor countries is over a hundred times greater than if you are working in an area where the basic situation is much better.” But what about the lobby of people who insist that foreign aid is ineffective – and that Gates is, in effect, wasting his money? His response is firm, although delivered in mild tones: “Well, if the critics were serious, what they would do is take aid and start to categorise it ... Nobody gave money to Mobutu in Zaire [thinking] he was spending it well, but that was a cold war calculation.” On the other hand, there are also “success stories in aid that are really quite unbelievable”. He ticks them off: “green revolution, reducing mass starvation, preventing famine ... The whole miracle of vaccination ... The primary reason we’ve gotten down from 20m children dying a year to close to eight million is vaccines.” Anticipating the objection that this will just cause a population explosion and therefore heighten poverty, Gates says that the research shows that healthier families with lower infant mortality have fewer children. So his vaccination and development programmes are actually helping to prevent a population explosion, rather than causing one. Inevitably, Gates is making decisions and funding projects that have all sorts of political implications. But, unlike George Soros, he has carefully avoided becoming a politically controversial figure. I get just a hint of his politics, however, when we discuss the speed and energy with which China is developing and I suggest that some might find it all a bit scary. The word sets Gates off: “If all you care about is the US or the UK’s relative strength in the world, then it’s particularly scary,” he says laughing sarcastically. “In the US case, 1945 was our relative peak.” Since then, as he points out, other countries from Europe to Asia have rebuilt and become more prosperous, but, says Gates, “I guess I’m just not enough of a nationalist to see it all in negative terms.” On the contrary, Gates is excited by the things that a richer China could bring to the world. “I think it’s good that Chinese scientists are working on cancer drugs, because if my kid got cancer, I wouldn’t look at the label that says ‘made in China’. And, hopefully, we’ll get them working on some of these vaccines and also on energy.” But Gates is also worried about the environment, so I ask him if the rapid industrialisation of China is a recipe for environmental disaster. Again, his impulse is to look to technology for a solution: “Short of going to war over this issue, the best way would be to find innovative forms of energy generation”. He is excited by solar and nuclear energy, and mocks those who complain about rising Chinese energy use – “I mean, these Chinese are actually using as much energy per capita as the average in the world today, how dare they! How did that happen? The US uses four times the average and the Brits double. But now these Chinese are trying to use the average.” He shakes his head in mock outrage, and for the first time I feel I am seeing Bill Gates in full flow – a mixture of energy, aggression, humour and intellect. But, just as he is warming to his theme, our waitress arrives with the coffee. Gates has declined, but I have ordered a single espresso (we are in Seattle, after all). When the waitress departs and Gates returns to the sensitive theme of American-Chinese relations, he is speaking more slowly and cautiously. I drink up my coffee and ask for the bill. As I produce my credit card, Gates looks slightly amused. “You sure you want to pay for this?” he says. “I got money.” I don’t doubt it. But the rules are that the FT pays for lunch. We will not be asking for Bill Gates’s charity. There are plenty of other willing takers for that. Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief international affairs columnist. .................................................. The Beach Café Woodmark Hotel, Kirkland, Seattle, Washington Crab dip $10 Cup chowder $10 Diet Coke $10 Iced water Old School cheeseburger x2 $28 Espresso $3.25 Total $61.25 ..................................................
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