If you look inside “The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen”, you will find the following inscription:

To Gavin Zhao
For opening my eyes to the real China.
You have been a great teacher and mentor;
I can do now what I once thought was impossible.I hope you win your battle with cancer,
so that you can continue to mentor and inspire more people like me.

That was written about four years ago. Today, August 9, 2019 at 1:34PM, he lost his battle with cancer. He died while I was on an airplane flying from Singapore to China to see him, perhaps for one last time…seems I was a few hours too late.

As a professional, Gavin interacted primarily with me as a project manager. He was instrumental in helping to build Novena, Chibitronics, Fernvale, and many more projects big and small. What made him special was not that he was a genius in electronics or process engineering. His degree was in Western Philosophy: he understood how people worked, both in terms of their minds and their hearts. He thought deeply on all issues, big and small; formed his own opinions about government and politics, and as such, always had to straddle a fuzzy gray line living in China.

Part engineer, part troublemaker – we got along well.

I often referred to Gavin as my cultural Rosetta Stone. We used to spend long afternoons discussing politics in China, comparing the merits of democracy and communism. There are plusses and minuses to both philosophies. He would archive and share with me stories and posts censored by the Chinese government; I would bring him copies of the New York Times and new books to read. He could explain the deep meaning behind some subtle government actions that would almost seem routine to a Westerner. The problem is, coming from my American background, there are so many mind-blowing things to learn about Chinese politics, we could never have enough time together to discuss. We’d meet for tea at noon and before we knew it, the sun was down. I started the Betrusted project in part because I wanted to be able to spend more time learning from Gavin – unfortunately, it just wasn’t safe for us to correspond via the Internet about some of the ideas and concepts I wanted to learn, so our political discussions were always face to face. Betrusted will come too late for Gavin, but hopefully not too late for others.