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DeepSeek founder and chief executive Liang Wenfeng returned to Mililing village in Wuchuan, a county-level city administered by Zhanjiang in Guangdong province, around Chinese New Year’s Eve on January 28, 2025. Residents put up red banners calling him a source of hometown pride, and local reports said he played football with former classmates before leaving the following day. News outlets described the reception as a “hero’s welcome,” although the reporting does not establish that it was an official government parade.
What happened when Liang Wenfeng came home?
Liang’s visit took place during the 2025 Lunar New Year holiday, shortly after DeepSeek’s artificial-intelligence models had become a major international story. Reports from the South China Morning Post and TechCrunch said villagers displayed red banners praising Liang as the village’s “hometown pride.” Local accounts also described residents gathering to greet him and a football game with former school friends.
The best-supported description is an enthusiastic community reception. “Hero’s welcome” and similar phrases are journalistic characterizations, not evidence of a formally organized state ceremony. The available reports do not verify that Liang delivered a public speech, nor do they provide a consistently counted crowd. One Economic Times account referred to hundreds of people, but other coverage emphasizes banners, residents and heightened attention without establishing a precise total.
Where is Mililing village?
Mililing is Liang’s childhood or ancestral village in Wuchuan, within Zhanjiang, Guangdong, in southern China. Those are different administrative levels: Mililing is the village, Wuchuan is the county-level city, and Zhanjiang is the prefecture-level city. DeepSeek, by contrast, is based in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province. “Back home” therefore refers to Liang’s hometown visit, not a return to the company’s headquarters.
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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The village’s location and the Lunar New Year timing were reported by the South China Morning Post. A report republished by GeoPolitTechs placed the visit around January 28, 2025, with Liang reportedly leaving on January 29: GeoPolitTechs.
Why residents were celebrating him
The welcome followed DeepSeek’s sudden rise to global prominence. Its DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model drew attention because reports presented it as competitive with leading AI systems while being developed under tighter computing and chip constraints than many observers expected. Coverage described strong results on selected benchmarks and renewed debate about the cost of advanced AI, access to Nvidia hardware and China’s ability to develop frontier models.
Those claims need context. A model’s result on a particular benchmark does not prove that it universally outperforms every rival, and statements that DeepSeek was built for a fixed “fraction” of competitors’ cost depend on what expenses and hardware use are counted. The Guardian described the broader technology and geopolitical significance, while TechCrunch provided background on Liang and the company.
Liang Wenfeng’s path to DeepSeek
From Zhejiang University to quantitative investing
Contemporary profiles identify Liang as born in 1985 and educated at Zhejiang University. He became interested in applying machine learning to quantitative trading and helped build AI-focused investment businesses before DeepSeek.
High-Flyer’s role
High-Flyer, the quantitative hedge fund associated with Liang, backed DeepSeek. DeepSeek emerged as an independent AI company in 2023. This history helps explain why the company approached model development from a research and engineering base connected to quantitative finance rather than from the usual consumer-internet founder pipeline.
A publicity-shy founder in the spotlight
Local interviews, social-media posts and hometown reporting often portray Liang as a strong student with unusual mathematical ability, the child of educators and a keen football player. They also describe him as private and less interested in celebrity than many technology founders. These are attributed local accounts, not independently verified psychological conclusions.
One account said Liang told friends he intended to return home while avoiding excessive attention. That detail should be treated as a reported anecdote. TechCrunch also mentioned that he returned with bodyguards, but that report does not establish a formal security operation or a government-organized event.
What changed for the village afterward?
The attention did not end with the holiday visit. Reports said people began traveling to Mililing to see the hometown associated with DeepSeek’s founder. A later South China Morning Post report published in March 2025 described the village as a tourist hotspot and said local authorities paid for renovations or other improvements. That later tourism and infrastructure story is an aftermath of the January homecoming, not part of the original welcome itself.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchWhat the homecoming meant
Liang’s return connected a small Guangdong village to one of 2025’s most consequential technology stories. Residents were expressing local pride in a former neighbor whose company had triggered worldwide discussion about AI efficiency, semiconductor access and China’s technological capacity. The evidence supports a warm, highly visible local reception amplified by DeepSeek’s breakthrough—not a verified national ceremony or proof that every dramatic claim about the company’s cost and performance was settled fact.
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