When I ask my host if he feels he needs any more money he is completely matter of fact — without a hint of greed or self-doubt: “It’s not that I want more; but I will get more.” I have no particular reason to doubt him: like so many of China’s new billionaire class Liu Qiangdong is making up for lost time — and with vertiginous speed.

Again, like so many of China’s new titans, Liu’s family was so poor that until he went to university aged 18 he only tasted meat once or twice a year. His family, peasant farmers in arid coal country, 700km south of Beijing, had a few rice fields but they also had to hand over the crop to the government; these were the dire days after the Cultural Revolution. “From June until September we were able to eat corn — cornmeal porridge for breakfast, corn pancakes for lunch and dry cornbread for dinner; cornbread so tough it made your throat bleed,” he tells me. “The other eight months we ate boiled sweet potato for breakfast, sweet potato pancake for lunch and dried sweet potato for dinner.”

Now he is 43 and worth nearly $11bn. He may bristle at the comparison but I am talking to the Jeff Bezos of China.