HANGZHOU, China - A tearful Jack Ma formally left Alibaba on Tuesday , donning a guitar and a rock star wig at an event for thousands of employees of the e-commerce giant he founded 20 years ago in a small shared apartment in Hangzhou city in eastern China.
Costumed performers, some dancing to dubstep music and dressed in traditional Chinese dress, and singers paid tribute to Ma's reputation for dressing up and performing at big events, entering to a parade of floats representing Alibaba divisions such as shopping site Tmall and payment service Ant Financial.
Ma was spotted at one point welling up with tears as staff put on skits and sang songs, prompting the topic"Jack Ma has cried" to trend on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Zhang, also clad in rock star garb, then delivered a solo, having earlier said that Alibaba would keep investing in areas such as cloud computing.