http://www.thanhniennews.com/overseas/?cat...mp;newsid=28660

A successful Vietnamese-American technology entrepreneur, who started out as a kung fu master, passed away last week at the age of 60 just before a scheduled trip to Vietnam.

Former chairman of an international martial arts club, and founder of Quantek and Power Circuit Inc in the US, Nguyen Xuan Dung, died unexpectedly of a stroke on 25th May.

At the age of 13 he learnt karate from Master Choji Suzuki in Hue town in central Vietnam. In the next ten years he also learnt Chinese Shaolin Temple martial arts and traditional Vietnamese ones.

His fellow students recall he could smash 10 bricks or a coconut shell with the side of his hand.

At 22 he moved to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and wrote a book on karate. He sold its copyright to Khai Tri Publishing House for a fortune and, with the money, opened a karate school called Champion Karate.

Since there were already many martial arts centers in Saigon, this invited trouble from other masters who challenged him to fights.

But he was adept at kung fu and soon earned everyone’s respect.

Champion Karate attracted thousands of students and he was also invited to be a martial arts advisor to the Japanese embassy and train its diplomatic corps.

Kung fu to businessman

After 1975 he migrated to the US with his wife and worked as a manual worker at a factory making electronic spare parts.

He fell in love with chips, transistors, and all things high-tech.

He applied for engineering courses and worked extra shifts at night to support this.


During a visit to Vietnam last year Dung told the press he had slept a mere 3-4 hours a day back then. He had to practice qigong - a Chinese practice that incorporates physical postures, breathing techniques, and mental focus

- to gain energy and not let it escape through the body’s chakra points, and bathe in very cold water to preserve his internal strength.

Several years later he earned an engineering diploma and opened a workshop employing workers of Vietnamese descent to make electronic parts on contracts.

He decided to expand his business and submitted a project report to the Bank of America for loans.

Recognizing the project’s potential, the bank loaned him US$1 million, far beyond his expectation. He was then only 30 years old.

He then founded Quantek, transforming it into a leading firm which in 1984 produced AT Computer, among the most modern at that time, using CPU 80286.

Dung opened several other firms including Power Circuit Inc, specializing in electronic circuits, which has annual sales of $30 million. It is a supplier for Boeing, Sony, and Toshiba.

In 1994 he returned to Vietnam to invest $4.3 million in a Surface Mount Technology (SMT) assembly line which builds electronic circuits by mounting the components directly onto the surface of printed circuit boards.

For a time in the 1990s he was chairman of an international martial arts association in the US.

He translated into Vietnamese The Book of Five Rings, or Go Rin No Sho, on swordsmanship by legendary Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi who lived in the 17th century.

The book’s teachings have been used successfully not only by professional swordsmen but by many Japanese entrepreneurs who found its basic fighting strategies applicable to modern business rivalries.

The book is yet to be published but sadly its translator has passed on.