Ping is a very smart guy. As you may already know, he is from USTC. After getting Ph.D in chemistry at Princeton, he went to Stanford for Ph.D in Finance. He didn't finish that program since he got a good offer from Lehman.
He was down 37% in the first few months in 09 and came back nicely. you have to have nerve for that kind of volatility. I am not sure if he did heavy leverage (he said no in an interview). His fund had under $200M in assets, which is relatively small.