More than one friend has told me that the festive spirit of the New Year and other holidays feels increasingly hollow these days — especially during the years when fireworks were banned and large gatherings weren’t possible. Their view: holidays are just a synonym for time off, nothing more.
Whenever friends vented like this, I’d give them a breezy reply: “But time off is wonderful — peace and quiet is the finest luxury of all.”
There wasn’t an ounce of empty comfort in those words. Because for me, the concepts of “Spring Festival,” “holiday,” and “time off” were completely foreign before 2017. Not because I was some relentless grinder back then — but because before 2017, my life was one unending battlefield.
Whenever I learned that National Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, New Year’s, or Spring Festival was approaching, my chest would tighten involuntarily. I knew another round of sword-and-shadow was coming.
Those of you who follow Master Chi’s work know: when I returned from overseas and gradually took over what was called the “family business,” what I actually inherited was a catastrophic mess — a wreck beyond imagination. Because of that mess, several of the company’s core executives had lost their entire fortunes; others ended up behind bars. The root cause of the total collapse was simple, and very much a product of local cultural character — I won’t go into it here.
There are only two things you need to know: first, I was still a young man barely out of the gate. Second, with no one else to rely on, I became the only representative the entire enterprise could push forward to handle whatever crisis came next.
To put it charitably, I was “managing situations.” But in reality, those two words amounted to one thing: debt.
I don’t know how well you understand what debt really means, but I urge you: don’t be fooled by that internet saying — “Owe a few million and you’re the creditor’s errand boy; owe a few billion and you’re the boss.” Anyone who’s actually touched real money knows that’s nonsense.
Let me tell you plainly: when the debt you’re facing reaches over a billion, you discover that this society can simultaneously mobilize a staggering number of resources, networks, and people — all directed at you. As the debtor, facing and bearing all of that is entirely reasonable. There’s no grievance to claim.
But can you imagine: for seven or eight full years of your life — every single day and night, every single minute and second — you’re dealing with every variety of creditor, enforcer, and opportunist imaginable? When I say every minute and second, I mean it literally.
For seven or eight consecutive years, it was basically just me, alone, handling courts across different jurisdictions, enforcement agencies, figures from the murky margins of society — and of course, the scavengers who had no legitimate claim whatsoever but showed up to pick at the carcass of a fallen whale.
This life looked like this: you’ve just finished a brutal day’s work and you’re about to collapse into bed — then you get word that a group of unknown men, armed with various implements, has gathered outside the property you built with your own hands, threatening bloodshed. You finally calm that group down and find some way to send them off — then enforcement calls and wants you to come in for a statement that will take several hours. Just when you think you can finally close your eyes for a moment, another crowd arrives, misled by someone with ulterior motives, demanding interests that have nothing to do with them — and they know it’s a shakedown; they’re counting on extracting a promise or signature from you while you’re half-delirious with exhaustion.
This kind of fighting never stopped. Day and night, without pause.
I actually calculated my work intensity during that period. Going two or three nights without sleep was routine — and not just sitting idle, but in constant motion: coordinating, fielding, managing wave after wave of people. My sleep, when it came, was three or four hours at most. Then up again to face the next round at the same intensity.
I’ll be honest with you: I genuinely thought I was going to die. Not a mental breakdown — my mind had gone numb long before that. But my body had simply reached its limit.
Maybe Heaven was watching over me. Because one summer during those years, eight words suddenly surfaced in my mind — simple, but absolutely critical:
“This way won’t work. Something has to change.”
Yes. Exactly. Of course. Endless wrangling and stalling could never solve anything. And if the problem couldn’t be solved, I’d never be freed from this crushing weight.
Grinding it out and white-knuckling through — that couldn’t be the answer. I needed a way out. A way to solve the equation. An actual answer.
Was there an answer? Absolutely. There had to be. No one was going to hand it to me — so I’d find it myself. No matter how brutal the search, it was better than letting this dead-end road drag me to my grave.
Armed with that one breath of resolve, my first move as a young man was to study law. Yes — learn the law myself.
A lot of people would say: with a family enterprise that size, why not just hire a lawyer?
All company assets had been frozen. Whatever remained couldn’t be accessed. What was I going to pay with?
And here’s how I thought about it at the time: a lawyer’s value lies in having a more complete, systematic grasp of legal knowledge than you do. What I specifically needed to master was a narrow slice — bankruptcy, liquidation, disputes. If training a full-spectrum lawyer takes eight years, then spending a few months to deeply absorb just those three sub-areas shouldn’t be impossible — should it?
It wasn’t. When life backs you into a corner, all kinds of things become possible.
And so what had been pure reactive defense finally gained a sliver of turning room. I found myself actually negotiating — sitting across from creditors and discussing solutions in a tone of mutual deliberation. Not resolving things, not yet. But a turning point, however small.
My second move: handle the underworld-adjacent figures. Every time they showed up, responding with a smile while watching my energy and composure drain away was unsustainable — and they weren’t getting their money either. So instead of making promises and kicking the can, I laid it all out plainly.
“There’s no money right now. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. I know you come ten or fifteen strong, but in this day and age, nobody’s actually going to open fire. And beating me to death doesn’t get you paid — you want money, not a corpse. So bring me a solution. I’ll see what I can work with. And I’ll try to find other business or resources on my side to offset some of what’s owed.”
I got burned a few times. Got played here and there. But even the slowest person grows eventually. Gradually I learned how to reasonably enlist the help of public security, and how to speak to these figures in ways that de-escalated rather than inflamed. Slowly, that front was reversed too.
With the institutions and the street-level players handled, it was time to focus on the major creditors — banks and large corporations. Nobody’s ideal outcome was a legal battle; if the assets had been enough to cover everything, everyone would have already rushed in. Since there was nothing to carve up, they still needed something to report back up the chain.
So: sit down. Let’s talk.
This period brought another phase of rapid growth. It was then that I came to understand how systems and institutions actually operate. Many things, I realized, were simply about giving someone up the chain a satisfactory answer. Many disputes — fought to the bitter end — cost both sides more than they gained.
Find a solution everyone can barely live with. Make it final. Get it done.
At the same time, I went to each person in the family and the enterprise, one by one, and made the case plainly: the water is already up to your neck. Stop thinking about protecting other assets. Find a way to extract yourself from the quicksand, and then commit fully to a new road forward. Let go of the sunk costs.
The logic looks simple laid out like this. But anyone with any life experience knows: those negotiations took enormous reserves of effort and patience to wear down — only after enough grinding did people finally accept the unavoidable reality.
Today, all of the family’s external debts have been fully resolved. Some were cleared by liquidating assets; others were settled by converting debt to equity; a few minor loose ends remain, but none of it matters anymore.
Looking back sometimes, I still feel a lingering chill. Seven or eight years without being able to go home. Not a single holiday spent with family. Relentless mental pressure. Bottomless anxiety.
And yet I’m grateful — that I forced a path through what felt like an absolute dead end.
Along the way, I internalized a set of truths — plain, but real:
1. When people say “I could never do that,” what they usually mean is they don’t want to. They haven’t been driven to the edge. When you truly are, what seemed impossible often becomes not just possible, but entirely achievable.
2. Time is a remarkable thing. Many problems that felt completely unsolvable eventually just had to be fumbled through — and fumbling long enough, the answer has a way of revealing itself.
3. Grinding it out and enduring by brute force are not always virtues worth praising — especially when they can’t change the situation. Sometimes the real courage is in seeking a different path, rather than spending your whole life burning yourself out on the one you’re stuck on.
4. Many daunting achievements become manageable once you break them into small targets. Memorizing all of law may be beyond you — but mastering a specific set of regulations and case precedents in a few months? Very doable.
5. There is no hardship in this world that requires death as the escape. If you’re not afraid to die, then you should be even less afraid of a week without sleep or twenty-hour workdays — those pale by comparison.
6. “Survive great calamity and greater fortune follows” — this saying has real truth to it. Because whoever survives a calamity carries that chill with them and will move heaven and earth to never fall into the same pit again. That drive turns into strength. Strength creates better futures. Better futures are the “fortune” they’re talking about.
7. You are far more capable of endurance than you believe. Whether it’s the blow of a failed enterprise or the battering of a difficult life, your inner reserves are vastly deeper than you think. So don’t cave and run every time something hard comes along. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the difficulties life throws at you — if you meet them head-on — will crumble and reveal themselves for what they truly are.
That’s the story of my early years. Not a glorious chapter — I trust you won’t judge it too harshly.
But I hope you understand: even someone as versed in destiny reading (命理) as Master Chi could not dodge the trials that life had written in. The difference lies only in whether you convert those trials into wisdom that feeds your growth.
In the next piece, I want to sit down and talk with you about something I’ve been thinking over carefully: after I climbed out of that quicksand, what genuine, lasting life wisdom did I absorb from the excellent, prosperous, and exceptional people I encountered on the other side?