When the major life cycle (大运) has yet to turn favorable, the struggle truly feels overwhelming — and I suspect many readers felt this acutely this year. Setting aside hearsay and rumors, even the close companions in my own circles — regardless of how large their operations have grown — would be hard-pressed to say this year has been particularly joyful. Never mind one long red candle on the index today; looking at the capital markets across the whole year, the picture is murky at best. And so the wolves and tigers in my world — the bold, the sharp — have grown listless and distracted. No wonder: the market hasn’t fully broken down, but neither has it rebuilt itself. In the end, it all comes down to reading the sky, watching the dragon’s face. Whether you’re hunting opportunities or positioning for the future, this isn’t the optimal moment. But the weight of capital costs and the steady erosion of value — those are real worries that gnaw at all of us. So be it: grab a plane ticket, get away, take a holiday, clear your head.
What about the red-team brothers — the ones who once moved steadily, blending commerce and officialdom so smoothly? How joyful have they been? The waves stirred by last year’s entertainment industry scandals were really just a warning shot — a stone thrown to startle the tigers — and since then, everyone has become unprecedentedly cautious and well-behaved. To be fair, most of what happened wasn’t nearly as sordid or shadowy as outsiders imagined. Just ordinary business dealings and mutual interests. But when you’re told to rein it in, you rein it in — especially that restless, ambitious heart. As for the corporate executives that young people admire so much: their days are arguably even harder. They’ve finally come to understand that the reason they climbed to where they are has little to do with being more capable than the young people who started from nothing. What made them was simply that the times needed them to exist. Over a decade ago, waves were cresting one after another — of course they rose fast. Those famous proclamations of “standing by the brothers through thick and thin” — everyone now sees them for what they always were: polite talk for good times. When the cold sets in, wives and children come before brothers. Every single time.
What’s more, people who should never have found themselves caught up in scandals did exactly that this year — they got a taste of iron bars. And it wasn’t just one company: almost every major platform you can name, across every industry, underwent a thorough sweep this year. This baffled those who had already been inside for a while: “Wait — what’s going on? Are you turning this cage into a laid-off workers’ entrepreneurship summit?” That, in brief, is the minor situation of this year: beneath the arrival of what they call a warm winter, the winter winds have blown colder than usual.
Do you remember? Master Chi said last year that 2019 would be the year of auspicious snow heralding a prosperous harvest — except I somehow forgot to mention that the entire year would be the snowfall. Whatever the case, auspicious snow is ultimately a good thing. Among the twenty-four solar terms, the quality of next year’s harvest is judged precisely by how thick this snow falls. Just like our path of development — we genuinely need this period of thorough calm and deep reflection. Otherwise, keep running blindly and you’ll end up on the wrong road.
People have a way of falling into polarized, binary thinking — especially when things go either extraordinarily well or deeply wrong. Emotion floods the mind. Like those friends I described at the start: are things really as bad as all that? Not necessarily. For those in capital circles, this year has given them the gift of time — to untangle relationships and networks accumulated over the years, to sort through the loose ends and reassemble what matters. Because the essence of capital isn’t wealth — it’s connections and the circles you inhabit. This kind of quiet season is precisely the best time to rebuild alliances and lay groundwork for what’s ahead. Old habits don’t fit the new game; what the old power brokers need most is a new set of moves.
As for friends in the political-business world — to say they’re unhappy would also be an overstatement. What wasn’t earned this year can come in time. These are people operating at nine and ten-digit levels of wealth, people who have weathered real storms. They know better than to fight over a moment’s pride. On the contrary, what they’ve all witnessed this cycle is that trillion-level platforms and opportunities are quietly coiling, preparing to spring. Being shrewd right now is the price you pay for a seat on the board of a far larger stage later. Wealth is just a vessel — and one of its other expressions is power. As for the corporate insiders: how many does anyone actually want to destroy outright? Everyone understands — push too hard, and the response is simple: “You’re not treating me like a brother, so don’t expect me to keep your secrets.” The optics look bad on the surface, but in practice it usually amounts to a month of closed-door quiet — a chance to fix the bizarre sleep schedules caused by endless socializing and overtime, and to clean out the chronic conditions that come from years of excess. Coming out the other side, there’s actually a story and an opening to work with the old employer under a new framework. Wasn’t everyone always saying they wanted to be their own boss? Now the chance has finally arrived. What once was a naive fantasy of entrepreneurship has matured into a real understanding of how business works. That is the true path to building wealth.
The Chi fortune (气运) of all things has always been this way: there will always be clear skies and calm waters, and there will always be crashing waves and lightning strikes. This is what others call “cycles.” This is what Master Chi calls rise and fall. Neither the rising nor the falling is absolutely good or bad. What truly tests a person is whether you can pass through the cycle of rise and fall again and again — continually upgrading your hand to a stronger position. Look no further than the summits of past waves: they ultimately proved that the so-called chosen few whom everyone celebrated were, in the end, just that — ordinary.
Yet it’s the ones nobody thought much of who’ve demonstrated the resilience of life, time and again. Isn’t that exactly what we’re seeing — the great director Feng and the celebrated Miss Fan making their return to the stage? Like the tides: when the tide rises, some people surge upward; when it falls, those same people vanish. A flash of glory that ends in nothing — what’s the point?
Since everything cannot escape this process of rise and fall, you have no business wallowing in winter’s ice and snow. Because if you do, you will inevitably miss the next spring entirely. You’ll experience the next spring too — but because you didn’t sharpen your skills during this period, you’ll only be swept aside. Like investing: if your life pattern (格局) never let you buy at the bottom, then the top holds no meaning for you. You’ll end up as the fragile stake propping up the mansion as it tilts — the one there to absorb the exit of the wolves and tigers as they cash in their gains. You are the one destined to be sacrificed. If you fail to make use of this period of decline, you can hold no real hope for the rise that follows — because you missed the chance to draw close when everyone was low, and you surrendered the last opportunity to visit the power centers before they closed their doors. You will not be welcomed back in.
When every fool is waiting for victory so they can pop champagne together, we must hold absolutely firm to this belief: the only ones who will actually drink that champagne are those of us still fighting at the hardest junctures, without pause.
So, Master Chi does not care whether you are today a penniless nobody of no consequence — I am going to demand that you lift your head from the chopping block and look around at the people nearby who may still be beyond your reach, but who are clearly mired in desperate circumstances. They might be your boss. They might be your friends. They might be new acquaintances or old ones. Some of them may have wronged you in the past — betrayed you, looked down on you. But please — make that correct and difficult decision. In those fleeting windows of opportunity, offer them your most genuine, most warm encouragement. Do you think you will ever have a better chance in this life to build real bonds with powerful people?
And so, Master Chi does not care that today you may have accomplished nothing and feel completely lost — I am going to demand that you pause whatever trivial matters you have in hand, set your goals for the coming year with absolute clarity, and begin all preparations to turn them into reality. Because the next wave is already drawing near. It will terrify everyone with the sheer force of its ebb — frightening people so badly they won’t even dare speak its name. But precisely when everyone has chosen to give up and despair, that is when it will unite with the deepest interests, and return with an overwhelming, unstoppable force, sweeping even ordinary people into the game whether they’re ready or not.
Do you think there will ever be a better chance in your entire life to swing alongside the blade of fortune?
Master Chi is deeply, sincerely grateful for every rise and fall of this era. Because it is only through this relentless tidal rhythm that those fools who swagger at the first sign of easy luck get washed out of the game. And it ensures that people like us — especially someone like you, a hidden dragon, a young phoenix still waiting to emerge — will always have the chance to rise and claim our place. So that we are never buried forever.