Yesterday, Master Chi was reading the destiny framework (格局) for a friend who was furious over a failed IPO. He had been all set to list on the ChiNext board, but due to the trade conflict, the final year’s financial audit came back with major discrepancies.
So he urgently called me over to help him see whether he could catch the next window.
After all, for someone long accustomed to wielding the sickle himself, watching other players dance through the leek fields cutting profits — it stirs no small amount of envy and resentment.
We were deep in conversation when one of his executive-level subordinates walked in. Neither of us noticed him at first.
It wasn’t until my friend glanced up that he saw this young man — just past thirty — had been standing at the edge of the table for quite some time.
You need to understand: a destiny reading cannot be done with outsiders present. This is both rule and reason — because if someone learns your fortune cycle and your vulnerabilities, tripping you up becomes trivially easy.
Perhaps out of his naturally impatient temperament, or fearing the subordinate had overheard things he shouldn’t, my friend snatched the clay teapot from between his lips and slammed it onto the table.
(Why Beijing people insist on drinking directly from the spout of a Zisha clay pot is a technical mystery I have never managed to understand — doesn’t tea left steeping turn unbearably bitter?)
In an instant, tea leaves, liquid, and ceramic fragments flew everywhere. Even I was startled. The subordinate was completely flustered, frozen in place.
My friend, direct as always, snapped with deliberate cadence: “Get. Out.”
The words landed like a fist.
But here is the moment that struck me as so absurd I still think about it: the subordinate walked out of the office with an awkward, apologetic smile on his face.
Yes. An awkward, apologetic smile. He smiled himself right out the door.
To make it more excruciating, the office was large. It took him a full ten seconds to reach the exit. Every one of those seconds was slow agony.
My friend broke the silence: “Never mind. That spineless thing — don’t give him another look. Come, Master Chi, let’s continue.”
Reading this, you probably think my friend is crude, rude, and overbearing.
You would actually be wrong. With friends and people of comparable standing, this man is remarkably warm, tolerant, and dignified — a true gentleman of commerce.
So why did he act that way? And more to the point — was he actually in the wrong?
In Master Chi’s view, you really cannot call it “wrong.” At most, he was a bit excessive.
The real problem in this situation lies with the subordinate.
Because after being subjected to that humiliation, he walked out smiling — awkwardly, apologetically, but smiling. In Master Chi’s assessment, this man is, for all practical purposes, finished.
Completely finished. No room for negotiation. This is a man destined to spend his life following someone else’s table scraps, never capable of striking out on his own, never standing as the head of anything.
Many people at this point will reach for excuses on his behalf. He’s not having an easy time of it. Mortgage to pay, kids to feed — a thousand reasons why he has no choice but to yield to power.
Oh — and that subordinate? He’s near executive level, pulling close to six figures a month.
Sure. I understand. Who among us hasn’t bowed for a bowl of rice?
When it comes to the pursuit of wealth and status, Master Chi is no different — my heart races for it too.
But here is what is absolutely fixed: this is a man who will only ever bow for that bowl of rice. That is his ceiling. He will not break through it — not in this lifetime.
The reason? Sheep nature carved into the marrow. No amount of scrubbing will wash it out.
You might ask: where does this sheep nature come from?
No mystery there — it was taught to him. By his parents, or by the older sheep he encountered while growing up.
What follows, Master Chi does not need you to agree with or fully understand. You only need to know that this logic exists in the world.
Because there will come a day when you understand it yourself: the great achievements of a person’s life have surprisingly little to do with what we call “wisdom” or “depth of character.”
Yes — Master Chi earns his living doing destiny readings (命理), analyzing destiny frameworks and fortune cycles. Pretty bookish work, right?
But once you’ve walked a real stretch of the world, you’ll know: before a person can even speak of success — just to stand upright, to make others look at you with basic respect — you had better have backbone (骨气) and heat in your blood. Even if it means getting your head cracked open for a while.
Remember this: ferocity is carried in the blood. Given time and experience, it is tempered into ambition and drive.
Cowardice is carved into the bone. Short of ripping that bone out entirely, it will follow you for life and bring you to nothing.
I remember the education I received growing up — almost entirely focused on sharpening yourself into a blade and fighting your way to the top. As I formed my own views and compared notes with classmates from domestic elite schools, I found we’d all been raised on roughly the same playbook.
Later, in overseas circles, it was identical — everyone a product of the same mold: the “elite education model.”
I’ll set aside what “elite education” fully means for another time, but this model has one characteristic that is universal, unambiguous, and cannot be overturned: nothing in this world will be given to you. Not by anyone. Even what your parents left you — without the skill to protect it, society’s wolves and tigers will strip it from you sooner or later.
So you must — absolutely must — possess the ambition to claim your place, and the spirit to refuse second place.
As for generosity and yielding? Those are built on the foundation of already having.
An opportunity must already be in your grasp before you can afford to be generous with it.
An advantage must already be firmly yours before you can afford to yield.
Everything else is empty talk.
This is why, whenever I overhear a parent on the street gently guiding their child to “be humble, learn to step back, practice letting go” — I can barely believe my ears. How do you damage your own child like that?
To be fair, these parents mean well. They’re simply teaching what they know. And what they know is mostly bad advice.
As for those who spend every day urging you to “find peace, let go, stop fighting, stop wanting” — that is not wisdom. That is someone who has given up on themselves, unwilling to face reality, using spiritual philosophy as cover for hiding from the world.
And this self-soothing nonsense is precisely what the small-collar workers and young strivers love to hear — those who think highly of themselves but lack the guts to build anything. Weak people desperately need a reason to justify their softness. They desperately need to find a flock to huddle with for warmth.
And then they get shorn together, every last one of them.
So: believe it, and you’re done. Done for life. Done to the roots. Done enough to poison the generations that follow.
Don’t let them wash your brain. Instead, believe this: letting go after sixty is real letting go. Letting go before sixty is just giving up.
In a life, there are unavoidable surrenders — the kind forced by genuine impossibility, the smart retreats. That’s one thing. But the one who surrenders without stopping, that is spinelessness.
And these people are everywhere. Perhaps gifted in some remarkable way, yet ultimately buried. Perhaps deeply accomplished in some field, yet still forced to retreat. Perhaps handed a beautiful opportunity, yet somehow watching it pass by inexplicably.
But there is no real burying. No being genuinely forced out. No truly missing it.
At bottom: they don’t fight. They don’t grab. They don’t dare protect their own interests and their own future.
And I’m sorry, but the world is not your parents. No one owes you protection.
Which brings us back to the opening story, as a way of closing this out.
There is one more thing you must remember: people are, frankly, a rather ungrateful species.
In this world, very few people will genuinely appreciate your effort, your concessions, your tolerance. On the contrary — they will read your goodwill as weakness and incompetence.
This is not malice on their part. It is simply that the world moves fast, and no one spends extra thought on your small gestures of kindness.
So when you eventually try to reclaim what was always rightfully yours, they will feel offended.
But if you do the opposite — if from the very beginning you stand tall, draw the line clearly even at the cost of open conflict, fully claim what is yours, and then toss them a bone afterward — they will be genuinely grateful.
Do you know why there has never been a top boss who got there by yielding?
If you can’t take it, you’ll always be the one bowing. Once you have it, you give — and you’re the one they bow to.
This logic holds everywhere. In career, in dealings with others, in all things.
And this includes the romantic lives young people love to debate. Master Chi will say it plainly: I would rather you be the so-called “player” who is adored by many, than the sniveling wretch who watches his lover get taken and weeps in a corner about how unfair it is.
If someone’s already taken what’s yours, what does being right accomplish?
By the same logic, this applies to the “respect” mentioned at the start of this piece. No matter how powerful or high-ranking someone is, you must learn to hold yourself with calm, steady dignity — neither cringing nor overreaching. Because if you let yourself be intimidated from the start, I’m sorry, but today’s polite deference as someone’s junior will become a lifetime of playing second fiddle.
That’s how they operate: they bank on you being a “good person” who will concede, then concede again, then concede once more — retreating until there is nowhere left to go. Only then are they satisfied.
Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. This world is not as terrifying as you imagine.
Sometimes, all it takes is speaking from a position of substance, knowing how to refuse and maneuver — and you’ll be fine.
If you can muster a little courage, play dumb while seeing clearly, and occasionally push back — you’ll find that most of these people have only three moves in their arsenal.
If it ever comes to a real confrontation, they may not be your match at all. So what is there to fear?
You, you foolish thing — Master Chi probably shouldn’t have told you this much.
But I can’t help it. You are my reader. You are my friend. You are the person I want to help with everything I’ve got.
What I want is for you not to be bullied. Not to be humiliated. For you to receive what you deserve — not to exhaust yourself in goodness only to watch someone else wear your work as their wedding garment.
Others, I cannot speak for. But if this happens to you — I’m sorry, I won’t stand for it.
Article complete (reproduction without permission is prohibited) — Master Chi, August 10, 2019