By now, most of you are probably tired of hearing about that couple’s public meltdown.
I won’t bother picking sides — frankly, I still can’t figure out what one party was even trying to accomplish. Days of frantic thrashing around, yet nothing coherent to show for it. Not worth the energy.
But there was one woman in this whole spectacle who earned my deepest respect: Zhang Lan.
Consider this — Zhang Lan is 64 years old. Yet watching her, where do you see even a trace of the frailty we associate with age? Whether it’s the videos she puts out or the sheer intensity of her workload, you can feel it clearly: she is the pillar holding up her son and the entire business. She is the lone warrior standing in the storm.
From the immaculate makeup every time she appears on camera, to the relentless daily grind of shooting videos, drumming up media presence, brand promotion, and day-to-day business operations — the production quality may not be slick, but in terms of raw work output, this woman is single-handedly carrying what a fully staffed team would struggle to manage.
And her willpower? Honestly staggering. No matter how deep she sank into the vortex of public opinion, no matter how badly the odds were stacked against her, she never let a single flicker of self-pity or retreat show through. She doesn’t concede. She doesn’t quit. The sky could be falling, and she’d still walk into that livestream with a smile on her face, chatting freely like the world is wide open.
Put someone else in that seat?
Plenty of people brand themselves as tough guys or independent women — but the ones who can actually hold it together when things go sideways, without emotionally unraveling? Those are rare.
You say she doesn’t know when to stop, that she has no sense of dignity? Maybe. But she held. Even with a terrible hand. Even as her own son kept sliding more bad cards into her palm.
No matter how much her teammate let her down, she refused to fold. Instead, she kept her chin up, worked each card carefully, and looked for any opening to win.
This woman may not be a perfect mother-in-law. But you’d want her on your side — as a mother, as family — because you know that if you’re on the same team, she’ll fight like a fierce lioness for every inch of ground, every scrap of victory.
What I admire equally, on the business side, is how fast she evolves.
Remember — this woman was once the queen of high-end dining in China. Choosing to step down and do pragmatic, budget-friendly livestream commerce is no small psychological leap. For most people, it’s nothing. But for someone who once commanded a culinary empire, there’s an unmistakable flavor of lowering oneself in it.
Yet she didn’t just enter that world — she threw herself into it with full seriousness, and she does it with real professionalism.
That alone tells you: this woman carries genuine entrepreneurial spirit. She can aim for the sky when fortune favors her, and she can kneel down and work the soil when it doesn’t.
I remember hearing that the young prince once mockingly called her a woman who came from nothing — someone who hauled dead pigs for a living. But when I learned she raised her son as a single mother, grinding away in the harshest conditions to build a life, my respect for her only deepened.
It wasn’t easy. It was never easy.
Now contrast that with all those women who claim, day after day, that they want to change their fate. How many of them shout loudly but never actually move their feet?
Some women are destined to prosper. Some women are destined to stay poor.
Blunt? Yes. But that’s the truth of it.
Sadly though, women like Zhang Lan — precisely because of their strength — tend to raise sons who are emotionally unstable and alarmingly incapable. When a mother is always there to clean up every mess, it’s nearly impossible for a child to develop the fighting spirit and psychological maturity they actually need.
When you have a mountain to lean on, you never build your own foundation. You never seriously reckon with the consequences of your whims, or consider the lasting ripple effects of your choices.
Because that mountain is always there. Because she keeps cleaning up the wreckage.
So you start thinking: things always work out in the end, so why not just live however I want?
And then — more recklessness, more indulgence, more emotional volatility. Until you’ve become a completely irredeemable mama’s boy-infant.
That’s the bottom line here. He was protected so thoroughly that now, even as a man past forty, he can’t handle a perfectly ordinary domestic conflict that should have been resolved peacefully. Instead, he loses all emotional control — and turns the whole thing into the low-grade spectacle of a drunk man cursing in the street.
His dignity as a man? Shattered completely. And the world is laughing.
What a waste.
Barring any surprises, this absurd tantrum of a drama should now be drawing to a close. And so I have a few final thoughts I want to share with you all:
1 — Being a mama’s boy or a princess is a lifelong condition, woven into the bone.
Anyone who carries these traits is essentially incurable. Which means you must never marry such a person — because if you do, you will spend the rest of your life revolving around them, pouring endless emotional energy into their needs. And the moment you so much as pause to catch your breath, they’ll instantly erase every sacrifice you’ve made and accuse you of selfishness and hypocrisy.
When I’m doing a destiny chart (命盘) reading and I spot these patterns in someone’s partner, my advice is almost always the same: think again, don’t rush in.
2 — For women who have a lot going for them, I generally recommend choosing a man who is self-made and on the rise — not a comfortable little second-generation heir.
A self-made man may not have struck it rich yet, but as long as he stays honest and doesn’t take foolish risks, his turnaround is only a matter of time. And because he clawed his way up himself, he’ll have an emotional intelligence and psychological maturity that no pampered heir can match.
The second-generation type who’s been shielded his whole life? Often the most useless kind — no matter how rational he sounds, if he’s never actually built something from scratch, his core self is still a grown infant depending on his parents. A giant baby raised in a gilded cage has no real voice, no real capacity to fight battles, no power to shape his own life — and certainly no ability to protect the woman who marries him. And he will almost always be immature.
3 — On marriage: I’ve said it countless times. The best match is always dragon with dragon, phoenix with phoenix, wolf with wolf, fox with fox.
This doesn’t mean every condition has to be perfectly balanced. But you must first be the same kind of person before you can share a home.
Same kind of person means your ambitions and your vision for the future align — whether that’s building a warm and simple family life, or charging forward together to create something great. It also means your psychological maturity and personal character are in roughly the same league.
A good marriage requires equal footing. Only then can you truly walk forward side by side.
Otherwise, if one side simply outclasses the other, the weaker one spends a lifetime being led around by the nose.
I remember telling a friend some time ago that I didn’t believe in this pairing. He couldn’t understand why, so I said it plainly: a middle-aged mama’s boy who grew up inside his mother’s protection can never outmatch a woman who stepped into the arena at sixteen and has been fighting her way forward ever since.
And as it turns out — that was exactly right.