It must have been about three years ago. A good friend invited me into a group chat. The people in it were no slouches — at minimum, leadership at foreign companies or Fortune 500 firms.
I almost never spoke in that group. I treated it purely as a little window into the yuppie lifestyle. After all, my own core circle is made up of older-generation capital and establishment figures — heavyweight people, but they rarely talk about巨富民, Pure Fitness, Brompton, Acne Studios, or any of those refined white-collar topics. So having this little window into current trends? Not a bad thing.
What struck me most — as a reflection of how much the world has shifted these past two years — was one particular mother in that group.
Her self-described label: Full-time Mom. Three-kid household. Husband is a listed-company executive. Annual household spending: seven figures.
Read that label and you already have a feel for her type.
Yes — exactly that kind. Not particularly sharp herself, but overflowing with a sense of superiority. The “small success” mom.
I didn’t open that group often. But whenever I did, at least 70% of the content was this woman parading her advantages with her nose in the air.
For instance: when genuinely accomplished professional women in the group talked about their careers in a self-deprecating way, everyone else would offer admiration and encouragement. But this mother would abruptly cut in: “Sigh, of course women who fight their own battles are tired — that’s expected. If you were really smart, you’d have just married well and let a man fight for you.”
Or when warm-hearted parents shared parenting insights or happy photos from family activities, everyone would find the togetherness touching. But this mother had to wedge in a comment: “The little ones are cute, sure. But have you considered? This kind of thing makes children overly combative. Makes them wild.”
Every single remark carried just enough of a sting to leave people vaguely uncomfortable.
And yet — she herself was obsessed with flaunting wealth. The low-grade kind of flaunting.
Her child got into an international private school, so she spent days in the group extolling the virtues of private education — and casually stepping on kids who attended regular schools.
When she bought luxury goods, she’d enthusiastically recount every detail of the purchase: “This one I picked up from the VIP lounge at Hang Lung. That one I went all the way to Milan to get specifically.”
When the family moved into a new home, she went for the “understated wealth flex” — complaining that her troubles never ended, that the staircase in the new place could only use a German imported design, and a single purchase ran several hundred thousand.
My friend — who runs the group — actually pulled her aside and suggested she ease up on the showboating, because while the group wasn’t exactly hiding dragons and crouching tigers, plenty of members had real reach. Among them: the top executive of a major global software company, the Asia head of a top-tier luxury brand, and the daughter of a well-known Shanghai family of standing. All of them, completely understated.
If she accidentally offended the wrong person one day, making her life “a little difficult” would be effortless for them.
Then something happened to her family. Details were vague, but apparently her flamboyance had drawn trouble.
Business collapse, maybe. Or a bad investment. Someone told my friend only that this woman’s household had been hit by major upheaval.
And the evidence followed.
Her home appeared on a public property listing — flagged with: “Urgent! Owner seeking quick sale!”
Her two children, according to classmates’ parents, had to withdraw from school due to unpaid tuition.
Even the housekeeper she used to publicly lecture about how well-trained and well-behaved she was — word got out that the family never had that much money to begin with. Just an unusually rigid set of rules, carefully performed.
And in the group itself? She went almost completely silent. A few curious members went and checked her Instagram and Xiaohongshu. All that curated luxury content — gone. Nothing but a plain, quiet blank.
I still think about one line she once said: “Ha. How could I possibly live some commoner’s life? There is absolutely no way I would sink to struggling, okay? My IQ simply won’t permit it. Understand?”
When I first read it, my instinctive read was: even without looking at her destiny chart (命格), the state she was in could never sustain the comfortable life she had — the moment her fortune cycle (运势) turned, she’d be knocked straight back to baseline.
As it turned out, reality is colder than anything I could have said.
One more thing I want to say to all of you.
Especially these past two years: learn the art of restraint and staying low.
Even if you’ve genuinely made money, gotten a promotion, hit a milestone — do not let the joy show on your face. Learn to speak more of the hardships along the way, of the difficulties you navigated.
This is a high-level wisdom for storing your fortune — keeping your luck close and protected. It lets you ride the wave longer. It keeps you out of conflict and away from envy.
And most importantly: it keeps you safe, for a long time to come.