Every Friday night is the perfect prelude to a beautiful weekend — and nobody wants to wade through a lengthy read. So here are a few simple tips to help boost your fortune (旺运). Don’t take my word for it: those who’ve tried them say they work remarkably well. [福]
1 - The year-end is approaching. Avoid gloomy, dreary places as much as possible. Instead, head to upscale, bustling malls, hotels, and restaurants. The livelier and more prosperous the venue, the better — go soak up that good energy.
Many ordinary people have a fairly narrow worldview — they look at things from a single angle, and they’re easily driven by emotion.
But you still cannot look down on them for this. Their awareness and insight may not match yours, yet at their core, they remain good and simple-hearted people. The key difference is simply that their base of knowledge is more limited.
Not long ago, at a dinner gathering, a young friend turned to me with a question: “Master Chi, why is it that people on the other side of the Pacific always seem to have those who can’t stand to see us doing well?”
Tonight I have an important dinner, so a long piece isn’t in the cards.
But walking home, lost in thought, some ideas came to me — ideas I want to share with you. So let me just follow the rhythm of the highway traffic and talk freely.
My personal read on the next decade goes roughly like this:
First, social stratification will solidify further. For ordinary people trying to leap ahead on pure hard work alone, the difficulty will be immense. But this isn’t entirely bad news — it means the path upward will be clearly defined. Those who can read and apply the wisdom left by those who came before will leave the brute-force grinders in the dust.
Student Question:
Hello, Master Chi. Last Saturday at five in the morning, I was jolted awake by an urgent phone call. My business partner was calling to say he was pulling out his investment. On top of that, one of our core marketing people was also resigning. Up until recently, my entrepreneurial journey had been mostly smooth sailing — I genuinely made money. Then in 2023, I got overconfident and decided to jump into live-stream selling myself. It was an absolute disaster.
Student Question:
I feel like I’m drowning in information overload every day. Friends keep introducing projects to me — Xinjiang salmon, nutrition, jade, live streaming, plus endless things I come across online. Every time I look into one, I find I could get up to speed on the knowledge fairly quickly, but building the channels takes a long time. I want to try one as a side business, but I was already feeling lost to begin with, and taking in all this information just pulls me in more directions.
These past couple of days, as the year winds down, something rather remarkable has been happening.
The comment section of my public channel — and the private messages on my knowledge platform — have been flooded with dozens, sometimes hundreds of messages every single day. And nearly every one of them is asking the same question: Master, do you think 2024 will be better?
My position on this has always been clear.
Student Question: Is Yiwu still worth pursuing for ordinary people — whether for employment, starting a business, or building a career? If someone wants to start a light-asset business there, what industries besides e-commerce are accessible to regular people?
Master Chi’s Response:
Let me start with the conclusion: Yiwu is still worth it for employment, entrepreneurship, and career development. That said, given the economic uncertainties of the past two years, if you currently have a job you reasonably enjoy and that fits your situation well, my advice is to keep working for now — entrepreneurship simply carries more unpredictable variables.
These past two weeks have been genuinely hectic — business matters piling up on one side, and with year-end approaching, I’ve taken the chance to meet with many friends.
By usual standards, the social gatherings wouldn’t start until January. But this year — well, you know how it is. Everyone is more eager to fire each other up, to lift each other’s spirits.
So yes, between dinners, tea sessions, and drinks, the quiet moments have been fewer. Even so, there’s something I’ve been wanting to share with you.
Student Question: I currently work in manufacturing at an entry-level position. I want to use my spare time to learn programming — partly to improve myself, and partly to set myself up for future promotions and raises. The situation is that I have absolutely zero programming knowledge. I also want to ask: if I learn programming and later want to relocate to a different city, would finding a programming job there be significantly harder? Product and operations roles seem heavily tied to specific companies and industries — but what about technical programming roles? Are they universally applicable across fields?
Student Question: How do you view the tendency to lose interest in a job after only a short time? I’ve held two jobs, and I feel like my enthusiasm for both faded quickly. My first was a customer service role that I held for a year and a half, until I realized there was no room for growth and the work was entirely mechanical. So I moved to a second job in sales, hoping to build my courage and communication skills and develop a habit of continuous learning.