This is actually a complete misconception. That kind of travel — checking into hotels, taking in the scenery, sampling local food — is pure consumption. It has absolutely nothing to do with the phrase “broadening one’s horizons.”
Master Chi believes that truly broadening your horizons means allowing children to genuinely engage with people across different social circles and living environments.
It means developing a deep understanding of how people at different levels of life actually live — their efforts, their goals, the many difficulties they face, and the ways they survive.
After the Lantern Festival wraps up, by all rights Master Chi ought to write a proper article — something about growth, wealth, and life patterns (格局).
But honestly, just like you, after the holidays I still have a bit of that restless, playful streak in me.
So, given everything that’s been happening in the entertainment world these past couple of days, Master Chi figures — why not just have a casual chat about some of it?
Let me share some thoughts from personal experience on this topic.
1 — The most worrying scenario is a child with shaky values and mediocre academic performance, whose parents happen to be financially well-off and rashly send them abroad anyway.
Children like this, with unstable values, are easily led astray by bad company they happen to meet while studying abroad. And when the family has money, it becomes all too easy for the child to be indifferent to their parents’ sacrifices — and just go wild overseas.
The concept of the “American life kill line” has been making the rounds lately, so let me share a few thoughts — and I genuinely hope it serves as a warning to all of you.
Pay special attention to the advice at the end of this article. If you have children studying abroad, or relatives living in North America — please burn these words into your memory.
Alright, let’s first explain what the “kill line” actually is.
Master Chi sincerely urges you — read this one with sharp eyes and commit it to memory.
1. The older generation in the family is rigid and arrogant. They love piling pressure on you to satisfy their own vanity, yet offer nothing in the way of real material support or resources.
2. Family members are divided and lack any sense of unity. Every one of them is a pushover outside the home but a tyrant within it. You alone are struggling to hold everything together, while the others treat this as perfectly normal.
No matter what it is, I always buy the best. Even if that means buying less — I pursue quality, not quantity.
A note here: quality doesn’t mean luxury brands. I rarely pay for brand premiums. I’d much rather spend on genuine quality.
So I would never, out of a desire to save money, buy a pile of things that look cheap but are actually poor quality.
Because with anything — if you simply follow the principle of “good and refined,” you’ll find that not only do you get full use out of everything you own, avoiding waste, but the experience of using these things is genuinely pleasant and comfortable. Life feels remarkably good.
As my regular readers know, I — Master Chi — lived in North America for many years, and through business, my social circle has long included Westerners and well-established overseas Chinese families abroad.
Over the years, friends who emigrated at different points in life are now spread across every industry.
So today, I want to give a wake-up call to all the parents who still think: “My kid isn’t doing well in school here — let’s just send them abroad to pick up a degree.”
1 — Don’t think that because you’re an ordinary person, there’s no point in building up financial capital.
Nearly every wealthy person in Master Chi’s circle — 99.99% of them — made their first pot of gold through two things: saving money and building networks.
On saving: even if you’re only setting aside seven or eight thousand, or ten to twenty thousand, it slowly trains your feel for managing wealth.
For those of you with the intention to capitalize on the dividends of this era, this is very good news.
At the highest level of economic discussion, the topics are always geopolitical patterns and the global chessboard. Get clear on these two things.
Wealth? That becomes a trivial matter well within your reach.
Let me offer a simple summary from Master Chi: in the world ahead, only the Dragon and the Eagle hold genuine power — the kind that can truly shape the global order and redraw the map of interests.
If your child is an international student, then as a parent, you absolutely must read today’s article in full. It holds real value — for your child and for your family’s future.
1 —
Today’s topic came from something a reader said to me two weeks ago, when she came to me in tears.
Her situation is a classic one. She had worked hard her entire life, and when the time came, she decided that sending her child overseas to study was the best thing she could do. So she did exactly that.