Student Question:
Hello Master, I currently operate a restaurant business in Shenzhen. We’re working in an environment where China is facing economic pressure from the United States. Domestic demand is weak, and commercial space is oversupplied.
Will commercial rental prices come down? Besides looking for bargain deals and exploring profit-sharing arrangements with landlords — should we be avoiding new openings and long-term leases for now? Currently, I’m maintaining profitability by keeping rent at roughly 19% of revenue or below.
Starting from absolute zero — hounded daily by Macau debt collectors.
To slowly finding his footing again and reclaiming a net worth in the hundreds of millions — my friend Su accomplished his full comeback in just five years.
I still remember it clearly. Many years ago, a down-and-out middle-aged man tracked me down through a winding chain of mutual connections, determined to find me.
His purpose was simple: he wanted me to read his destiny chart (命盘) and tell him honestly whether he had any chance at all of turning his life around.
No — they are the true signals of a great transformation descending upon us. — Master Chi
If you want to develop sharp insight into the grand currents of world affairs, your best move is to stop staring at those hyped-up, sensationalist media accounts that pump content straight into your brain all day long.
Because every word they write has been deeply processed with one purpose: to ignite your emotions, make you lose your reason, and drag you completely into the biases they’ve pre-set for you.
At work, we often encounter good fortune in our daily professional and personal lives.
For example, your manager, in high spirits at a dinner gathering, leans over and quietly tells you: “Son, keep up the good work — I’m saving that supervisor position for you.”
Or perhaps you’ve just arrived in an unfamiliar city, and a close friend, seeing you without a place to stay, says: “I’ve got a one-bedroom unit sitting empty — just move in.”
To be precise, it has been over half a year since I last wrote a grand strategy-level piece. The main reason is simply that on our side, there have not been any particularly noteworthy events worth discussing.
Of course, the various influencers who specialize in international geopolitics always find clever ways to turn minor topics into something dramatic. But anyone with clear eyes knows it is nothing more than blowing small things out of proportion for clicks.
Student Question
What do you currently do? I work at a foreign company handling automotive parts trade and procurement.
What field are you in, and what problems are you facing? I’ve been in the automotive aftermarket space and have offline supplier resources and decent supply channels. The problem is I have no stable sales channel to monetize — sales are sporadic. I occasionally collaborate with friends where I handle the supply side and they handle the client side, but demand is inconsistent. I’m thinking about opening an Alibaba International store to do automotive parts export. The first year requires roughly 70,000 yuan in investment, which I don’t currently have. I’m on the fence about whether to move forward.
First things first: arrange your time wisely.
Don’t throw great chunks of your life at things with negligible returns.
There’s an old saying: in your first thirty years, you can’t get enough sleep; in the next thirty, you can’t fall asleep. But it’s not really insomnia, is it? It’s that after thirty years, you’ve realized how precious time is. You simply don’t want to waste it in bed.
We only have this one life. Make it count — do things that matter, things that genuinely excite you.
Student Question:
Hello, Master. I’d like your guidance on a negotiation situation. Our company is looking to purchase a batch of Japanese-imported soybean harvesters from another company. Their opening price was 5.99 million — far above the actual market value.
We made our position clear: this figure cannot serve as the basis for negotiation.
Their representative didn’t answer directly. Instead, he changed the subject and went to great lengths to highlight the product’s quality and superiority. So we asked: “How many companies manufacture this type of product in total? And on what grounds does your company claim your product is superior to American soybean harvesters?”
Student Question
Hello Master, in a small city where house prices have shown little to no long-term growth, is it better to buy with a mortgage or pay in full? (I do have the means to pay in full.) Doing a rough calculation, the annual mortgage interest is quite significant — much higher than what a bank deposit would earn. Please advise. Thank you.
Master Chi’s Response
If house prices aren’t going up long-term, buying in full means you’re continuously losing money — it’s no different from just holding cash.
Student Question
Hello Master, I’m thinking about creating self-media content by “picking up bottles” (generating side income). My family has a middle school physics teacher and a middle school math teacher. What do you think about doing analysis videos for high school entrance exam (中考) questions? Each video covers one problem, about ten minutes long, published across Douyin, WeChat Video, and Kuaishou simultaneously. Please advise.
Master Chi’s Response
This type of tutoring and education content is under strict restrictions.