Student Question: I work a standard 9-to-5 job. My salary isn’t great — currently around 6,000–7,000 RMB a month — but I need at least 10,000+ just to break even. I’m interested in video editing, programming, and music. Do you have any reliable part-time recommendations that can help me earn extra income after work while also building my skills?
Master Chi’s Response:
Both programming and video editing can work as side hustles. To freelance in programming, you need a sufficiently high skill level. It requires genuine passion for the craft and a willingness to invest serious time. Income potential is high, but freelance work is inconsistent. Video editing has a faster learning curve with more available gigs, though the pay is relatively lower. Rideshare driving and delivery work are also reliable part-time options — the main advantage is flexibility.
After graduating from university, society demands we master two things: 1⃣ interpersonal relationships and 2⃣ the ability to earn money. Unfortunately, school never teaches either.
Even if you happen to arrive at this insight on your own someday, your parents and teachers will quickly stamp the thought out: “Just focus on your studies — don’t worry about all that!”
So some people never even make it out of academia before being disillusioned by human nature — graduate students get their first hard lesson courtesy of their own supervisors. Those who do enter the working world discover they’re just ordinary people: average technical skills, average emotional intelligence, and even more average self-awareness. The suffering that comes with that realization is immense.
★ - I know that lately you’ve been carrying this feeling of “nothing excites me anymore, and hope is nearly impossible to see.” But don’t be afraid — you’re not alone. Many people far more successful than you feel exactly the same way right now. In fact, their burdens are incomparably heavier than yours, because they also face mountains of debt and endless disputes. Haven’t you noticed? Many of the wealthy figures who once strutted so boldly have gone quiet and invisible. As the saying goes: the tallest tree catches the most wind. What they fear most is trouble coming from every direction.
I’ve never been one to call myself a tycoon, but over the years, through Chinese metaphysics (guoxue), I’ve assisted many prominent families and distinguished individuals. Combined with a solid upbringing, I’ve seized quite a few opportunities and seen through to the core of many things.
Honestly, striking it truly rich is incredibly hard to replicate — it requires timing, opportunity, and innate talent.
But if all you want is to make a few million? That’s not so hard. Grasp a few key points and that’s enough:
Among life’s many challenges, I’d rank finding a good romantic match somewhere around fifth or sixth in difficulty.
The advice below draws on esoteric wisdom, but if you study it carefully and truly absorb it, you’ll find — unless your destiny chart is exceptionally unusual — that a quality partner is well within reach in three years. Quite easily, in fact.
1. When you find yourself surrounded by people with terrible character, whose lifestyle choices and social skills leave much to be desired, the problem is probably not them — it’s that you’ve drifted into a social circle that doesn’t belong to you.
Tonight I didn’t have time to write anything long — I’d been sharing a few quiet drinks with some friends at an old colonial villa on Fumin Road.
Funny thing is, every time I’m the slightest bit tipsy, I get this strong urge to have a little heart-to-heart with all of you.
So right now, in this moment, I just want to tell you sincerely: this year, don’t voluntarily load yourself down with too much pressure.
1 - Honestly, I feel genuine compassion for the women who come to me seeking a destiny framework (格局) reading. In the vast majority of cases, it’s not that they lack intelligence — it’s that they’ve never had anyone reliable in their corner. No one who could stand at a higher vantage point and help them untangle the knot their life has become.
That is the root of it. Born into an ordinary family, they never developed the awareness needed to navigate a world this complicated and unforgiving.
You must believe this: hidden within your life is a destiny script you have never once read.
Because you’ve never read it, you don’t understand why — despite all your grinding effort — you still can’t see results, noble benefactors (Gui Ren), or wealth on the horizon.
Otherwise, how do you explain it? Why can some people do just a few seemingly effortless things and immediately crack their world wide open?
I just walked out of an intimate private dinner in Gubei — the kind that comes together casually. Even though a few of the guests were well-connected figures from the south, the drinks did their work and everyone loosened up, speaking frankly.
Plenty was said over the clinking of glasses. But sobering up afterward, I realized — a lot of what I shared at that table belongs here too, with all of you.
If there are a handful of articles in this lifetime capable of completely changing your destiny after you read them quietly to the end — this is absolutely one of them. And what you’ll find here are secrets that your ordinary social circles will never bring you anywhere near.
In the depths of my youth, at my lowest point, I desperately wished there was a noble benefactor (Gui Ren) beside me — someone who would take my hand and illuminate the confusion, show me the road ahead.