Introduction: If your network of connections is of sufficient quality, you will inevitably come to understand that happiness and achievement in life do not necessarily have to be built upon grueling, blood-and-sweat struggle. Just as countless real-world examples are constantly teaching us: happiness and achievement are nothing more than doing the right thing, at the right time, toward the right goal. And the reason Master Chi writes this article today is not only because I hope you achieve happiness and success — but more so because I want that path to be easier for you. After all, an era of great reshuffling is fast approaching. Why not position yourself to win — and win decisively?
Every Teacher’s Day, I receive greetings and words of thanks from many of you — mostly expressing gratitude for my ongoing sharing and guidance.
Honestly, I don’t feel I deserve this gratitude.
By any measure, I fall far short of the title “teacher.” A true teacher imparts unquestionable wisdom and truth to their students. What I share with you is mostly a personal perspective drawn from my own life experience — inevitably a mix of the insightful and the flawed.
In the second part of the Gilded Age, Master Chi will focus on the topic of “self-cultivation.” This section matters because many people still haven’t grasped that the rules of the game have completely changed.
Take today’s wealthy individuals as an example. If you’re not in that circle, you naturally assume these rich people live lives of indulgence and excess — that their massive fortunes exist purely because of lucky timing or some murky, unspoken connections.
After writing so many insightful articles, I find myself increasingly convinced that the wisdom capable of truly changing a life is rarely complex. It simply needs the right person to deliver it in the right tone.
And if you were my child, these few principles below would be the most heartfelt lessons I’d want to pass on to you.
On Life
Most people in this world place far too much pressure and burden on “life” — as though unless they achieve something notable, their existence has been wasted. It simply doesn’t need to be that way.
This article is dedicated to every woman who has faced a difficult fate, yet has never understood where she went wrong.
Have you noticed? The women who get hurt in entertainment gossip almost always share one thing in common: they lack parents who protect and watch over them.
This isn’t to say they grew up without a mother and father. It’s that their parents clearly never passed down the most fundamental wisdom a woman needs — how to protect herself.
(Qixi is approaching — republishing a classic)
Before we begin formally, let’s establish a few foundational principles:
1. In this world, there will always be 20% of people who are simply not suitable as marriage partners. As friends, lovers, or even casual companions — perfectly fine. But as husband or wife? That is a suicidal choice. These people must be avoided.
Yes, some people are destined to grow old alone, for their entire lives. Whoever gets entangled with them pays the price of sacrificing another person’s entire life. Master Chi does not want that person to be you.
There was a time in my youth when I was lost and confused, perpetually puzzled by my own family. Why was it, I wondered, that other children’s parents could immediately lavish them with gifts and favors the moment they asked — while we always seemed to have so little?
Whenever I tried to ask my mother for something, she would look at me with an exhausted yet tender expression and say: “Child, I know it’s hard for you. Hold on a little longer — someday we won’t lack for anything.”
For those who can pick up a pen and hold forth brilliantly on national affairs and international currents, Master Chi has always held deep admiration. Though I sometimes feel the itch to jump in with a thought or two, I ultimately know my limitations in the arena of international politics — so looking back across my hundreds of articles, there is barely a single one that seriously tackles “great power competition.”
Finding the essence of things is crucial.
Whether you truly internalize this determines whether you’ll sink to the bottom for life — or whether you’ll keep climbing and rewrite your destiny.
Think about it — why do high-education families produce top students at such a high rate? It’s genuinely not that these children have superior genes or a higher destiny framework than ordinary kids from birth.
It’s purely that the parents help their children find the essence of test-taking early on.
Prologue: Your family of origin may well be the most terrifying thing in this world — because it transforms people who wouldn’t even qualify as your friends into relatives you can never quite escape.
I. The Truth About Toxic Family Bonds # The reason I have nothing but contempt for domestic television dramas is that they invariably love to attempt, at the story’s end, a forced rehabilitation of utter human garbage.