Let me start with something serious — something genuinely worth your attention: Over the years, through my work, I’ve had the chance to interact with a vast number of ordinary readers. And what I’ve come to see more clearly than ever is this.
The resource most ordinary people lack isn’t money, physical strength, or intelligence — it’s access to genuine, high-quality information.
This is why most ordinary people’s understanding of the world and society is completely out of sync and perpetually behind. By the time they catch wind of something significant, that something is already well into its second half.
The painful consequence is that they simply cannot read the current “macro script” — they can’t see which act is being played out right now, nor can they anticipate where the story is heading.
And if you can’t read the big picture, you’ll never know how to play your own small hand well.
1
Idle talk is the single greatest time-waster in the world — especially the kind where people spend all day arguing about whether the sky is “dark with storm clouds” or “clear and sunny.” At its core, this is nothing but a pointless waste of life.
You’re a smart person. You already know in your bones what the current situation actually is — you can feel it for yourself.
My own view is to maintain what I’d call a “don’t blow big money, don’t skimp on small effort” stance.
Absolutely do not take on any position that puts you at serious risk or draws you into high-stakes gambling. No matter how tempting something looks, raise the white flag and walk away.
Staying steady is winning.
And there’s no need to walk around with a long face all day, sighing and complaining with a crowd of others. That’s its own kind of foolishness.
I have a particular aversion to people who wear their complaints on their sleeve. Once negative energy reaches a certain threshold, it infects every single thing you do — like moving through bitter cold, where your every motion becomes sluggish and dull.
I’ll be plain: I carry myself with clarity of spirit. I have no interest in being surrounded by resentful ghosts and bitter souls.
2
From a practical standpoint: don’t make the mistake of thinking that doing “small things” during a period like this is a waste of your energy and time.
If over the next year or two you were to comprehensively reorganize your schedule — cutting out the vast majority of non-essential activities and channeling all your energy into reading deeply through book after book, maintaining good eating and exercise habits, and ensuring you get enough sleep each night…
And at the same time, treating yourself like a business to be managed — proactively expanding your range of competencies each day, developing deep skills, actively building a trustworthy network, and offering genuine value to the people around you…
Simply sustaining that kind of daily rhythm would produce an enormous strengthening of your inner foundation.
And that way of living would be far more comfortable, high-quality, and effective than what countless people experienced over the past three or four years — those who were dead-set on forcing a turnaround, gambling against the times, and ended up with a bloody nose.
If time could rewind, you’d find no shortage of people who wish they hadn’t pushed so hard, hadn’t been swept up in self-congratulatory hustle, and had simply lived their own quiet, good lives.
3
I also want to share some thoughts with brothers and sisters that may not be immediately easy to absorb.
Read this, sit quietly with it, try to make sense of it on your own. Whatever you take from it — you don’t need anyone else’s validation. Just let it settle in your own heart.
A broad recovery is clearly not coming quickly. It still requires patient stillness and the willingness to wait, slowly and steadily.
From the most macro perspective of the great tides of the world, our competition with the power across the Pacific is the root source of many of these problems. Now we watch to see whether it’s Trump or Harris who takes office.
But regardless of who it is, what gets decided is the mode of competition — not its fundamental nature. So a long road ahead is inevitable, and you need to set your expectations accordingly.
On another note: where conditions allow, don’t let bias and stubbornness cloud your rational judgment.
Travel. Go see the world — different parts of China, different corners of the globe. Observe the scenery, the culture, the environments, the way people live. Many things can only be truly understood once you’ve seen them with your own eyes.
Over all my years, the most profound lesson I’ve learned is this: opportunity and perspective are things that can only be earned by wandering the world, reading widely, and seeking out people worth knowing.
Staying locked in your own bubble, refusing to look outward — this will never lead anywhere good. It only produces ignorance and arrogance, and a worldview that grows more narrow and dim with each passing year.
Some brothers and sisters have asked me: why, in this kind of environment, are you, Master Chi, still running successful businesses?
Honestly, there’s no great secret. My approach to business has always been “people first, small scale first.”
To unpack that: “people first” means I place extreme importance on a partner’s character and track record. They must be reliable and singularly focused. If they meet that bar, there’s a basis for sitting down and talking.
“Small scale first” means I’ve never been the type to leverage my resources for some reckless grand ambition. On the contrary, every time I start a new venture, I shrink the operation down to its smallest viable form — run the logic slowly until it works, and only then, when it’s genuinely necessary, expand gradually and bring more people on board.
So over the years, the businesses I’ve been involved in have quietly earned comfortable, stable modest returns. Yes, I’ve missed plenty of opportunities — but I’ve also saved myself enormous headaches.
As for other investments — whether property or stocks — because I got in early enough and have almost never been tempted to tinker and fiddle, even today, the rental income and dividends alone provide very solid returns.
Let me put it this way: if you haven’t truly been wealthy, or if you’ve only briefly caught a taste of small money, you may not fully grasp what I mean when I say this — a solid financial foundation is like a house built from marble. During construction, waste and loss are inevitable.
But once you push through to completion, it can sustain your comfort and security for an entire lifetime.
Think about it this way: if you currently held eight figures’ worth of various mid-to-small properties, would you lie awake worrying about their daily price fluctuations? You wouldn’t. Let them be. Where there’s a floor, there’s also a peak — what remains constant is the compounding accumulation that long-term holding brings you.
This is something that the newly and briefly rich have never been able to understand.