This post was originally meant to share my thoughts on “the big casino” — the stock market — because from today’s action alone (April 19th), the index is beginning to stir with some restless energy. But there’s no great urgency just yet, and that discussion can wait until tomorrow.
Today, Master Chi has something bone-chilling to share instead. Since this comes straight from the heart, I won’t write it as a formal piece — read it as casually as I’m writing it.
Just moments ago, a client of mine — someone connected to me by fate who had firmly decided she never wanted children — sent me a message. I’ll call her Nancy.
Nancy told me she now wants two children. Even if that requires medical intervention, she’s willing.
To give you some context: both she and her husband are founding members of a major Shenzhen tech firm. They no longer clock in daily, yet still collect annual dividends in the tens of millions. Over the years they’ve acquired multiple properties and never stinted on the finer things in life. DINK existence, carefree and polished. I became their friend because they occasionally needed someone to read their fortune (运势) when making investments.
This told me everything about who they are: when these two decide on something, it’s iron-clad — full speed ahead, no looking back.
So for people like this to go from “absolutely no children” to “let’s have two” — something had to fundamentally shift.
And sure enough, Nancy told me why.
During Chinese New Year, her husband’s niece came to visit. The girl sat in their meticulously designed living room, wide eyes sweeping over everything the couple had so carefully built — and then, out of nowhere, said:
“Auntie Nancy, do you have other big houses? When you’re old, will all those houses be mine?”
The girl’s expression was undisguised joy. Or call it what it really was: greed.
Nancy understood immediately. The girl wasn’t asking a question — she was confirming something she already believed was true. The fact that she even phrased it as a question was, in its own way, already quite “considerate and polite.”
The moment the words landed, Nancy’s sister-in-law clapped a hand over the child’s mouth and laughed it off — “Kids, you know how they are.” The grandmother nearby looked on with a warm, contented smile.
But Nancy was struck silent. She couldn’t shake it.
Especially when she watched that eleven-year-old girl wander into their bedroom as if she owned the place — casually handling the jewelry cabinet that Nancy had filled piece by careful piece over the years. And when she saw the girl settle into the living room sofa with the unmistakable ease of a little mistress of the house, making it perfectly clear she had never once considered herself an outsider.
Nancy made up her mind then and there. Two children.
Is this selfishness? A failure to see the bigger picture of life? No.
This couple is genuinely generous — their donations to medical charities and education foundations alone exceed what many ordinary people accumulate in an entire lifetime.
But the knowledge that everything you’ve fought for and built is being quietly coveted, anticipated, and waited upon by someone else — that is something they simply cannot accept.
In an earlier piece, I said there are certain places you must visit to truly mature as a human being. Today I want to add one more to the list: the wards and corridors of the oncology ICU.
The elderly patients who have children — they fare better. At the finish line none of us can avoid, they still have someone to lean on, someone to confide in.
But the ones who don’t: watch carefully. You’ll notice the relatives who show up grow fewer with each visit, and more visibly impatient with each one.
Until the very final stage — when nieces and nephews and distant kin who haven’t been seen in years suddenly appear together, all at once.
They wear sorrowful faces. But they radiate the unmistakable atmosphere of relief. What are they waiting for?
In that moment, you will feel it in your gut: the human vultures — those who feed on the declining, who want a life to end — are standing right there beside you.
Let me be clear about where I stand: I neither support nor oppose anyone who chooses the DINK life. That is entirely yours to decide.
But as someone who shares a small thread of fate with you, I want to leave you with one thought: Every choice has its gains and its losses.
The gain of choosing DINK life is freedom — the lightness of your years before sixty. You won’t need to pour time, energy, or money into raising children.
The loss is what waits on the other side of sixty: emptiness and a particular kind of fear. Not everyone will feel this — and some may not even reach sixty. But the unavoidable reality is this: if you’re in your thirties or forties right now, modern medicine means you have an excellent chance of living into your eighties or nineties.
And if you have no direct blood descendants by then, that means for the last twenty or thirty years of your life, there will be no one young, strong, and genuinely invested in protecting your interests and your dignity.
I’ve made the same recommendation to every DINK friend in my circle: before you commit to this path, go first. Visit a hospice. A nursing home for the very elderly. An ICU. A cancer ward. See it with your own eyes. Then make your decision — the way you’d do proper research before buying property or signing a contract.
The results? Of the friends who actually went, 70% gave up the DINK plan. Some, already past thirty-five, came rushing to me in a panic — asking me to read their children’s palace in their BaZi (四柱命盘) — hoping there was still a chance for a healthy, capable child.
As for you: I’m not here to frighten you into anything. This is your life, and I have no authority over it. Go see for yourself — you’ll understand in a way no words can teach.
Whatever path you choose, I wish you a life that is full, fortunate, and at peace.