The old man next door is never short of gossip. This afternoon I heard him talking about how a mining boss in our residential community made his fortune.

That mining boss came from the kind of deep mountains shown in picture one. His family was so poor it squeaked, and he only went to school for two or three years. At 14, he entered the mining area, cooking for miners and managing tools—he did that for 6 years straight. He didn't go down into the mines until he was 20, and after enduring another 8 years, he was barely making enough to eat, let alone saving money to get married.

Later he married a widow three years his senior whose late husband had left her with over a hundred thousand yuan. That money became his startup capital for contracting a mine.

He worked it himself for seven or eight years, but still didn't strike it rich. Until the Shanxi coal reform happened, and an official in charge took notice of him for being a straightforward person and gave him a hand. From then on, he took off. Previously he made tens of thousands a year; now he can make in half a day what he used to make in a year.

The older generation all say that if a businessman really wants to take off, many times he needs to meet a noble person, find a platform—what they call "officials backing merchants." That's just how reality is. Without resources and platforms, no matter how hard you work alone, it's too difficult.

But what's rarest about this person is that he didn't forget his roots. After he got rich, there were no shortage of women circling around him, and many wanted to move up. He just said one thing: I got my start because of my wife, and if we made it, I'm not going to kick her out—do I still want to be a person? (Miners are very superstitious about switching wives)

Poverty isn't scary, hardship isn't scary, lack of education isn't scary—what's scary is having money and forgetting where you came from, having power and changing your heart. This mining boss, though he's just a rough man, in how he conducts himself as a person, he really passes the test.$ETH #Gate2月衍生品市场份额创新高