Daily Lesson from Life 01 August 2008

"Tue, August 01, 2008 China Daily, ANN How the super rich live

CHINA - "Being rich and living the life of an aristocrat are not the same thing," Rupert Hoogewerf, author of the 2008 Hurun Report of New Aristocracy, said. He is better known by his Chinese name Hu Run.

An aristocrat in China generally spends about 4.57 million yuan (US$672,000) a year, and much of it on a premium standard of living.

Hoogewerf said the report was compiled after analysing the lifestyles of more than 100 super rich people in China and not all spend lavishly. To live the life of an aristocrat, those super rich people must have spent at least 83 million yuan (US$12 million).

The report describes the life of a typical aristocrat.

He is someone in his 40s, lives in Shanghai with his wife and has a son about 17 years old studying in Britain. He owns a villa in the city and an apartment in Beijing, has four cars in his garage including a Rolls-Royce Phantom for himself and a Mercedes-Benz ML500 for his wife.

He enjoys playing golf and has paid more than 3.5 million yuan (US$512,182) to join golf clubs in Shanghai and Beijing. Sometimes, he and his friends will charter a plane to play golf in Hainan province."

I thought I was going to be reflecting on something interesting until I read the details and found that it is the report by 'Hu Run' - a smart foreigner who made his name and money publishing the 'Rich People List' in China.

Some people are taken to it while some are not. Some intended targets by Hu Run turned him away as they are not interested to be, or scared of being, included in this Rich People list! Hu Run's list in my humble opinions are just scratching 10% o f the truly super-rich as many of them are not able to truly show their wealth to him! Many wealth are not easily estimated and fraught with wide margin of errors in the multi-million rmb range!

Anyway, my lessons are:

1. it is not how much you have that matter but how much you can and want to give that decide if you are rich or not!;

2. the abundance earthly things you owned is nothing but transient! You come to the world stark naked with life to live to the fullest and you leave the earth not able to bring anything you amassed or created with you! The many cars you own is like the many gold plated toilets you built for yourself, you can only use them one at a time!;

3. the chartered flight, the fancy watches and the after-3-glasses-all-wine-taste-the-same charade only show others how rich you are. But are you really rich? Or you are are but are you confident about yourself that you do not need these superficial things to make you feel rich? Or are you cleverer than the smooth marketers who just want to get the pile of money off you hands instead of letting your pile of money go to the charitable causes and helping people who honestly need help?

The lifestyle of the super-rich. What Mr Hu Run described are printable. I know of many Chinese friends who know of people with tons of money and spent it on incredulously stupid things and people.

May you be rich and really rich in both the material world, and the spiritual world. Start becoming a 7e Way of Leader! ;-))