Raymond's User Manual

Why Beijing

6 min read

“Why Beijing” was a career choice Raymond Hou (Raymond) made between 2018 and 2019. After building a body of content and experience as a lecturer in Taiwan, he and his wife Song Zhiyou (Yuzu; see Yuzu (Song Zhiyou)) decided to move west to mainland China and make Beijing their base for work and life. The reasoning behind this decision was documented in full in the “365-Day Countdown” series on the “柚智夫妻” WeChat public account, which began in August 2018. Counting down to “going to Beijing on August 15, 2019” turned a career direction into a year-long public preparation that readers could witness. This entry covers the background and reasoning behind the decision itself; the experience after moving is in The Beijing Period (2019–2020), and the content experiments beforehand are in Beijing Eve: 柚智夫妻 Public Account and ‘365-Day Countdown’ (2018–2020).

Trigger: A Visit to Beijing in 2017

In 2017, Raymond visited companies and organizations in Beijing and encountered several content-marketing companies he considered “exceptionally impressive.” This visit was the direct source of the decision. It did not simply create a longing to go; it created a comparison. In Beijing, Raymond discovered that he was not as strong as he had thought, while also realizing that he was more unwilling to accept defeat than he had imagined. In the first “365-Day Countdown” post, he wrote a line that set the tone for the whole journey: “I am not as strong as I imagined, but I also discovered that I am more unwilling to give up than I imagined.”1 This stance—neither arrogant nor withdrawing—became the psychological baseline for the Beijing decision.

The Options Put on the Table

The other side of the decision was what not to choose. Raymond’s position in Taiwan was already good: more than a hundred course and speaking invitations a year, a leading position among Chinese-language Medium writers, work as an online-course instructor and audio creator, and experience in corporate content and brand marketing. The main objection to moving west was therefore the opportunity cost: “Are you going to give up everything you worked so hard to build in Taiwan?” Raymond responded by separating “leaving” from “giving up.” He gradually transferred and passed on his existing work in Taiwan rather than cutting it off. He based his conviction on the criterion that “the easier a choice is, the less likely it is to offer something deeply worthwhile.”2 Staying in a familiar environment and living off past gains was the low-risk option; starting from zero in mainland China was the high-difficulty option he deliberately chose.

Why Beijing Rather Than Somewhere Else

Raymond clearly asked himself why this should be the goal: at every stage, did he still have the courage to pursue “a dream that people of this age, background, and identity would not dare imagine,” so that he would not set a ceiling for himself in advance? He had two reasons for choosing Beijing. The first was the opportunity: Chinese-language internet businesses, paid knowledge products, and content operations were expanding rapidly, and Beijing was home to leading companies in the field. It was a place to test his content capabilities in a larger and faster market. The second was that the difficulty itself was part of the goal. For someone born in the 1990s, from a non-metropolitan area in Taiwan and a blue-collar family, venturing to mainland China was a deliberate move out of his comfort zone and a way to remove labels others had placed on him. Yuzu’s contrasting remark in the same series was that even with family support, one should still go out, take a fall, and make one’s way in the world.

The Form of the Decision: A Year of Public Preparation

It is important to distinguish this from an “up and go” decision. They designed it as a preparation period with a deadline. A year before moving, Raymond and Yuzu began running their public account and publishing content at 08:15 every morning, putting the countdown in each title. The content focused on internet operations analysis, time management, and personal-brand methods needed for their move. The decision was therefore simultaneously a Career Development choice, a content experiment, and a self-imposed accountability mechanism: make the goal public to narrow the way back. Raymond also noted in the series that he valued “action and rapid iteration,” tending to start first and adjust based on feedback.

Consequences and Looking Back

The move to Beijing happened as planned in August 2019. Raymond joined the sports-internet company Keep in product operations and also served as a digital-transformation consultant for a Taiwanese brand group. They had originally planned to settle there for three to five years, but their plan ended early in 2020 when the pandemic broke out and they could not return to Beijing after coming back to Taiwan for Lunar New Year. From a career perspective, the decision did not complete its original script. From the perspective of personal development, however, it became the starting point for the next stage. The high-frequency publishing discipline and data-review habits built before and during the move, along with the Business Thinking gained by observing paid knowledge products and community operations up close in mainland China, all nourished Raymond’s later Super Individual business. Raymond later assessed that wrapping up a six-month consulting engagement helped confirm that “my value lies in helping individuals accelerate their development, not organizations.” This is another answer the question “Why Beijing?” received in retrospect.

Further Reading

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Footnotes

  1. Raymond Hou, “[365-Day Countdown] About Us—How Much More Can We Imagine?” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-15. View original ↩

  2. Raymond Hou, “[364-Day Countdown] Before You Act, Tear Off the Labels Others Put on You!” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-16. View original ↩

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