Having read this article by He Caitou, I feel an inclination to write about Li Xiaolai that I know of.
Seven years ago when I first accessed Li Xiaolai’s blog, my first impression of him was that this guy was not a typical English teacher. Unlike other English teachers from the New Oriental School, (in the beginning I did not know that he had just resigned his teaching position from New Oriental at that moment,) there were few articles about “English knowledge and skills” such as sentence patterns, grammar analyses or so-called “Bible for exams”, etc on his blog but rather articles about how to learn knowledge (more than English). In addition, he built up his own blog website with a personal domain name instead of issuing posts under other blog service providers, which seemed like high-tech to me. Thenceforth I become a follower of one of his principles, that is, all depend on (long-term) accumulation and all can be accumulated.
The first influence on me, which I would mention to my friends again and again since then, was that his blog posts subverted my old philosophy of learning, especially that of English learning, and rebuilt a promising new and living one. Before long I accessed his newly published book, which would become a best-seller and long-term seller―《把时间当作朋友》. Now if there would be anything regretable, it would be that I only applied those principles to English learning, especially to my preparation for the postgraduate school entrance exam. My last sevent years, which can be seen as a period of one incarnation according to Li Xiaolai’s newly-updated concept, has not been fully exploited.
As a matter of fact, I absolutely did not realize in the beginning that Li Xiaolai would surprise me more than once. I always took him as an English trainer, if not a teacher, in my subconscious. When he mentioned he was engaged in on-line projects I only thought that he was just entertaining himself by playing as an amateur. It would be years later, last year to be precise when I found years before he had once declared that he was free for he had mastered the techniques of website construction by two years self-learning. What I could most imagine was that he would become a CEO-type person rather than a CTO-type person. And when he delivered his first Wechat Public Account article, which concerned business matters or financial investments to be precise, I felt confused why he should choose this subject or have such interest, though at that time I had already learnt that he had made a large fortune by dealing in Bit Coins.
It is amusing that when I badly needed to find way to further learning one year after I graduated as an undergraduate student, I had the luck to meet his blog on the Internet while once again when I badly needed to find way to my future life as a newly-graduated postgraduate student, he began to share his experience as a life-long learner and an investor. This time it was my philosophy of value and that of life that his principles, based on the knowlege of knowledge, helped make mature. The amusement can be noticed that I was always steps slower than Li Xiaolai’s sharing contents.
When I received the push from Li Xiaolai’s public account (xiaolai-xuexi) that he would start a column in the App “Get it” I immediately paid for and subscribed to it. As I have mentioned above, when I wanted to improve my English, he provided knowledge more than that of English learning while this time his column concerning how to achieve financial freedom provides knowledge more than that of making money. This time I am one step faster than before.
如果你也看过《把时间当作朋友》，也许你会和当年的我一样感慨：对于一名英文教师而言，李笑来老师想得太多，对于事物的看法太独特，也太个人化。这样的人，要是一直当英文老师就可惜了，他应该去教中文的。——和菜头“得到”App专栏文章《穷小子李笑来来了》
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