Yi did NOT say that. According to AI, it may come from Fortune’s profile of her. In the article, Eowyn Chen (who worked under Yi) describes how Yi typically answers people who mock her rural Sichuan background: “She tells people, ‘Sure, I came from a crappy background and made good, so why don’t you do the same?’” says Chen.
Yi will not say something that arrogant directly. Luck plays a role in "success". The "direct quote" style is misleading. 🙏
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The most powerful woman in crypto grew up without electricity.
Yi He was born in a village in Sichuan that had no electricity and no running water. Her father died when she was nine. At sixteen she was selling drinks for a living. Later she hosted a travel show on Chinese television. She started learning English in her thirties.
In 2014, working in marketing at an exchange, she hired a little known engineer named Changpeng Zhao. Three years later, the two of them founded Binance.
In December 2025 she was named co-CEO. In 2026 Fortune placed her on its Most Powerful Women in Business list the first crypto-native executive ever to make it.
Asked about where she came from, her answer was short:
Of course I come from a poor background. But I am successful. Why can't you do the same?
There is no secret here. Just someone who never asked her circumstances for permission.
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In SW China’s Sichuan, a foreign tourist, just like any visitor to the local teahouse, was treated to a tea pouring performance. When the ritual ended, everyone applauded.
The longest tunnel on the Sichuan section of Xining-Chengdu railway was successfully drilled through on Saturday in Songpan County, southwest China's Sichuan Province, laying a solid foundation for the official opening of the line that connects the northwest and southwest regions in the country.
Stretching 11,795 meters, the single-bore, double-track railway tunnel features a designed speed of 200 km/h, and an average elevation of 3,500 meters.
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A woolly hare forages on a flower-dotted meadow in Shiqu, southwest China's Sichuan Province. Its fluffy fur, slender ears, and playful energy make this wildlife scene utterly charming.
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A dose of cuteness from the wild! Two adorable marmots were captured on camera standing amid the grass and looking around inquisitively in Shiqu County, southwest China's Sichuan Province.
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Chili Pepper Price Trends 2026
Nine years ago there were already rumors that chili pepper futures would be listed. I researched it at length and even wanted to visit the production regions in India, but nothing ever came of it.
Here I have to say something about AI hallucination, which increasingly demands vigilance these days. AI swore up and down that the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange had listed chili pepper futures. Fortunately I trade every day; after a moment of doubt, I confirmed that the Zhengzhou exchange has no such thing.
Back to the main story.
The top boss among chili producing regions is of course China, now accounting for nearly half of global output, at 22 million metric tons per year against world production of 44 million tons. That output has fully doubled from twenty years ago to today.
The growth in chili demand tracks partly with population growth and partly with economic growth: as incomes rise, people dine out more, and chili demand rises with it. Alongside this came the territorial conquest of Sichuan and Hunan cuisine, and the penetration of Mexican tacos into the United States.
However, chili flavors differ by variety, and fresh chilis are hard to transport and store, so price correlation between the Americas and Asia is not high.
Chinese and Indian chili prices, meanwhile, are increasingly intertwined. This is mainly because India’s S17, a high heat dried chili, occupies an ever larger place in Sichuan and Hunan cooking. People’s palates keep getting heavier: spiciness only ever intensifies, never lightens.
India’s actual output is about half of China’s, but because it is dried chili, its nominal volume appears to be only one tenth of China’s.
Chili shares two traits with other vegetables.
First, the cobweb effect: farmers blindly chase prices, so price and output repeat in cycles, circling in place like a spiderweb, like the succession of ancient dynasties.
Second, eating at the mercy of the heavens: climate has an enormous impact on chili output. But climate effects in China, India, and Mexico are not synchronized.
If you compare the overlap between apple and chili growing regions, you may find some correlation between Chinese chili and apple prices, but chili has its own characteristics. Cold storage apple prices do not affect new season contracts, whereas chili cold storage inventory can affect market prices directly, with no futures influence.
Still, the structural contradiction here is obvious. Last year’s high dried chili inventory and high import volume, stacked on weak food service consumption, formed one side. Meanwhile the small fresh chilis of daily consumption, thanks to the cobweb effect, saw planted acreage fall by 20 percent. So on some wholesale price indexes, you can see Sanyingjiao chili prices rebounding.
For those in the growing and wholesale trade, expectation management is critically important.
For more on vegetables, fruit, fresh proteins, and meat, visit the fresh commodity world, launching soon.
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Japan's Prime Minister briefed her country with wet hair last night. Beijing would have detained the citizen who filmed it.
At 10:29 p.m. on Friday, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck Japan's Yamanashi Prefecture, registering a maximum seismic intensity of lower 6 in the town of Fujikawaguchiko at the foot of Mount Fuji. By 11:15 p.m. — forty-six minutes later — Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was standing at the Prime Minister's Office briefing the nation. Crisis management center activated. Director-general-level emergency gathering team convened. Human life first. Information to the public, promptly and accurately.
She was also visibly straight out of the bath.
Hair still wet. No makeup. Takaichi posted on her own X account a short time later, in plain language: she had come directly from the bath without time to dry her hair or apply makeup, and apologized for her appearance. She did not have to volunteer that detail. She chose to.
That choice is the story.
Because somewhere about 1,700 miles to the west, operating under the same physics but a very different political philosophy, the first hour after a magnitude 5.6 earthquake would have looked nothing like this. It would not have been spent activating a crisis center, dispatching emergency teams, and putting the head of government in front of cameras to admit she had rushed straight out of the shower. It would have been spent deciding what to tell the public, what to delete, and which citizen with a camera to detain.
We know because we have watched it happen.
In Wuhan in early 2020, the doctors who tried to warn the world about a novel coronavirus were summoned by police and forced to sign confessions for "spreading rumors." The citizen journalists who filmed the morgues and the sealed apartment doors — Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin, Li Zehua — were disappeared by the state. Fang Bin would later be sentenced to three years in prison; he was held for the duration.
In Zhengzhou in July 2021, passengers drowned trapped in a flooded subway tunnel while state propaganda ran headlines about heroic rescue. When BBC correspondent Robin Brant asked the local government how a metro system less than a decade old could leave passengers to die on a platform, the Henan branch of the Communist Youth League posted his whereabouts to its 1.6 million followers and called for people to track him down. Death threats followed within hours.
In Hebei in August 2023, when the floodwaters from Typhoon Doksuri had to go somewhere, authorities diverted them away from Beijing and into Zhuozhou — and the Hebei provincial Party Secretary, Ni Yuefeng, publicly declared the province would "serve as a moat for the capital." Videos of the submerged villages disappeared from Chinese social media within hours.
And in Sichuan in 2008, after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake killed at least 5,335 schoolchildren in school buildings that collapsed while government offices nearby remained standing — what citizens named "tofu-dreg schoolhouses" — the writer Tan Zuoren tried to compile a list of the dead. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Huang Qi, the activist who tried to help the parents, got three years; in 2019, the Party gave him twelve more on state-secrets charges. He is still inside.
The pattern is not a series of accidents. It is a system. In the People's Republic of China, the function of the state in a disaster is not to serve the public. It is to protect the Party from the public.
Compare and contrast.
In Tokyo on Friday night, the head of government decided that telling the country what she knew, forty-six minutes after the ground stopped shaking, mattered more than how her hair looked. In Beijing under any equivalent scenario, the head of government would not be at a podium for hours, or days. The citizens with cameras would already be on a list.
Wet hair is not the real headline. Wet hair is the headline because of what it accidentally exposes: a democracy is a system that runs toward its citizens in the dark. A dictatorship is a system that hides from them.
Sanae Takaichi did not need to apologize for her hair. The Chinese Communist Party owes apologies it will never make, to families whose dead it never named.
ACI — Aric Chen | Insights
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Sichuan’s signature dishes, all absolute fan favorites! 🔥
Kung Pao Chicken features a rich lychee-style sweet-spicy flavor. Shui Zhu Rou Pian is piping hot, bold and aromatic. Twice-Cooked Pork Slices is luscious and fragrant, tender without being greasy. Fresh Pot Rabbit is silky and fresh with a distinctive taste. Fish-Flavored Shredded Pork is sweet and tangy, perfect to whet the appetite. Qiaojiao Beef in Clear Soup boasts a rich, comforting broth🤤
The essence of Sichuan cuisine shines through every bite. Which one is your favorite? Share with us in the comments! 💬
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