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    Why the Chicken Crossed the World: 18 Surprising Secrets from China on Success, Wealth, and Happiness
    Why the Chicken Crossed the World: 18 Surprising Secrets from China on Success, Wealth, and Happiness
    Why the Chicken Crossed the World: 18 Surprising Secrets from China on Success, Wealth, and Happiness
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    Why the Chicken Crossed the World: 18 Surprising Secrets from China on Success, Wealth, and Happiness

    By Funky Chicken

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    About this ebook

    A brilliant collection of hilariously poignant true stories illustrate what China teaches us about happiness, wealth, love, power, and getting what you want. Based on a successful, witty blog by a Chinese-American expatriate in Shanghai, these impactful insights loved by worldwide readers illuminate how China changes your world at home.

    Experience this amusingly honest resident’s view of the most influential country in our lifetime. Peek into an entertaining and thought-provoking world that you won’t find described in newspapers or textbooks. China: where is all that money coming from, and will it really rule the world?

    Only in China could you fall into the glamorous expat life of having a personal driver, maid, and private Mandarin tutor—only to quickly learn that your “help” are all richer and more financially savvy than you.

    Enter a realm of wild possibilities, and the twisted ironies of the world’s fastest-growing emerging market. A 50-year-old maid’s family was so poor during the communist Mao era, they bought their son a wife in exchange for a watch. Decades later, that same maid bought her daughter a nose job, and accidentally turned her into a model. In China today, a new luxury mall magically appears the week you go on vacation. Weekends are spent at fabulous pool parties. Yet this authoritarian state is still far from democratic—just ask Chinese mothers who create “dating resumes” to pimp their children out at marriage fairs.

    Learn the tricks of life success, seen through the twinkling eyes of a mischievous humorist. Follow the sassy and smart Funky Chicken—shameless enough to nearly do a TED talk in a chicken suit, but wise enough to create a pen name in authoring this tell-all tale about the world’s most powerful communist country. Flirting with China is fun; getting arrested is not.

    What can you learn from China, and how will it change your life? See for yourself.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFunky Chicken
    Release dateAug 31, 2016
    ISBN9781310250972
    Why the Chicken Crossed the World: 18 Surprising Secrets from China on Success, Wealth, and Happiness
    Author

    Funky Chicken

    Funky Chicken is the pen name of a Chinese-American who writes with full honesty and wit about her adventures living in Shanghai. She’s the Clark Kent undercover observer of the real China you never knew. Only, her superhero ability is to slip undetected into a sea of a billion people to capture the Communist China of today — full of Ferraris, smart phones, and ads for plastic surgery — all the while managing to avoid getting arrested. Her day job is being the Chief Strategy Officer for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at one of the largest global companies in the world. When not hiding in a corporate suit, she writes a clever, humorous China blog loved by a worldwide audience. She is a charming (almost) TED speaker, astute observer, and definite random adventure collector. Unlike many other authors, she lives with her zero children in an unquiet non-suburb and owns no dogs. She will gladly do consulting projects and speaker events for a small fee, and will do so in a chicken suit for a larger one.Find how the Funky Chicken will change your world at speaking@findingfunkychicken.com.

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      Book preview

      Why the Chicken Crossed the World - Funky Chicken

      Why the Chicken Crossed the World

      18 Surprising Secrets from China on Success, Wealth, and Happiness

      By Funky Chicken

      © 2016 Funky Chicken

      All Rights Reserved.

      Contents

      Introduction: China - Powerful Secrets

      China Secrets Part 1 - A Happy Life: It’s all in the Mind

      #1 - The Power of Perspective: New Look at an Old City

      #2 - The Power of Creativity: Scary Boss

      #3 - The Power of Resilience: Floppy Disk

      #4 – The Power of Enjoying Life: The Fabulous Life of Pool Parties

      #5 – The Power of Laughing at Yourself: When My Maid Takes a Break

      # 6 – The Power of Appreciation: How Not To Buy a Wife

      China Secrets Part 2 - Capturing a Wealth of Opportunities: Be Number One, Too

      #7 – The Power of Assertiveness: Mother Pimps at the Marriage Fair

      #8 – The Power of Trusting Your Instincts: Some Bad Medicine to Sit On

      #9 – The Power of Negotiation: Do You Like My Hat?

      #10 - The Power of Motivation: When Your Maid is Richer than You

      #11- The Power of Understanding the Background: Life with Tiger Mommy

      #12 - The Power of Competitive Advantage: Why China is Taking over the World

      #13 - The Power of Finding Your Own Natural Strengths: Stumbling on Happiness

      China Secrets Part 3 - True Success: A Dream with No Regrets

      #14 - The Power of Now: What, From This Moment, Changes Your Life?

      #15 - The Power of Dreams: My Upcoming Date with TED

      #16 - The Power of Knowing Your Audience: How My Blind Date with TED Went

      #17 - The Power of Relaxation: The Creative Process and Why Artists Take Drugs

      #18 - Power of Trying Your Hardest: True Winning

      Final Thoughts

      Chicken Haiku (1)

      Chicken Haiku (2)

      Summary of Powerful Secrets

      About the Author

      Introduction: China - Powerful Secrets

      Chicken, secrets, and China don’t seem like obvious choices to put in the same sentence. Add happiness into the mix and you seem to have a strange oxymoron. I thought so, too. Until, I started writing an autobiographical blog of a chicken American exploring the seemingly intimidating life insidethe world’s most populous communist powerhouse. And then I realized,life in China was not scary—it was fascinating! Even better, there is a ton we can learn from an overseas adventure in China—and these lessons can apply to anyone. By then, I’d become pretty excited. I arranged all thesepowerful insights together like a big puzzle. For a moment, I really thought I had found the meaning of life. At the very least, I solved some of its biggest problems.

      By the time you’re finished with this book, you willbe inspired to pursue your own dreams of success and happiness, be humorously entertained by unbelievable shenanigans, and gain insight into what is arguably the most influential country in our lifetime. If this isn’t enough, you’ll also see amusing travel pictures, compliments of my iPhone and bad photography skills.*

      Though before you credit all of life’s answers to a little chicken, let me introduce myself. In doing so, I’ll simultaneously address the riddle posed by this book’s title: Why did a Chicken cross the world, and what stories did she uncover on the other side?I’m a Californian-turned-New Yorkerwho kissed her otherwise satisfactory life in America goodbye to seek adventure in Shanghai. Why China? Simply, there is no other country like it. You can thank the country for simultaneously manufacturing the underwear and iPhone you own, while also bombarding Paris luxury stores and inflating San Francisco and London real estate prices. And China is just getting started. Who wouldn’t want to capture this incredible moment in time? Thus, to answer the riddle: this Chicken crossed the world to witness itsmost dynamic emerging market, while it was still emerging.

      What did I see? During my four years living in China, I discovered things fabulous, frustrating, and interesting. I promised close friends and family that I would share these China adventures in a blog. However, I didn’t expect anyone besides my mother to read it. So I included all the awkward stories and created a pen name—Funky Chicken—just in case a future employer or prospective hot date happened to stumble upon them. Like the blog post about my Chinese driver accidentally buying me a soaking tub meant for hemorrhoids.

      As fate would have it, I pecked at all sorts of topics as the Funky Chickenuntil I realized that China, conveniently enough, is geographically shaped like a chicken. An excited local who learned English out of a textbook (probably outdated a hundred years) introduced his country: China is shaped like a cock!

      Then another strange thing happened. I accidentally left the blog publicly accessible on Google. I was shocked, proud, and embarrassed when fans from countries I had never even heard of subscribed to my personal diary. I even welcomed page-long comments—left by strangers—arguing my description of my life in China was inaccurate in my blog. At least that meant they read it.

      And then I had an idea. Why not publish the most popular of the 400 blog posts as a series of books? The objective was simple: a resident’s honest view of the world’s fastest-growing economy that you don’t get to see in the newspapers or textbooks. After all, China is all over the news. Given the wide range of gossip, did people think China was a superpower ready to take over the world, or a polluted wasteland with no more baby girls? I figured a lot of people—beyond my mother—would be curious about what it’s really like to live here.

      That being said, let me get this out of the way: I’m not a China scholar. There are already tons of academic books about China written by true experts, and even more China statistics you can find on Google for free. If you want to know the real mindset of a Chinese, you could easily ask a local. Many, with their new wealth, have already immigrated to a big city near you. This is not a dramatic novel, either. This book collects a wide range of small snapshots to give you a bigger picture of China, and of life. Just as I couldn’t explain the complexity of human life in just one linear story, I couldn’t encapsulate the intricacies of China in one narrative. Thus, there is no heroine or even deep character development. Even if there were, I’m not writing this book to win the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature. Although it would be fun if I did—I would happily show up on the acceptance stage as the humbly honored Funky Chicken, dressed in a chicken suit.

      Instead, I’m an American-born Chinese woman on a professional work assignment in Shanghai. I look like a local on the outside, and think like a Westerner on the inside. That’s how I’ve succeeded in slipping amongst a billion people to capture the most interesting parts of living in China and tell you all about it—a place where fact is often better than fiction, and certainly more entertaining.

      The Chicken Take-Away:An author with the pen name Funky Chicken crossed the world to a country geographically shaped like a chicken, and learned powerful life secrets to happiness and success on the other side.

      A daily view my parents would have seen if they had stayed in China: The Dreams of a Nation.

      Instead, one generation later, this is my daily view. A city four times bigger than NYC, Shanghai is the concrete jungle where 24 million dreams are made.

      China Secrets Part 1 - A Happy Life: It’s all in the Mind

      To achieve what you want—happiness, success, fulfillment—you need the right perspective. What is perspective? Call it a good attitude, winning spirit, or even luck, your perspective is how you decide

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