YouSaid · the spoken record

Bo Shao

lines on the record: 106
first: 2022-04-06
most recent: 2022-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“One card from the 50 card, two cards away, and ask me to add up the rest. And he will set a time limit. So I have to get it right within a certain time limit. And I think I trained for several years under this method. And I actually became so fast that I think I was able to add up 52 cards under 12 seconds or so. And actually just to be able to show the cards so quickly. I was going to say.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we were so poor, we didn't have ways of setting up mass these days, Fiona Street, Math, you have lots of tools to do it. But back then, we didn't even have an abacus. He initially started just writing down aristemic problems, like five plus seven or 15 plus 28 on a piece of paper and asked me to add them. He has to write hundreds of these equations, and I need to solve them. But then he said, oh, he sort of had one day had an inspiration. Actually, initially started with my sister, who is three years older than me, and said, oh, why don't we use a deck of cards? And obviously Ace is one and two is two, and then Jack is 11, then King is 13, etc. And you add up the deck of cards. Initially, I should add up only 10 cards. And then to 20 and then to 40 involving 1 to 10, and eventually to 52 involving 1 to 13 times 4. The total sum, I think, is 364. And then he would take...”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, I didn't know I was poor. Everybody was poor. So I didn't know I was poor, which is actually a good thing. But the way we grew up is when I was four or five years old, we didn't always have meat on the table. Everything was rationed, including milk, rice, oil, cooking oil, meat certainly. Very rarely any kind of seafood. I think vegetable probably was not ration. I can't remember. And you get these little tickets you have to carry to a grocery store in addition to the money. And they were making, I think my father was making maybe certainly less than $10 a month. My mother was also making $10 a month as well.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where that happened, it was in front of the kitchen. I have a mental picture of that location right now. And I don't recall too much. To be fair, I can't say he did not hug me ever. He probably did. Left such a deep imprint in me of getting this kind of, I didn't ask for a hug. And he gave me a hug, you know, in a very tricky situation. And that left a very deep imprint on me. Then later on, I found out that I won my first mass competition. I think it was in fifth grade is a mass competition involving all the students in Shanghai. Shanghai is like at that time probably a city of 12, 13 million people. And I was like clear number one in that mass competition.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he flew into a rage. I do not remember whether he hit me or not, but it was very scary. And I'm sure I cried and it was a terrible time. And then a couple of days later, I came home and I saw him in the good mood. And I think that somehow gave me courage to ask him again. Like, can I try the ketchup? Which actually is surprising because after that episode, usually I would not have worked up the courage to do some things similar. But in that case, I did because he looks so happy. So he said to me, bro, you can't have my Chinese nickname is Xiaobo. It's like, Xiaobo, you can have as much ketchup as you like. I was shocked. And not only I tried the ketchup and he actually bent down to hug me. I remember exactly.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I grew up in Shanghai, China. My father was a math teacher. I guess he's retired now. He had always been very strict with me. He had many, many good qualities a father, which I won't go into here, but one of the things he did not do so well was he was angry all the time and often for a certain period of years he was angry. And also he would unpredictably get very, very angry and get very scary. So I think one day maybe when In a bottle of a beer bottle, I remember as a green beer bottle. And we never had ketchup before. You know, we grew up poor like everybody else in China. And I think I stole a taste of it without his permission.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT