The Pan Feng Problem: Why the Staircase Is Always There

TL;DR: A reader asked if upward mobility closes in Stage 3 economies. I told him about the day I learned I was Pan Feng—a proud general who died in one blow. The staircase to upward mobility never disappears. What disappears is the willingness to climb it. Everyone wants the elevator. No one wants the stairs.

James here, CEO of Mercury Technology Solutions. Wanchai, Hong Kong — August 22, 2026

A reader asked me a question I've heard a thousand variations of:

"Is upward mobility dead?"

More precisely: he wanted to know if Stage 3 economies—mature, developed, saturated—have closed the door on people trying to rise. If all the good mines are taken. If the elevator only goes down.

I could have answered with data. I could have cited Gini coefficients or intergenerational mobility studies. But instead, I told him about the day I met Hua Xiong.

The First Blood Promise

I grew up in a China that transformed in real-time. My childhood was Stage 1—factory floors and export quotas. My adolescence was Stage 2—white-collar emergence, MBA worship, the first wave of entrepreneurship. By my thirties, we were in Stage 3—consolidated, competitive, the easy wins long gone.

In high school, I was Pan Feng.

If you don't know the reference: Pan Feng was the chief general of Ji Province in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Proud. Fierce. The kind of man who strides onto the battlefield convinced he's the protagonist.

He died in one blow from Hua Xiong.

I was that guy.

My first exam in high school, I ranked 80th in my grade—roughly 1,000th in the province. The teacher made us share our feelings with the class. First Blood had just hit theaters. I stood up and said: "This is the first tear I shed in high school. It will be the last."

Two months later, I was 12th in my grade. Top 100 in the province.

The whole school knew: the Rambo guy was coming for the provincial champion title. I was going to start a tutoring empire. I was going to be someone.

I was Pan Feng, polishing my blade, ready for the spotlight.

The Man Who Played Possum

Then I met him.

There was a student in my grade who had been hiding his true strength. For two years, he deliberately missed questions to maintain a comfortable 4th or 5th place. In senior year, he unleashed his full ability.

He didn't just win. He dominated. Every provincial mock exam, he was so far ahead the school used him as a benchmark.

From my perspective, I had prepared to fight for provincial champion. Instead, I was facing a national champion who happened to be in my school.

My morale collapsed instantly.

Later, he pulled me aside. What he said sounded like mockery at the time. It took me years to understand it wasn't.

"If you really want to start a business, whether you become provincial champion is irrelevant. Battles don't wait for you to be ready. When opportunity comes, you have nothing—do you fight or not?"

He was telling me: You're still thinking like a child.

Children believe in fair fights. They believe in preparation, in merit, in the idea that if they just work hard enough, the world will arrange a proper stage for their debut.

Adults know better.

The Mine That Isn't There

My classmate wasn't being cruel. If anything, he was disappointed. He had seen my First Blood moment and thought: This one's different. This one might already be grown up.

He was wrong. I was just a kid who had memorized some adult lines.

Here's what he understood that I didn't:

Any mine you can see is already claimed.

The oil that bubbles to the surface. The iron ore scattered on the ground. The industries with clear profit margins and predictable returns. You think you're going to walk in and claim those? You're not Maitreya's attendant. You're not the Jade Emperor's steed.

The things with hope—clear hope, visible hope, obvious hope—are not for people like us.

This is the part most people never figure out. And because most people never figure it out, no one is competing for the invisible mines.

The world is not short of intelligence. My classmate was right about that. There are plenty of smart people—top exam scorers, gold medalists, Ivy League graduates. Our second shareholder's conglomerate received stacks of their resumes every year.

What the world is short of is smart people who are also willing to be stupid.

Everyone is waiting. Waiting for the right opportunity. Waiting for the sure thing. Waiting for the elevator to arrive.

They wait their whole lives.

The Staircase vs. The Elevator

A decade ago, during my first startup, our executive team had a late-night conversation with the chairman our second shareholder had assigned us. He told us something I've never forgotten:

"There are plenty of smart people. What's rare is smart people who are also foolish enough."

The foolishness he meant wasn't stupidity. It was the willingness to work on things with no visible hope.

Most people ask about upward mobility, but what they really mean is: Where's the elevator? They want a path where they change nothing about themselves, where the world simply recognizes their inherent worth and carries them upward.

That's not upward mobility. That's a fantasy.

The staircase is always there. Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3—it doesn't matter. The staircase doesn't disappear. What disappears is the willingness to climb it.

Because climbing stairs is invisible work. It's mining without knowing if there's ore. It's building without knowing if anyone will come. It's the courage to keep going when every signal says you're wasting your time.

Courage as Cost Management

I'm not a coward. I wasn't a coward in high school either. I was just uninformed.

Pan Feng had courage. He charged onto the battlefield without hesitation. But courage without understanding is just recklessness. He didn't know what he was facing. He didn't know there were levels above his level.

When I call my classmate Hua Xiong, understand the implication: he wasn't that strong. He was just stronger than me.

If I had waited until I could beat Lu Bu before entering any battle, I might as well have stayed home.

The visible mines are taken. The winnable battles are assigned to people with better connections. Your only option is the invisible mine—the thing that requires courage because it requires endurance.

Courage, in this context, is a cost management strategy.

Your personal reserves—your savings, your energy, your willpower—are extremely limited. If you can't integrate with a commercial system, if you can't find reinforcements, you'll exhaust your rations in days. This is why most people who start invisible mines don't finish them. They run out of courage before they hit ore.

The full stack—insight, courage, system integration, endurance—is what determines whether upward mobility is real or imaginary.

The Question Behind the Question

So is upward mobility dead?

No. But the elevator is broken, and it was never going where you wanted anyway.

The staircase is right there. It was always there. The question isn't whether the path exists.

The question is: Are you willing to climb it?

Most people aren't. They'll wait their whole lives for the elevator, watching the numbers go down, convincing themselves that the system is rigged, that the doors have closed, that Pan Feng never had a chance.

They're half right. Pan Feng never had a chance.

But Yang Wen-li did. Not because he was stronger. Because he understood that the most effective way to win is to make the enemy lose their will to fight.

The enemy, in this case, is your own hesitation.

Kill it.

Related Mercury surfaces:

• Mercury Orbit — Framework 00: citation to conversion as one loop. The staircase for businesses.
• Mercury Core — Framework 01: the human-agent operating system. Build your own reinforcements.
• Mercury Apex — Competitive intelligence that remembers. Know the battlefield before you enter.
• For founders — Stop running the company from spreadsheets. Climb the stairs.

Mercury Technology Solutions: Accelerate Digitality.