CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 1:39
Introduction: Li Lu, Munger, and a Hard-to-Find Book
David Senra introduces Moving The Mountain and its author Li Lu, founder of Himalaya Capital and a 20-year partner of Charlie Munger. He tells the Munger story that led him to Li Lu and explains that the book was written when Li was in his early 20s, with no way of knowing his future.
- •Li Lu has run Himalaya Capital for about 30 years
- •Munger said he turned $80 million into $400-500 million with Li Lu
- •The book was written after Li fled communist China in his early 20s
- •The book is scarce, with copies selling for $300-$600
- •Senra thanks Kenny Lee and Moses Kagan for lending him the book
- 1:39 – 6:34
Boarding Kindergarten: Hunger, Bullying and Lizards
The book opens with Li as a preschooler left alone at a boarding kindergarten because of his parents' political status. He is bullied and beaten, but he disproves the lizard myth and learns the value of confidence.
- •Li is the only child who never goes home on weekends
- •Classmates taunt him over his parents' backgrounds
- •Teachers control the children through beatings and encouraged factions
- •Surviving the lizards teaches him to question what he's told
- •He knocks down the first official and rises in the pecking order
- 6:34 – 7:04
Learning Through Questions and the Hornet Attack
Cut off from the outside world, Li learns by interrogating other children about their weekends, developing curiosity and imagination. At six he is attacked by hornets, and then the kindergarten sends him away because of his family background.
- •Li asks detailed questions to learn about the outside world
- •His inquisitiveness grows out of his shut-up life
- •The hornet attack shows his will to fight back
- •The kindergarten head refuses to keep a child of such family background
- 7:04 – 11:38
Living with Big Dad and the Cost of Political Background
Li is taken in by Big Dad and Big Ma, who already have six sons, in a poor mining neighborhood. A child's question about whether his father is a spy leads into stories of abuse of power by the Zheng family and the death of Big Dad in a mine explosion.
- •His parents are labeled for a foreign broadcast and a landowning family
- •Big Dad, a friend from the coal mines, takes him in
- •A neighbor tells him his father is a spy
- •The Zhengs control ration tickets and use them to punish people
- •Big Dad dies in a mine explosion and the family collapses
- 11:38 – 15:10
Moving Between Families and Teacher Wang's Kindness
Li lives briefly with his rehabilitated parents, whom he feels are strangers, and counts at least nine families by age nine. Teacher Wang offers him a home so he can keep learning to read, and he fights the bully Fatty.
- •His parents are rehabilitated and he finally lives with them
- •He feels superfluous and wants to grow up fast to support Big Ma
- •Teacher Wang takes him in so he can study
- •Reading becomes the foundation of his future career
- •He fights Fatty and loses his childhood carefree attitude
- 15:10 – 16:41
The Tangshan Earthquake
At ten, Li survives the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which Senra calls the deadliest in human history. He finds Big Ma's house collapsed and the family dead, with Big Ma having shielded the little children.
- •Over 300,000 people died in the earthquake
- •Residents thought an atomic bomb had been dropped
- •Li trips over a severed arm and faints
- •He finds Big Ma and her children crushed in their house
- •He remembers Big Ma kneeling over the children whenever he thinks of mothers
- 16:41 – 18:43
Propaganda vs. Reality: The Commune and Mao's Death
Li goes to live with his mother at the Orchard Commune and sees the party secretary's family hoarding relief supplies despite the rhetoric of equality. He also witnesses the announcement of Mao's death and the mass mourning it produced.
- •The party secretary's family has its own tent and better food
- •Official propaganda contradicts what Li sees
- •The loudspeaker announces Mao's death
- •People mourn as if a child had died
- •The government controlled information and indoctrinated children before they could read
- 18:43 – 22:16
Discovering His Father's Past and the Roots of Li's Research Habits
Back with his parents, Li watches his father build kang bed stoves and grows proud of him. He finds a suitcase of photos that opens up his parents' history, and Senra links his hunger for accurate information to his later investing approach and his Columbia lecture.
- •His father becomes known as an expert kang maker
- •Li finds photos from his father's time studying in the Soviet Union
- •His father calmly lets him look, while his mother is nervous
- •He feels he has a home and a history
- •The Financial Times describes his mantra as accurate and complete information
- 22:16 – 25:18
The College Entrance Exam as a Road Out
Li's father tells him that resumed college entrance exams reward hard work, and Li resolves to go to college. Senra previews Li's path from Tiananmen to Columbia, where he earned three degrees, and compares his lecture to the Morgan Freeman scene from Seven.
- •His father explains the entrance exam as competition that rewards work
- •Li decides he wants to go to college
- •He would later be on the wanted list after Tiananmen
- •He learned English in a summer and earned a BA, MBA and JD at Columbia
- •Senra contrasts Li's response to opportunity with the poker-playing guards in Seven
- 25:18 – 27:19
Books as an Escape: The Library and Biographies
Li places well in a regional schoolchildren's competition and is reunited with his grandmother. A school librarian shows him a library, and he sees books as a way to travel the world and make friends, echoing what Munger said about biographies.
- •He places fourth in composition, sixth in oration, and in the top 20 in math
- •His grandmother had served a prison term and encouraged him
- •The library astonishes him with thousands of books
- •Books let him travel and he made most of his friends in them
- •Senra compares this to Munger's remarks on reading and biographies
- 27:19 – 30:20
The Stream Club and a Teacher's Warning
Li reads scientists' biographies and starts a secret discussion group modeled on Einstein's Olympia Club. A teacher tells him to leave China to study freely and shares his own story of working hard to escape his village.
- •Li reads about Fermi and Einstein
- •He founds a secret group called Stream to discuss China's future
- •Students were treated as slaves and teachers as gods
- •Senra cites Ogilvy on non-conformists, dissenters and rebels
- •His teacher says a person can't pursue research without free inquiry, and recommends the United States
- 30:20 – 30:50
Li's Study Plan and the First Half's End
Inspired by his teacher, Li adopts a strict daily schedule of study and exercise before his exam. He ranks fifth in his school and earns a place at a good university, which ends the first half of the book.
- •His teacher began with only youth and vigor and a drive to study
- •Li wakes at 4:45 and studies until midnight
- •He runs to school as exercise
- •He ranks fifth in his school
- •Senra recommends the first half, up to college, as the part not to miss
- 30:50 – 34:04
Tiananmen Square, Escape, and What Comes Next
Senra jumps to the book's end, reading Li's account of the army clearing Tiananmen Square. Li ends up on a wanted list, escapes through a smuggling route from Hong Kong, and starts a new life in New York at 23. Senra says he may do a follow-up on Li's investing.
- •Soldiers and tanks attack students and citizens in the square
- •Li's name is placed on the wanted list
- •He escapes via a smuggling route used for Western goods from Hong Kong
- •The book ends as he flees without knowing his future
- •Senra plans a possible episode on Li's investing and lessons from Buffett and Munger
