<p>1. She is smarter than anyone you or I know.</p><p>Some of you have worked with very smart people at a FAANG company. I did too. It was a pleasure to be the dumbest person in the room because they were so inspiring. They were literally some of the greatest programmers in the world, and you would know their names even now. She's smarter than they are. Not just programming-wise. In all-around life.</p><p>2. She's a better programmer than anyone you or I know.</p><p>In the early days of our marriage My Lovely Wife thought she needed something to keep her mind busy. She thought she would learn modern programming. Her last programming job had been using an outdated DOS language called FoxBase. We decided that she could learn to create a game in C++ for s. Since she knew nothing about s, C++, or the Microsoft Foundation Classes (a complex C++ application framework) I thought it would take a year. Maybe as little as 3 months. Not less than that under any circumstances. These things had taken me several years to learn well enough to get a job using them.</p><p>She got the game working in a week. No bugs, either.</p><p>3. She won't let anyone hire her. Even me.</p><p>The obvious question is, why don't I hire her as a programmer? I can't. She doesn't like the feeling of having an unfinished program and being obsessed by it. That's what I like about programming.</p><p>One of my most common jokes is that if I could monetize her we'd be billionaires. </p><p>It's not really a joke, but she doesn't want to be a billionaire.</p><p>4. There is no word for this in English, but she is a natural economist.</p><p>You probably know that she is very good at math. That is not unusual among Chinese people in your social group. But that's not the impressive thing. She understands the value of real world assets and business processes deeply, like a trained economist. I still can't describe this condition very well, but it means we have a lot of fun discussing how businesses work, and just life in general. Making hard financial decisions, such as whether to buy a business, is much easier with her than your spouse. Sorry.</p><p>5. Her mother is my hero.</p><p>My Lovely Wife is very private so I can't say much about this, but her mother was raised in very difficult circumstances, yet put herself through college and became a pioneering scientist. She did it through kindness and hard work, not guanxi. She is the most inspiring person I ever met. I feel deeply honored to know her.</p><p>I once ruined a company meeting where I consult. They started the meeting by asking everyone to name their favorite superhero. The whole place started buzzing as people decided on their Marvel and DC movie characters. Since I was a guest they asked me to go first. I said it was my mother-in-law and explained roughly what I just explained to you.</p><p>After I spoke, there was a bit of silence. Then everyone else decided they had to bring up actual people in their lives too. That wasn't my plan, honest. I was just telling the truth.</p><p>Sorry, people at that company! Next time say Iron Man or Thor and I won't think less of you. You just don't know my mother-in-law. It's not your fault.</p><p>6. Her mother is my favorite communist.</p><p>Speaking of which, we have helped out a lot of family in China by sending them things we bought here and mailed there. We have had investments that helped family in China. I always loved that because her mother is very generous. She is good at distributing things to the family members who need them most. My stock joke is that she is my favorite communist. I am a little sad that most of the family has been doing better the last 10 years or so because I always knew the things we helped with would go to the right place. Now most of them are doing fine and have plenty of money. It could be worse, I guess.</p>