★ Author Chen Ao, writing as the "Venice Ferryman", is a serving professional in China's publicly offered mutual fund industry: more than 20 years in finance, 15 in the fund sector, and over 1,000 offline training sessions delivered.
★ The book holds a Douban rating of 8.0, with a positive-review rate above 99%. Its companion audio series has logged 17.55 million plays; the author's flagship album, "Five Minutes a Day: Straight Talk on Fund Regular Investing", has 106 million plays and 617,000 followers on Ximalaya, China's leading audio platform.
★ Written as questions and answers: more than 60 standalone sections, each a five-minute read, moving step by step through the ideas and the mechanics of fund investing, with guidance that assumes no prior knowledge.
★ It runs from first principles to working competence — a fund reference the reader can follow and use. Its premise: investing should make daily life better, and only the reader can be responsible for the reader's own money.

Household finance has become a routine part of life in China, for practical reasons. With interest rates low, the real return on savings is shrinking. Property is no longer the only container for a family's wealth, and the policy line that "houses are for living, not for speculation" (fang zhu bu chao) has made that plain. Yet the would-be investor still meets the same wall: fund investing arrives wrapped in professional vocabulary, and there is no obvious place to begin.

Chen Ao's response is to take the wrapper off. "Fund Investing Made Simple" is written entirely as questions and answers — more than 60 short, self-contained sections, each meant to be read in about five minutes. Nothing assumes a finance background. Each question ends with something the reader can act on, so the book works less as a set of concepts than as a sequence of decisions: what to ask yourself first, which product fits your temperament, how to buy it, and when to take the money out.
The stance throughout is unusual for the category. Chen Ao argues against copying another person's portfolio. Money belongs to its owner, he writes, and no one else can carry that responsibility. The book's aim is therefore not to hand over a pick, but to leave the reader able to judge one.

Chen Ao (the pen name "Venice Ferryman" (Weinisi Baiduren)
He holds a master's degree from Jinan University in Guangzhou and is a serving professional in China's publicly offered mutual fund industry, a senior lecturer and a nationally certified enterprise trainer.

His experience runs 20-plus years in finance, 15 of them in the fund industry, covering investment market analysis, asset management research and sales management. He has delivered more than 1,000 offline training sessions — the practical grounding behind the book's insistence on execution over theory.
He is also one of the more recognisable hosts on Ximalaya's business and finance channel, with 617,000 followers; his flagship album, "Five Minutes a Day: Straight Talk on Fund Regular Investing", has been played 106 million times, and the audio series tied to this book 17.55 million times.