Latest posts

Thoughts

Refactor: A Trip to Japan, and Rethinking What I Thought I Knew

Using software refactoring as a metaphor, this essay looks back on my first solo trip abroad, to Japan, when I was approaching forty. From the worries I carried before departure to several unexpected encounters along the way, I began to question how much my understanding of the world had been shaped by secondhand information and personal experience. Reality doesn't always confirm our expectations, and a single trip cannot define an entire country. Refactoring doesn't necessarily mean changing our lives. Sometimes, it means revisiting our assumptions and learning to see the world with a more open mind.

Travelogues

Analysis of Japan Travel Expense (202608)

After the trip, what remained was not only photographs and memories, but also a detailed record of spending. This article revisits a trip to Japan in June 2026 through its expenses, covering everything from transportation, accommodation and dining to shopping, payment methods, discounts and tax refunds.

Thoughts

Error and Debug: One Ordinary Person's Self-Debugging

Using error handling and debugging as metaphors, this essay explores social expectations surrounding marriage, parenthood, and masculinity. I once wondered whether my life was going wrong because it didn't follow the path expected of me. Over time, I began to question not just my choices, but the standards I'd grown accustomed to measuring myself against. Accepting an ordinary life isn't giving up. It's learning to stop proving myself to others and putting that energy into living my own life well.

Thoughts

Hello World: A First Attempt, and an Answer That Never Came

Using “Hello World” as a metaphor, this essay looks back on two firsts: running my first ping command in college in 2008, and getting my personal website running in 2015, during a difficult period of unemployment in Chengdu. What followed was a long stretch of loneliness, uncertainty, and self-doubt. I learned that making a system work is one thing; knowing what you want from it is another. Awakening doesn't provide all the answers. Sometimes, it simply gives you the strength to keep going.

Tech Stack

From Zero to Live: A Complete Deployment Log for a Personal Website

This is a complete deployment log for a personal website: I built a trilingual (Chinese/English) blog at zero cost using the fully managed stack of Astro + Supabase + Cloudflare Workers. The article has two halves — the first is a from-scratch deployment walkthrough you can follow to get an identical site; the second is nine real pitfalls, each with its cause and fix. The core selling point: zero ops, publish-and-it's-live, ¥0 a month.