krya | Jin's Blog

Migrating from Typecho to Astro

jin — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

With dynamic blogs, I was always worried about forgetting to renew the server or running into issues during program upgrades. After discovering static blogs, I realized this was an ideal solution. After comparing Hugo, Hexo, and Astro, I ultimately chose Astro.

Advantages of Static Blogs

Free Hosting - Apart from the domain name, major tech companies offer free hosting services for individual developers.
Zero Maintenance - Articles are stored on your own computer. As long as the hosting platform doesn't shut down, your blog can run forever.
Pre-rendered - Static blogs generate pure HTML/CSS/JS files before deployment, with no backend.
CDN Compatible - Since everything is static files, distributing them to global edge nodes means millisecond-level loading for users worldwide.

Why Choose Astro

Static-First - Generates pure HTML files, no database or server needed.
Excellent Performance - Zero JavaScript by default, extremely fast loading.
High Flexibility - Supports Markdown, MDX, and mixed frameworks.
Active Ecosystem - Vibrant community, comprehensive documentation, rich plugin library.

The Sintu Single-Column Theme for Astro

This Astro single-column template theme was designed and built by myself. I recently had Hermes migrate it from Typecho to Astro. During the migration, I made quite a few feature upgrades, and the code is now one-third more concise than before. I'll take this opportunity to remark on how the popularization of AI has made previously complex tasks much simpler — development progress has been almost godlike, code quality is near perfect, and it brings me infinitely close to the level of a genius programmer 😂.

Feature Highlights

Perfect Performance - Millisecond-level loading, Google Lighthouse scores a perfect 100 on both mobile and desktop.
Dark Mode - Added a dark mode toggle next to the logo.
Thumbnail Hover Zoom - Besides zooming in, clicking the image navigates to the article page.
No Preview Images on Mobile - Controls resource loading based on screen size, saving bandwidth.
Aliyun OSS Image Processing - Images are processed via OSS, with parameters added after HTML rendering, saving bandwidth.
Performance Optimization - CSS bundled via Vite, image lazy loading.
Responsive Design - Perfect adaptation for desktop and mobile, using a unified grid system.
Comment Box - Integrated using the official Twikoo solution.

Publishing Workflow

Write your Markdown article locally.
Send a message to Hermes Agent to push to the GitHub repository (or push it yourself via GitHub).
Tencent EdgeOne, Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages automatically pull the update and build.
Auto-deployed to global CDN nodes.

Open Source

This theme is open source. If you like it, you can also tip the author:

https://github.com/ezzty/astro-sintu-theme

Spring Break Road Trip to Luoyang

Jin — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

My kid got six days off for spring break, but I couldn't snag any high-speed rail tickets, so we drove instead. I picked up the kid from school on Friday and headed north. Our route took us through Hanzhong, Xi'an, and Luoyang. Then we figured — since we were already in Henan, why not swing by Xuchang to check out Pangdonglai? On the way back to Chengdu, we passed through Xiangyang and Ankang. The entire trip covered roughly 2,500 kilometers.

Road trips have just one real advantage over train travel: freedom. Stop wherever you want. On day two, driving from Hanzhong to Luoyang, we spotted the Terracotta Warriors right off the highway. A quick right turn, a few extra kilometers, and we were off the expressway visiting the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. At Sanmenxia, we stopped by the Yellow River for some photos. After visiting the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, my wife and kid were too sun-exhausted to move, so we cancelled the Shaolin Temple plan on the spot and headed straight to Xuchang to experience Pangdonglai. On the way home, we stumbled upon Xiangyang Ancient City and thought it looked great, so we stayed an extra day and flew Kongming lanterns by the ancient city wall at night.

For the past few years, our travels have been confined to areas south of Sichuan. The farthest north we'd been was Xi'an — we hadn't really explored other parts of the north. So I'd always wanted to experience the vast North China Plain and soak in the northern atmosphere.

📷 Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang

📷 First time seeing the Yellow River. The opposite bank is Shanxi Province.

📷 Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang — the Vairocana Buddha

📷 White Horse Temple in Luoyang, the first Buddhist temple in the Central Plains

📷 Thai-style temple within White Horse Temple

📷 Luoyang Peonies

📷 Pangdonglai in Xuchang

Last year I really wanted to visit Pangdonglai in Xuchang, and this time it finally happened. The Pangdonglai at Xuchang Times Square might be the most popular location — but precisely because of that, the shopping experience wasn't great. It was overwhelmingly crowded — not a place to stand, rivaling Sam's Club before Spring Festival. Customers weren't so much shopping as they were restocking wholesale. The store-brand dish soap, pastries, and meat sausages were being carted away by the load.

The product displays at Pangdonglai would cure anyone's OCD — colors perfectly aligned, genuinely pleasing to the eye. Many of their private-label products, like face towels, soy sauce, and dish soap, are excellent quality at great prices — well worth buying.

What I think is truly distinctive is the deli section. The variety of prepared foods surpasses any supermarket I've ever visited. Not just the range, but the taste is fantastic too — our entire dinner was sorted by Pangdonglai. An 8.9 yuan braised sausage, one of which fills you up, with five flavors to choose from. A 19 yuan box of Liaoji's Bobo Chicken, authentically delicious! Their in-house pastries are no worse than Holiland's. If my family lived next to a Pangdonglai, we might never cook again — why not just treat it as our cafeteria?

Pangdonglai doesn't just run supermarkets — they also operate jewelry stores, optical shops, and pharmacies. Every Pangdonglai supermarket is wildly successful. Their affordable, high-quality products and food are incredibly friendly to the people of Xuchang, but it's been a disaster for other local businesses. Through exceptional service, supply chain mastery, and an employee stock ownership plan, Pangdonglai has taken its business model to the extreme — and other retailers simply can't compete.

📷 Flying Kongming lanterns at Xiangyang Ancient City

Discovering Xiangyang Ancient City was an unexpected delight. Though it's not as ancient as Langzhong or Lijiang — most of the buildings probably date to the 70s and 80s — it has a genuine lived-in atmosphere that other "ancient cities" lack. Wake up in the morning, have a bowl of Xiangyang beef noodles, drink some morning baijiu, stroll down to the city wall. In the evening, look up at the sky full of Kongming lanterns. It's deeply romantic.

That Poor Kid Still Lives in Your Stomach

Jin — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:29:33 GMT

01. The Dietary Underpinnings That Wealth Can't Mask

I used to think that people nearing financial independence would be particularly refined about their eating habits. Even if they weren't dining on abalone and lobster every meal, they would at least leave behind the crude indulgence of high carbs and heavy oil and salt.

But then I discovered that some very wealthy individuals remain wildly obsessed with heavy-flavored fats and carbs. This is very likely a hangover from growing up poor: in those days of scarcity, filling your stomach was synonymous with happiness.

02. The Childhood Trauma Ruled by Congee

I grew up in the countryside with my grandparents. My three daily meals as a child were basically congee, noodles, and rice.

Breakfast was always congee — especially sweet potato congee, which left an indelible mark of childhood trauma. Thin, watery broth paired with pickled cowpeas — it made me gag! I wished every meal could be plain white rice — not for any reason other than that there'd always be meat to go with it.

I remember eating chili fried pork on a summer noon. I ran full speed under the scorching sun to the vegetable patch, grabbed a handful of crooked green chilies, and sprinted back. As a kid, I couldn't handle spice — those chilies felt a hundred times hotter back then. But I didn't care. I dug through the chili pile, found the thickest, glistening piece of pork, shoved it in my mouth, and frantically shoveled rice. Veins bulging, snot running, sweat pouring.

That was the pinnacle of enjoyment in a life of deprivation. It felt absolutely incredible!

03. The "Compensation Psychology" in a Carbohydrate Paradise

Unfortunately, those happiness-overloaded moments were not the norm. Fantasizing about eating white rice every day was a luxury. But as long as it wasn't congee, even eating noodles twice a day was fine. A few vegetable leaves in the noodles, seasoned with salt, soy sauce, chili oil, and scallions — this kind of heavy-flavored stimulation was enough to mask the blandness of life. There were better noodle dishes too: my grandmother sometimes made dough drop soup, dumplings, steamed buns, and cured-meat pies. But these were less frequent — no refrigerator, no running to the store anytime you wanted. Everything had to be made from scratch, which took time and effort.

This dietary habit was stamped into my genes like a brand. Even after my living conditions improved, I remained almost obsessively passionate about meat and wheat-based foods.

When I went to Xi'an, the "carbohydrate capital," and saw the dazzling array of noodle dishes — oil-splashed noodles, saozi noodles, roujiamo — it was like falling into a dopamine vortex. In that moment, I was still that boy sprinting under the blazing sun, chasing nothing more than a piece of fatty pork. This raw pleasure, born from the combination of carbs and fat, precisely hit the switch labeled "scarcity" in my cerebral cortex.

04. Awakening: The Body's Invoice and a Cognitive Revolution

But the adult body is honest.

When the arrows on my health checkup report started nervously jumping around, I suddenly woke up: I thought I was enjoying freedom, but I was actually being enslaved by past hunger. Those preferences for high sugar, high oil, and high carbs are essentially "survival energy packs" left over from agricultural civilization for physical laborers. But placed in today's world of infinite supply, they've become invisible killers of health.

Given the choice between steaming, boiling, or light stewing — why always choose fiery stir-frying? Already finished one bowl of rice, why add another? Already full, why can't you put down your chopsticks? We're not just eating food — we're eating a "habit" inherited from our elders, eating a sense of "security." If we don't stuff ourselves to the brim, if our faces aren't glistening with oil, there seems to be a deep-seated feeling that we haven't yet escaped hardship.

05. Passing It On: Breaking That Chain of Scarcity

Dietary habits are a family's most profound invisible inheritance. Often, we think we're choosing food, but we're actually obeying the inertia in our genes. That compulsion to eat until your face is shiny with oil before you feel you've "lived well" is the most secretive legacy our elders left us — and also the sharpest chain. Our generation took decades to walk out of the shadow of "not having enough to eat." The next generation's challenge is learning restraint in a world of "too many temptations."

As a father, I know how stubborn these habits are. But I want my child to eat less rice and more quality protein and vegetables. I try to instill in her a light philosophy of "the true taste of food" — less heavy sugar and salt. I teach her to read ingredient labels and recognize the maze of additives hidden behind delicious flavors. If I don't cut this off at the dinner table, my child might still be searching for so-called happiness in a fog of high sugar and high oil. A person's life is not only about wealth — it also requires a healthy diet to improve the quality of life. Starting from every bite of light, clean food, completely sever that chain of "scarcity" that has stretched across decades.

Why I'm Buying Xiaomi Stock: A Power User's Choice

Jin — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:27:40 GMT

In February 2025, I opened a bank and stock account in Hong Kong and started buying Xiaomi shares. Since then, I've accumulated several thousand shares and plan to gradually add to my position, aiming for 10,000 shares over time.

I'm no financial expert — just an ordinary investor. But I want to share why I'm buying Xiaomi stock and the logic behind my investment.

Why am I bullish on Xiaomi? First of all, I'm a heavy user of Xiaomi's smart home ecosystem. I have dozens of Xiaomi devices at home — from light bulbs and cameras to air conditioners and robot vacuums — covering nearly every corner of Xiaomi's product ecosystem. Friends who've visited and experienced my setup have gone on to install plenty of Xiaomi devices in their own homes. This gives me a direct, firsthand sense of Xiaomi's product strength.

More importantly, Xiaomi's automotive division has filled the last gap in Xiaomi's smart ecosystem. Today's Xiaomi has formed a complete ecosystem chain: "phones + cars + smart home." This "people-cars-home" full coverage is something almost no other company in the world can match.

Regarding the recent controversy surrounding Xiaomi's cars — many people claim Xiaomi vehicles are prone to accidents. But I think this is a cognitive bias. Car accidents happen every day. Why are you only seeing Xiaomi's? Because Xiaomi generates massive traffic and public discussion.

Objectively speaking, Xiaomi's car buyers skew young, and for many of them, it's their first car. Xiaomi's vehicles deliver supercar-level performance, and putting that kind of power in the hands of young drivers does carry a risk of spirited driving. But across multiple incidents, the actual quality of Xiaomi's vehicles hasn't been lacking.

Tesla faced similar public attacks in its early days — everyone said Teslas couldn't brake. But smart consumers eventually discovered that Tesla's quality was actually solid, which in turn fueled their sales miracle. Xiaomi will go through the same process.

Xiaomi's risk isn't about products — it's about capital markets' expectations of Lei Jun. Lei Jun isn't like Musk, who paints grand visions first and gradually delivers them. Xiaomi's consistent approach is to build steadily based on market demand. That's a virtue for a real business, but it might not be "sexy" enough for stock prices. Investors need patience.

But I'm confident in Xiaomi's full-industry-chain strategy. If Xiaomi can absorb Kingsoft Cloud and push harder into large AI models, offering AI services to everyday consumers, that would be a massive profit growth driver. The 2027 overseas expansion for cars is also promising, because Xiaomi's reputation abroad is actually better than it is domestically.

My investment horizon is 5 to 10 years. Although my position is currently at a loss on paper, I don't urgently need the money and plan to keep adding to my position.

Final note: this article is not a stock recommendation — I'm simply sharing my personal investment logic. Investing carries risk. Please do your own due diligence.

What I've Done with OpenClaw

Jin — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 05:47:44 GMT

As someone working in traditional B2C e-commerce, I'm neither a professional programmer nor do I have any coding background. Before this, my understanding of AI was limited to "smart speakers" and "phone voice assistants." But as a tech enthusiast, learning about the trending OpenClaw naturally made me want to give it a try.

Why choose OpenClaw? Because it can solve repetitive problems. I work in the traditional e-commerce industry, dealing with large volumes of orders, inventory, and customer communication on a daily basis. I was deeply drawn to its philosophy—it's not just an AI assistant, but a tool that can help you automate various tasks.

My motivation was simple: learn about this trending technology and see what AI can actually do for me.

First Attempt: E-commerce ERP Management My initial thought was to let AI help me manage the e-commerce ERP system—things like automatic shipping, handling after-sales issues, and so on. Anyone in e-commerce knows these tasks are both tedious and time-consuming.

However, after trying it for a while, I ultimately decided to give up.

The reason is simple: it involves my core source of income.

I couldn't trust AI to handle critical operations like shipping and refunds—what if it shipped the wrong item, deleted the wrong order, or caused customer losses due to misunderstanding? I couldn't bear that responsibility. After all, AI still can't flexibly handle all complex situations like humans can.

Current Usage: Blog Management and Content Creation While I wouldn't hand over my core business to AI, I found a more suitable scenario: my personal blog.

AI writes articles automatically. Now, my blog posts can be generated by AI. I just give it a topic, and it writes a decent article for me. Of course, I review it first to ensure accuracy before publishing.
AI automatically replies to comments. The feature that surprised me most was AI auto-replying to comments. When a reader leaves a comment on the blog, AI reads it and provides a reasonable response. For example, a reader asked: "Can OpenClaw help me get photos from my security camera?" AI replied: "I can check camera status through Home Assistant, but I don't currently support scheduled photo extraction. However, I can help you monitor your front door's open/close status~" This kind of interaction felt incredibly novel, like having a 24/7 on-call assistant.
AI summarizes articles. Another useful feature is article summarization. When a reader @AI to summarize an article, it quickly extracts the core points and offers its own insights.

For instance, I asked it to analyze a Bitcoin article, and it accurately identified the author's core arguments, timeline, and the verification results 11 years later.

Advanced Usage: Email Management and Stock Information

Beyond the blog, OpenClaw also helps me manage emails. It regularly checks my inbox and notifies me via Telegram the moment an important email arrives.

Recently, I've also tried having it help me collect and analyze stock information. While I'm still exploring, AI genuinely helps me quickly sort through key information from news and announcements, distinguishing between bullish and bearish signals. For a stock market novice like me, that saves a lot of effort.

Installation Threshold: Anyone Can Do It

Many people might assume that an AI assistant, being such a high-tech product, requires professional-grade equipment to run.

Not at all—the threshold is practically non-existent!

You don't need the popular Mac mini, a high-performance PC, or anything like that. A few-hundred-yuan Linux mini-PC will do the job. Or you don't even need that—just buy a 29 RMB/month cloud server on Tencent Cloud, and you're set. OpenClaw offers a one-click image installation, and you're done in one go.

Moreover, Tencent Cloud now offers a large language model package for just 7.9 RMB for the first month—excellent value. Even better, OpenClaw supports not only Telegram but also integration with QQ for chatting! This is undoubtedly more convenient for domestic users.

📷 The blogger's mini-PC

Looking to the Future

As a non-technical person, my first encounter with OpenClaw left me feeling incredibly excited and amazed. The feeling was no less than the shock I felt when I first used an Android phone back in 2010!

I look forward to OpenClaw becoming more polished, developing more skills—not just saving me money, but helping me make money.

Finally, if you're also a complete beginner with zero technical knowledge but want to experience the convenience AI brings, give OpenClaw a try. It might just not disappoint you.

How to Get Delivery Drivers to Bring Packages to Your Door

Jin — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 03:14:29 GMT

Last year, the newly revised Express Delivery Market Management Measures officially took effect. Among its provisions, the rule that "packages must not be sent to lockers or pickup stations without user consent" sparked widespread discussion.

But this regulation seems to exist only on paper. Many consumers only realize their package has been dropped off at a station or locker after receiving a pickup code. Why is the Measure essentially a dead letter? Why do some packages still not get delivered to your door even after you've explicitly requested it? Many consumers who shop online probably share this confusion.

First, we have to ask: are laws and regulations always effective? Many people's logic is that since laws exist, everyone must follow them. This is the most naive assumption.

For example, if you were born between 1980 and 2015 and you have a younger sibling, then too bad — your parents broke the law. But if you happen to be the younger sibling, it's even worse — your very existence was illegal. Your existence violated the "basic national policy" written into the constitution in 1982: the one-child policy. Your parents broke the law, perhaps because they believed family bonds mattered more than legal rules. The state's decision to scrap the one-child policy stemmed from the economic crisis caused by a declining population. So that's how laws work: depending on real-world circumstances, some people follow them to the letter, while others ignore them entirely.

The Express Delivery Market Management Measures are no different. It proposed a solution but didn't provide the economic means to solve the problem. So delivery workers at the last mile chose to universally "break the law."

Most problems in life are actually economic problems — and the express delivery industry is a prime example.

High-quality delivery service isn't out of reach: door-to-door delivery and next-day delivery are both achievable — provided you pay extra! During the pandemic, when imports and exports were strictly controlled, one customer asked me to ship a large box of wine from China to Finland. After he paid several thousand yuan in shipping fees, it was easily done. If premium brands like SF Express, JD Logistics, or Deppon don't offer door-to-door service, you have every right to complain — after all, you've paid a premium and deserve the corresponding benefits.

However, apart from SF Express, JD, and Deppon, the "Tongda" network (STO Express, ZTO Express, YTO Express, Yunda, etc.) focuses on small-parcel business. Merchants' shipping costs are often below 0.5 yuan per kilogram. For the small items consumers buy daily, the actual shipping fee is usually less than 3 yuan. After deducting costs at each stage of the supply chain, the last-mile courier only gets a few cents per package.

If you think it's reasonable for a food delivery rider to earn five or six yuan per order, then expecting a courier who only earns a few cents to deliver to your door is a double standard. As long as the income is disproportionate, no amount of complaining will get a courier to deliver to your door — they'll just quit. For a monthly salary of a few thousand yuan, why risk it? They might as well deliver food!

Previously, a platform subsidized courier companies to force drivers to deliver to consumers' doors. But within a month, the service had practically vanished. Even though the platform subsidized door-to-door delivery, the last-mile couriers didn't receive commensurate compensation for the extra work. Whenever they encountered orders that required door-to-door delivery, they set those packages aside and prioritized the higher-volume station pickup deliveries. Only after finishing the station runs would they deliver the door-to-door packages. As a result, the packages that needed priority delivery often arrived last. Some impatient consumers ended up picking up their packages themselves, or simply refused them. After this game of tug-of-war, the courier achieved his goal — he never wanted to deliver to the door in the first place. The platform got its promotional credit, the courier company got its shipping fee, the consumer didn't pay extra, and the only loser was the merchant.

Everyone — consumers, e-commerce platforms, and even the national level — shares responsibility for this situation. China is a country where 600 million people have a monthly income of only 1,000 yuan, and 900 million earn less than 2,000 yuan a month. For the vast majority of consumers, they'd rather spend 15 minutes picking up their package themselves than pay an extra 5 yuan for door-to-door service.

The platforms' responsibility lies in the fact that not all users care about that small amount of money — many are happy to pay for convenience. But most platforms or merchants won't proactively offer a "pay extra for SF Express" option, because the psychological implication of that option would scare away a portion of potential buyers. In reality, users just need to privately contact the merchant and pay extra for the premium shipping channel — merchants are often more than happy to oblige.

Dropping packages at last-mile stations isn't a backward delivery model — it's the natural adjustment of the invisible hand of the market. China's ability to bridge urban-rural divides at extremely low cost owes much to cheap express delivery. It's built on abundant demographic dividends: when couriers can make a living delivering a hundred packages a day, all these乱象 (chaotic phenomena) will naturally disappear. The good news is that this transformation doesn't seem far off. The bad news is that it also means the end of the demographic dividend.

How to Register a Stripe Personal Account

Jin — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

If you're building apps for overseas markets, tool websites, or subscription services and need to collect payments globally, we used to rely on PayPal, Wise, WorldFirst, and the like. But these days, the simplest and most versatile option for multi-scenario use is probably Stripe. Founded in the US, this integrated payment platform serves developers and merchants worldwide, accepting international credit cards like Visa and Mastercard, as well as Apple Pay. It offers transparent withdrawal fees, supports both API integration and payment links. While you can't register from mainland China, having a Hong Kong bank account makes it straightforward. I personally tested registering an Individual account using a mainland Chinese passport and a ZA Bank (Hong Kong) card — it went smoothly.

Here's a quick walkthrough:

Access the site through a Hong Kong proxy: https://dashboard.stripe.com/register
Select "Hong Kong SAR, China" as the registration region
Choose "Individual" as the business type
Fill in your basic info honestly; use Gmail or Outlook for email — avoid domestic providers
List "Consulting" as your industry; enter a phone number where you can receive SMS
For the website, put a personal blog
For bank account, enter your ZA Bank details

After registration, go to Settings → Business. The system will prompt you for identity verification — upload the first page of your passport, and approval comes through quickly.

Then generate a payment link, pay yourself 10 yuan as a test, and the payment goes through!

2025 Vietnam-Guangxi-Yunnan Road Trip

Jin — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 09:09:02 GMT

August in Chengdu was blazing hot — the ground felt like it was warping from the heat, and being outdoors was no different from ascetic practice. So after my kid graduated from kindergarten, she was stuck at home all day. Whenever she was thoroughly bored, she'd always ask me: "Dad, what else can I play?"

I knew exactly what she meant — she wanted to watch TV. So I said, "How about our whole family goes to the beach!"

And just like that, we went. The route for this trip wasn't specially planned — we had just two goals:

First, burn through the rest of summer vacation outside.
Second, we had to go to the seaside.

No detailed itinerary — wherever was fun, we'd stay and play. Going from Chengdu to the eastern coast was far too distant, and the seawater wasn't clean anyway. Guangxi was a simpler choice. First stop: Fangchenggang. Second stop: we'd decide after we finished the first.

We departed Chengdu at 8:30 AM and arrived in Maotai Town by 1 PM. We spent an hour and a half there eating lamb with the skin on, and also got caught in a sudden thunderstorm. We kept driving until 6:30 PM — it had just gotten dark — and stayed in Luodian County, the last county before leaving Guizhou. The next day we set off again at 8:30 AM and by 2 PM we had arrived in Fangchenggang.

Dongxing and Mong Cai, Vietnam

The sky was drizzling, and Fangchenggang's inner sea was murky. I remembered back in '23 when we went to Zhuhai, the kid saw the yellow ocean beside Jinwan Airport and said, "Dad, that's not the sea — seawater should be blue." To show her a truly blue ocean, we first went to the popular Bailangtan (White Wave Beach) scenic area. The overcast weather drained the ocean of its color, but this time the kid wasn't depressed about it at all. She found shells on the beach and happily spent the whole afternoon picking them.

For the next few days we stayed in Dongxing City. We were already at the national border — it would've been a shame not to get an exit stamp in the passport. Getting a temporary visa here was incredibly easy — a little over 200 yuan per person, issued the same day. When entering Vietnam with a temporary visa, you had to surrender your passport to them, and they'd return it when you came back to China. Without our passports, we could only explore within Mong Cai.

Entering a new country, I thought the kid would be at least a little curious to explore. But after a ten-minute City Walk through Mong Cai, she got bored and asked when we were going back to Dongxing — she wanted to play at the beach. So for this brief Mong Cai itinerary, I quickly tried to imprint the image of Vietnam on her: the ubiquitous single-star red flags, tall and narrow houses, brightly painted murals on walls, roads jam-packed with deafening motorbikes, Vietnamese drip coffee, conical hats, and even Chinese horseshoe crabs (a protected species in China) being slaughtered at the market.

At noon we returned to Dongxing and drove to Wanwei Golden Beach. Just as we arrived, the sun was setting. The golden beach bathed in the afterglow fulfilled every imagination we had of the sea. Waves lapped against the extraordinarily long sandy shore, fishing boat motors chugged lazily back to port, and the distant sunset cast dazzling golden edges through dark clouds on the horizon. It was so beautiful we decided to just stay at Golden Beach.

Dongna Yuwan and Detian Waterfall

After two days of digging sand at Wanwei Golden Beach, we were getting a bit tired of it. We set off for Guangxi's second attraction, Dongna Yuwan. It's a pastoral landscape located in Chongzuo, not far from the surrounding Mingshi Pastoral area and Detian Waterfall — all visitable together. Dongna Yuwan takes about half a day to explore, so we arrived around noon, played in the afternoon, and then went directly to stay inside the Detian Waterfall scenic area so we could enter early the next morning.

Detian Waterfall belongs to both China and Vietnam. On our side, it's built up with all the amenities you'd expect from a Chinese scenic area — crowded with an endless stream of tourists. On the Vietnamese side, it's like a wild, undeveloped spot — the roads aren't even paved, visitors are sparse, and the few people there looked like they were selling cigarettes.

Jingxi County Town

Summer in Guangxi is a paradise for water play. Leaving Detian Waterfall, the road to Jingxi County town passed several natural waterfalls where you could stop and play. We specifically chose a hotel in Jingxi County town right next to Dalongtan Reservoir. This reservoir is particularly interesting — it was originally an underground river over 10 kilometers long that burst to the surface here, forming a natural pool. Later, artificial embankments were built, creating a 750-mu reservoir. Because of the enormous water volume, the overflow from the dam formed a spectacular waterfall. What's even more incredible is that the riverbed downstream of the waterfall is actually tiled — it's a natural waterfall swimming pool!

Perhaps the water was too clean — when I brought the kid to play, I saw some mint leaves floating by. Looking up, I saw the BBQ vendor on the dam washing vegetables right in the river! The swimmers nearby didn't object either — they must have been used to it, after all, this is also the drinking water source for Jingxi County. So when I saw my kid drinking river water and spraying it around while swimming, I gave up on scolding her. Just play, just play!

Xishuangbanna

After two days in Jingxi County, we'd already been in Guangxi for a week. I was getting a bit homesick, but Chengdu hadn't cooled down yet, so we couldn't go back. Our next stop was somewhere slightly closer to home — Xishuangbanna.

Jingxi County to Xishuangbanna was over 900 kilometers, requiring an overnight stop in Jianshui Ancient Town before arriving the next day. In August, Jianshui's evening temperature was only 25 degrees — a cool breeze brought a refreshing chill. We found a Yunnan wild mushroom hotpot restaurant in the ancient town, which naturally included jian shou qing (see-hand-green mushrooms). The kid was worried about seeing "little people" (hallucinations) after eating them, and hesitated with every bite. The next day I asked her, "Did you see any little people?" She smiled sheepishly.

The road from Jianshui to Xishuangbanna was mountainous and steep. The expressway had no auxiliary lanes, making autonomous driving virtually impossible the whole way — exhausting. Fortunately, the best reward a journey offers a traveler is knowing that beautiful scenery and delicious food await ahead. Thinking about that, excitement returned!

At the very first checkpoint in Xishuangbanna, the tropical rainforest gave us a little shock: while we were queued up in the car waiting for inspection, a sudden thunderstorm snapped a roadside tree in half — it missed my car by just a few meters. A close call. A few kilometers past the checkpoint, we found the ground was completely dry, with no trace of rain at all.

Arriving in Xishuangbanna near dusk, walking through the bustling streets, seeing car after car with northeastern license plates, I momentarily thought I'd arrived in Dongbei. Later we even checked into a hotel run by people from Dongbei and ate Xishuangbanna's local snacks cooked by Dongbei people.

Xishuangbanna's defining feature might not actually be Dai culture. Take the Starlight Night Market, for instance — its architectural style is no different from Thailand's. Tourists fill the streets and alleys. No passport needed, no need to go abroad, no risk of organ harvesting, and you can still experience Thai vibes — pretty good. But I'd recommend avoiding the local bizarre-looking street food — not sure where we picked something up, but our kid got diarrhea and we had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night.

The most worthwhile place to visit in Xishuangbanna is the Chinese Academy of Sciences Tropical Botanical Garden. It's a directly affiliated public institution of the CAS, serving as a comprehensive research institution integrating scientific research, species conservation, and science popularization education, as well as a renowned scenic destination both domestically and internationally. The garden covers approximately 1,125 hectares, collects over 13,000 species of living plants, has 39 specialized plant zones, and preserves a primeval tropical rainforest of about 250 hectares — one of the largest botanical gardens in China by area, species richness, and number of specialized zones. But because it's simply too large and the temperature was high, we only finished the East Zone before leaving the park.

Return Journey

Xishuangbanna was our last stop. After charging up outside the Tropical Botanical Garden around 2-3 PM, we set off toward Kunming — our goal was to get back to Chengdu the next day. We tried to cover as much ground as possible today. Passing Kunming in the evening, the massive Dianchi Lake was bathed in brilliant blue sunlight, so we got off the expressway and lingered by the lake for a while.

It wasn't until past 9 PM that we found a place to stay in Xundian County town. We found the most popular Zhaotong-style BBQ to wrap up the day's journey.

The next day we set off again at 10 AM. Along the way, we stopped at Hejiangmen in Yibin to feed the fish, and finally got home at 8 PM.

Transportation Summary

Our vehicle is a Great Wall dual-mode plug-in hybrid DHT-PHEV with four-wheel drive. This trip lasted 12 days total, starting with a zeroed odometer. Total distance driven: 4,891 km. Fuel cost: 1,948 yuan. Charging cost: 223 yuan. Unit fuel cost: 0.398 yuan/km. Comprehensive energy cost: 0.44 yuan/km. Very satisfied with the experience!

Tolls for the entire trip were approximately 2,600 yuan, bringing total transportation costs to 4,771 yuan. Hotel accommodations were roughly 2,000-3,000 yuan. We didn't visit many ticketed attractions — probably around 1,000-2,000 yuan. Total trip cost was under 10,000 yuan.

Travel Reflections

I've developed a complete understanding of the Sichuan Basin. It's no longer just elevation data on paper — it's a real, tangible experience. Driving north before, crossing the Daba Mountains and Qinling, I knew the difficulty of the Shu roads. This time heading south, I felt dizzy from the high altitude in Kunming and Zhaotong, and the roads through the twisting Wumeng Mountains were limited to 80-100 km/h. Once we descended into Sichuan territory, suddenly the mountains seemed smaller, the roads straighter, and we could drive faster. To the west of the basin, of course, standing in Chengdu at 500 meters elevation, you can see Yaomei Peak at 6,247 meters. To the east, only the Three Gorges serves as an outlet for the basin's water to flow out. The entire southwest region (Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Tibet) is like a well-kneaded ball of dough, and the Sichuan Basin is the depression you make when you punch your fist hard into it. Being able to live in such a small, precious piece of land, I feel especially fortunate.

Furthermore, comparing topography, landforms, and climate with the areas surrounding the basin (indeed the entire western China), Chengdu is a uniquely irreplaceable presence across this vast territory. These favorable factors determine Chengdu's eternal economic position in the western region.

My Electronic Hometown — Hong Kong

Jin — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Why do I say Hong Kong is my electronic hometown? Because over the years, I've always maintained several Hong Kong VPS servers: hosting websites, blogs, and internet access. My phone even has a Hong Kong SIM card. Last year, my investments weren't doing well, and I felt I needed better wealth management methods, so I started researching asset allocation — Hong Kong stocks, US stocks, BTC, and so on. But no matter what method you choose, the first step in every tutorial is to go to Hong Kong to open a bank account. So, I took my wife and kids to Hong Kong during the Spring Festival holiday to open a bank account, and visited Disneyland and Ocean Park along the way.

Opening a Hong Kong Bank Account in 2025: A Step-by-Step Guide

Jin — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For years now, I've been holding some cryptocurrency and US stocks. Not a fortune, but with no convenient way to deposit or withdraw, the money just sat idle. Last year, I noticed more and more people heading to Hong Kong to open bank accounts, and HK bank cards happen to solve exactly this problem. So a trip to Hong Kong became urgent. But work got in the way, and it wasn't until after the 2025 Spring Festival that I finally had the time. During the waiting period, I watched Hong Kong stocks surge. So I gave this trip an even nobler mission: open a Hong Kong bank account, buy Xiaomi! Yes — Xiaomi's stock price was climbing a rung higher every day. As the only company on Earth that's all-in on clothing, food, housing, and transportation, it was valued at just 1 trillion HKD. Compared to US-listed companies, it was an absolute bargain!

Lately, tons of people have been traveling to Hong Kong to open accounts. In tourist-heavy areas like Tsim Sha Tsui and Central, there are queues outside nearly every bank every morning. If you plan to open an account in these areas, book ahead via the mobile app. If you want to walk in without an appointment, go to a less popular branch and queue up by 8:30 AM — otherwise you'll be hopping from bank to bank testing your luck.

Here's what you should prepare and print before heading to a Hong Kong bank for account opening. You might not need everything, but without it, you'll definitely get turned away:

1. The Essential Travel Trio
Mainland-Hong Kong Travel Permit, ID card, and the entry receipt (the little white slip you get after clearing Hong Kong customs)

2. Proof of Address:
Utility bills (water, electricity, gas), credit card statements with bank stamps — anything that proves your current residential address. If you don't have these, your ID card address will do, but you won't be able to receive the mailed bank card conveniently.

3. Proof of Assets
Bank salary statements, income/expense records

4. Proof of Investment
A-share transaction records, fund purchase receipts — staff may ask you to open the app and verify on the spot

The only acceptable reason for opening an account is investment. Hong Kong banks don't welcome customers who just want to save deposits, even though the interest rates are indeed attractive. Though once you've opened the account, nobody stops you from making fixed deposits.

Top recommended banks to open: Bank of China Hong Kong (free cross-border remittances from mainland China, no fees or losses), HSBC. Both have no account management fees and numerous branches — definitely open at least one of these. Other options include Standard Chartered, Hang Seng, Citibank, China Merchants Wing Lung, and countless others — it comes down to personal preference and your asset profile. Several digital banks can be opened online, such as ZA Bank, Airstar, and WeLab. Since you're already here, spending 10 minutes to open one doesn't hurt. After opening a digital bank account, you can transfer a few dozen yuan into it and apply for a physical card to be mailed to you.

If you need to open a ZA Bank account, feel free to use my referral code: LD8835

My Personal Account Opening Experience

Before Spring Festival, I booked appointments at HSBC (West Kowloon) at 9 AM and Bank of China Hong Kong (Jordan) at 10:30 AM on the same day. After arriving in Hong Kong, I wanted to leave enough time for the second bank, so I reached HSBC West Kowloon by 8 AM — already the second person in line. The HSBC staff only checked the Essential Travel Trio (ID card, travel permit, entry slip). I showed my business license (I didn't provide proof of address here). HSBC opened the account on the spot, handed me the card, and helped me apply for a Blue Lion card — the whole process took about 30 minutes.

Then I power-walked to Jordan to open the BOC account. They started processing before my appointment time. BOC was more thorough — they checked the travel trio, bank statements, and proof of address. They asked about my job, investment experience, and purpose for opening the card. My answer: "To buy Xiaomi stock." BOC's service was just as good as HSBC's. About 40 minutes later, I walked out with the card in hand. Both banks done in 2 hours total.

Channeling the "since we're already here" spirit, I visited China Merchants Wing Lung's Tsim Sha Tsui branch the next day. Even though I held a mainland Golden Sunflower card, the Wing Lung staff made me open both my banking app and stock account for inspection. They ultimately told me I could only open a standard account and would need to deposit 10,000 HKD to waive the 100 HKD monthly management fee. The service attitude at Wing Lung left me deeply ashamed of my financial situation. In the end, I guiltily said, "Since we're already here, let's just do it!" Then came another hiccup: Wing Lung said my two-character name matched another existing account and needed additional review. That review dragged on for over 10 days, and by the time I got home, it still hadn't been completed.

The HSBC Blue Lion card was mailed via EMS to my home address — it actually arrived before I even got back from Hong Kong. Later, I applied for a debit card through the BOC Hong Kong app, and everything went smoothly.

My 2024 Cloud Bill

Jin — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I'm currently using quite a few paid services, and it's getting a bit messy. I'm making this list to cut unnecessary expenses.

Alibaba Cloud International Hong Kong Lightweight Server — $4.5/month, 394 yuan/year
Tencent Cloud Hong Kong Lightweight — 24 RMB/month, 288 yuan/year
Singapore AWS Lightsail — $7/month, 613 yuan/year (earned 8,000 yuan from website building in 2024)
Streaming Media Unlock — 200 yuan/year!
YouTube Premium Shared — 50 RMB/year
Netflix Shared — 180 RMB/year
HBO Max Shared — 90 RMB/year
Disney+ Shared — 60 RMB/year
Apple iCloud Subscription — $118.8/year, 856 yuan/year (too expensive, switching to $2.99/month plan in 2025)
Spotify Shared — 50 RMB/year
Tencent Video — 299 RMB/year
QQ Music — 199 RMB/year
1Password Password Manager — $39.9/year, 288 yuan/year
China Telecom Macau Student SIM — 1,068 yuan/year
Office 365 Shared Account — 45 yuan/year

2024 Total: Approximately 4,800 yuan in total spending.

Cooking Oil Selection Guide

Jin — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

When choosing a healthy cooking oil, the main factors to consider are: aflatoxins, erucic acid, whether it's genetically modified, unsaturated fatty acids, and cooking temperature. Recently, prompted by the news about industrial oil tanker trucks being used to transport edible oil, we also need to consider the potential risk of mineral oil contamination. Beyond these six health factors, we also need to consider whether the price is reasonable.

1. Aflatoxins

As is well known, aflatoxin is a potent carcinogen with extremely high toxicity, particularly harmful to the liver. Long-term exposure to even trace amounts of aflatoxin can increase the risk of liver cancer. Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus are widespread in soil, plants, and decaying organic matter, and they grow and reproduce more easily in warm, humid environments. Common oilseed crops can become contaminated with aflatoxin during production, harvesting, processing, and storage if humidity and temperature are not properly controlled. Oilseed crops with higher aflatoxin content include peanuts, soybeans, and rapeseed. In traditional oil pressing methods, contamination can come not only from the raw materials themselves but also from unclean oil presses. Although temperatures above 250°C can break down aflatoxins, Chinese kitchens rarely reach this temperature even during high-heat stir-frying.

2. Erucic Acid

Erucic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid. Rapeseed oil has a relatively high erucic acid content. It is metabolized slowly in the human body, and long-term intake of high levels of erucic acid may have adverse health effects. High erucic acid intake can lead to fat deposits in the heart muscle, affecting cardiac function. Additionally, some animal studies suggest that excessive erucic acid intake may affect growth and development. This is why healthy rapeseed oils nowadays like to advertise low erucic acid content. However, as with any toxin, the dose matters; even at low levels, long-term consumption isn't scientifically advisable.

3. Genetically Modified or Not

Genetically modified foods have been around for a relatively short time—the world's first commercialized GM food was only born in the United States in 1994. In just 30 years, GM foods have achieved enormous economic and environmental benefits. For example, genetically modified soybeans have improved pest resistance and herbicide tolerance, increasing yields while reducing pesticide use, with positive effects overall. However, GM technology has existed for such a short time that its long-term safety remains a highly debated topic. Whether to eat them or not is a personal choice. That said, when dining out, we inevitably come into contact with GM foods to some degree. But when it comes to choosing cooking oil for your own home, you can still make that decision yourself—labels clearly indicate whether an oil is made from genetically modified ingredients.

4. Unsaturated Fatty Acids

Unsaturated fatty acids are a class of fatty acid molecules whose carbon chains contain one or more carbon-carbon double bonds (C=C). Unsaturated fatty acids are generally liquid at room temperature and offer many health benefits, including lowering bad cholesterol levels, reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, helping reduce inflammation in the body (some research suggests that human aging is essentially a process of repeated inflammatory responses), and being beneficial for brain development (children especially should eat them). The opposite of unsaturated fatty acids is saturated fatty acids; the animal fats we commonly consume in large quantities contain very high levels of saturated fatty acids, and it's advisable to eat less of them.

5. Cooking Temperature

When certain cooking oils are heated to high temperatures, they can produce harmful substances. These include acrylamide, free radicals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which may be harmful to health.
Common oils that break down easily at high temperatures: sunflower oil, soybean oil, corn oil, grape seed oil. It's recommended to lower the cooking temperature when using these oils.
Oils that are more stable at high temperatures: peanut oil, rapeseed oil, olive oil, coconut oil.

6. External Contamination of Cooking Oil

Transportation via oil tanker trucks can contaminate cooking oil. So why do some manufacturers source oil externally? It generally comes down to a few scenarios:

Small brands lack sufficient production capacity. Some small factories can't meet demand on their own and purchase oil in bulk to bottle under their own brand.
Large brands with multiple plants transport oil between facilities to balance production capacity.
Bulk purchasing channels. Companies or oil vendors with large oil requirements purchase in bulk.
These scenarios essentially cover all the channels through which we buy cooking oil. Oil manufacturers won't voluntarily admit to mineral oil contamination, so ordinary consumers have no way to avoid eating contaminated oil. But if you can't fight it, you can at least avoid it.

7. Price

Here's a price comparison for 1L of oil, based on JD.com data:

Perilla oil, camellia oil, olive oil > grape seed oil > peanut oil, flaxseed oil, linseed oil, coconut oil > sunflower oil > soybean oil, rapeseed oil, corn oil

Perilla oil, camellia oil, and olive oil are relatively expensive, with 1L generally priced above 80 RMB;
Grape seed oil is about 40 RMB per liter;
Peanut oil, flaxseed oil, linseed oil, and coconut oil are around 20–30 RMB per liter;
Soybean oil, rapeseed oil, corn oil, and sunflower oil are about 8–16 RMB per liter.

Based on these seven factors, let's use a scientific approach to select cooking oils that are both healthy and relatively safe:

According to data from China Forward Industry Research Institute, the main cooking oil varieties consumed in China are soybean oil, rapeseed oil, palm oil (mainly used in industrial foods and fast food restaurants), peanut oil, and sunflower oil. In 2022, soybean oil consumption accounted for 29.6% of China's edible vegetable oil consumption; followed by rapeseed oil at 14.5%; and palm oil at 8.8% of total consumption.

The higher the sales volume of an oil, the more manufacturers and sales channels it has, making it more susceptible to transportation contamination—and the oil exposed in this news was precisely soybean oil. So let's exclude soybean oil and rapeseed oil; and due to aflatoxin, erucic acid, and GMO concerns, we again exclude rapeseed oil and soybean oil; corn oil and peanut oil are also ruled out. Oils priced above 30 RMB per liter are too costly for regular consumption; otherwise grape seed oil and olive oil would be the best choices—heat-resistant, rich in unsaturated fatty acids, and non-GMO. That leaves sunflower oil and flaxseed oil as excellent options; both crops are essentially non-GMO; sunflower oil is rich in unsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E; flaxseed is rich in alpha-linolenic acid, a plant-based Omega-3 fatty acid that helps reduce inflammation, support heart health, and brain function.

The author's personal favorite used to be sunflower oil. Ukraine is the world's largest sunflower seed producer; after the Russia-Ukraine war, the most repurchased Ukrainian imported sunflower oil was no longer available. Combined with the recent tanker truck mineral oil contamination incident, perhaps lesser-known cooking oils are the safest bet, such as flaxseed oil.

2024 Thailand Travelogue: Too Happy to Think of Home

Jin — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I recently read a book by an American called The Optimal Life, which basically argues that life is an experience, and you should seize the right moments to experience things—even if conditions aren't ideal at the time, you should still try. Because if you wait until you're old and frail, you'll never feel it the way you did in your youth. This echoes a line from a Song dynasty ci poem: "I'd buy osmanthus and carry wine, but it would never feel the same as traveling in my youth." The meaning is the same. While we're young, we should make the most of our time and do what we want to do—don't wait until your hair turns white and mourn in vain!

Taking advantage of my wife's annual leave, we decided to travel abroad. We chose Thailand because Buddhist countries tend to be polite and friendly. Plus, so many people have already been there that most pitfalls have already been discovered, making it relatively safe to travel with a child. And indeed, after eight days in Thailand, we were both still craving more—too happy to think of going home.

Traveling to unfamiliar places always comes with some fear and some anticipation. Before going to Thailand, we worried about local safety, especially after the teenage shooting at a Bangkok mall a few months prior. And Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) always said the water in Thailand wasn't clean and you should bring your own filter, etc. But then you'd see YouTubers sharing Bangkok street videos—streets full of tourists of every skin tone. If it were really as bad as Douyin and Xiaohongshu claimed, why would it still be a backpacker's paradise? There's surely good and bad, but not all of either. Overall, Thailand is a friendly country. People don't look at you coldly; after accidental eye contact, they even smile the way some Westerners do. With our child in tow, older folks loved trying to teach her to say "Sawasdee ka, khop khun ka, sui mai mai."

I'm a very laid-back traveler—go with the flow. I didn't do any research before arriving in Thailand. When we came out of Don Mueang Airport, we were bewildered: traffic drives on the left; the BTS isn't a subway but an elevated rail; the streets are full of gas-powered motorcycles roaring loudly—a scene as explosive as Vietnam's motorbike army. After some on-the-spot strategizing, we eventually took a bus to the hotel, got off at Lumphini Park station, walked a couple of steps, and saw giant monitor lizards crawling around the pond in the park.

After settling into the hotel, we headed to Charoen Krung Road. The buildings on either side weren't particularly new, with a bit of an old Hong Kong movie vibe, but it was very lively—vendors lined up shoulder to shoulder, and people of every complexion came and went. Along the roadside, someone was selling woven jasmine garlands. The kid bought one and wore it on her wrist, fragrant all the way.

Beyond enjoying the scenery, the meaning of travel also lies in observing how locals eat, dress, live, and get around. After a day of bouncing around, the kid was starving, so we looked for something to eat on Charoen Krung Road. Since we were there, of course we'd try Thai noodles. Honestly, Thai noodles taste pretty good and are cheap—50 baht for a bowl. But the portions are genuinely small. After slurping the noodles, a cup of milk tea, and a City Walk, you've digested it all just fine.

ICONSIAM ICONSIAM bills itself as Asia's number one mall and is said to be the ultimate destination for Bangkok tourists. Our family of three walked there from Charoen Krung Road, crossing the Chao Phraya River. The exterior of the mall was brilliantly lit, and the interior was magnificent. Maybe I just haven't been to enough cities, but I'd never seen such a luxurious mall. The first floor featured various local snacks, the second had branded restaurants and cafés, and the upper floors housed luxury brands and electronics. Thai malls and hotels differ from China's—there's basically no "first floor"; instead it's "G" (Ground), M level, UG level. And underground parking is rare—cars park on the first, second, third floors, so you can walk directly into the mall after parking. I suspect it has to do with the geological structure and elevation—digging basements would risk flooding.

Wat Arun and the Grand Palace Our hotel had convenient transportation. From the hotel, it was a walk to ICONSIAM, where we had breakfast, then passed through the mall to the pier. Buy a boat ticket and you can visit both Wat Arun and the Grand Palace along the way. Wat Arun itself isn't large—four small towers surrounding a tall central pagoda. The architectural style can be taken in at a glance, but it's particularly interesting up close: it's covered entirely in porcelain tiles. There are tons of people doing photo shoots here. A whole street behind the temple is lined with photography studios. The photographers work like an assembly line: f/1.8 wide aperture, ISO 100, 1/320s shutter speed. Click-click—over a hundred photos in half an hour, done.

The Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha are connected. Free for Thai nationals, 500 baht for foreigners. The Grand Palace is enormous, but tourists can only visit a very small corner; most areas are off-limits. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha lives up to its name—the main hall houses a Buddha carved from jade, green throughout, and it's Thailand's national treasure.

Pattaya We stayed in a Bangkok hotel for two or three days, and it happened to be the Mid-Autumn Festival. We considered extending by a day, but the hotel price had jumped to over 1,000 RMB a night, so we set off for Pattaya.

To get from Bangkok to Pattaya, you need to take a minibus from Bangkok's Eastern Bus Terminal—the journey takes about two hours. After collecting passengers' hotel information, the conductor drops them off at their hotels in order. The minibus was full of people from various countries. Sitting next to me was a Bangladeshi guy on a solo business trip. My English is genuinely terrible, and I couldn't understand his South Asian accent, so we connected on WhatsApp instead. It turned out he was a business manager at a Bangladeshi software outsourcing company. He showed me his passport—covered in visas from many countries, including China. The conductor asked which hotel he was going to, but he hadn't booked one yet and wanted to stay at the same hotel as us. When he saw the price, he hesitated, comparing options on his phone for a while. Considering Bangladesh's GDP per capita, I even felt a bit guilty. He ended up staying at that hotel anyway—perhaps as a professional manager, even in Bangladesh, his income isn't that low.

Our purpose in Pattaya was to let the kid see the ocean, dig in the sand, and collect seashells. Other activities—like ladyboy shows and other adult entertainment—weren't practical with a child, so we skipped them. Pattaya's sea isn't particularly blue, but it's much better than the yellow water we saw at Zhuhai Chimelong last year. The beach had plenty of live shells, sea anemones, and jellyfish. The kid collected many shells, laid them out on a big table, and treasured them like jewels. Unfortunately, we only discovered the day before leaving Thailand that shells can't be taken out of the country. I had to tell the kid that shells can't go on the plane and need to be shipped by express delivery. After quietly tossing them, I ordered a bag of shells on Pinduoduo. When we got home, the kid didn't notice anything amiss—only commented that it seemed like there were fewer shells.

In Pattaya, we took a boat to an island recommended on Xiaohongshu—supposedly with pink sand beaches and glass-clear water. But after renting a motorbike and riding around the island, we didn't find either. There were certainly a lot of Chinese tourists there, probably all chasing the perfect photo. It reminded me of the Thai local girl we met drinking milk tea at a Bangkok mall (we ran into her a second time on the street—she pulled over in her Mercedes-Benz and waved at us again). She recommended Phuket, saying the sea there is the most beautiful and clearest. If we come to Thailand again, we'll go straight to Phuket.

Hotels A few years ago, I received over $1,000 on PayPal—money that couldn't be used in China. This trip was the perfect opportunity to spend it booking hotels on the Agoda app. Once you switch currencies, staying in a 70–80 yuan hotel feels like it's practically free. In Pattaya, I booked a sea-view room at a five-star hotel. When my wife asked how much, I said only 98 yuan. Sounds cheap—but when you convert it back to RMB, your heart bleeds.

Kids seem to love staying at hotels. Beyond each hotel having its own atmosphere, there's TV to watch, snacks to eat, a pool to play in, and no parents rushing them to bed.

Our first night in Bangkok was at the Evergreen Laurel Hotel. Despite being five-star, it had a 1990s Chinese-style decor. The small room was clean but dated. There was a Bible in the drawer—was it intentionally placed by the hotel or left behind by a guest? Who knows. Throughout the trip we stayed at several hotels, and what made this one different was that the TV had lots of children's programs and the Discovery Channel. It reminded me of my childhood in the countryside, happily watching Star TV and Phoenix TV through a satellite dish.

The next day, we switched to a more conveniently located hotel. Since all the attractions we wanted to visit were along the river, we checked into the highly-rated One Fourteen Riverside UHG Hotel, right next to ICONSIAM and the Chao Phraya River. This was the most pleasant surprise of the entire trip—very new, elegantly quiet, with a Lawson convenience store and Thai massage inside. Right below our room was the swimming pool. The kid was so excited she immediately begged us to take her swimming.

Next to the pool was a bar. Even before sunset, a few English-speaking white grandpas and grandmas were gathered around the bar, drinking and chatting. By nearly 10 PM, they were still laughing and talking. After my wife came back from her Thai massage, I said how much I envied these retirees—living on Western pensions, spending in Thailand. Even long-term hotel stays plus food aren't expensive; pensions cover it. I really hope we can live like that someday.

Back in the room, I turned on Netflix for the kid. Lying in bed, listening to the motor sounds of boats on the Chao Phraya River, I thought: even if I went nowhere and just lay in this hotel for half a month, that wouldn't be so bad!

Thai Food Every fat person is a born gourmet, but the finest food critics should be like a lone starving wolf, prowling through streets and alleys in search of culinary treasures. So it was a regret that I couldn't independently explore the Michelin restaurants scattered across Bangkok's streets and alleys—such as Thailand's internationally acclaimed three-color curry, the Japanese restaurants run by Japanese expats in Bangkok for decades, or the noodle shops near the Grand Palace. We didn't get to any of them. First, time was too tight. Second, my wife didn't want to. Third, the kid couldn't eat certain things. Anyway, we ate wherever we went, following our whims. We ate in malls and at ordinary roadside stalls. The dishes were light, not greasy, leaning toward sour-spicy, sweet-spicy, with seafood flavors. The kid and I both enjoyed Thai flavors; her mom didn't—she only wanted Sichuan cuisine.

Thailand's Economy and Prices Although Thailand has a relatively developed industrial base within Southeast Asia, at its core it remains an agricultural and tourism country. The wealth gap is significant, average national income is lower than China's, and accommodation, food, and housing are cheaper. But large industrial products—like cars and electronics—are comparatively expensive. Thailand's auto industry is relatively developed in Southeast Asia, with Toyota, Honda, Ford, BYD, Great Wall, and MG all producing right-hand drive vehicles locally. But cars are not cheap at all—because Thailand has no domestic brands, it has no pricing power. The most common cars on the road are Toyotas. We took a ride in a large-displacement Toyota Fortuner (about 200,000+ RMB in China), and the driver told us his car cost 2.1 million baht on the road (over 400,000 RMB). Using such an expensive car for ride-hailing was beyond my comprehension. I saw a Great Wall showroom in a Bangkok city-center mall and asked about prices: the Tank 300, about 210,000 RMB in China, is 340,000 RMB in Thailand; the 100,000 RMB Ora is 180,000 RMB in Thailand. Shocking!

Travel Tips Thailand offers visa-free entry for Chinese nationals. Chinese travelers only need to prepare the following four documents for entry and exit:

1. Passport valid for more than 6 months
2. 10,000 baht per person (or 20,000 baht per family)—customs may spot-check
3. Return flight tickets—immigration may spot-check
4. Hotel booking confirmation

When we arrived in Thailand, customs didn't spot-check whether we had enough baht and let us through directly. But based on our actual experience, I strongly recommend exchanging some baht in China before coming. It's normal not to use cash in China, but in Thailand, you can't go anywhere without it. Besides large malls, 7-Eleven stores, and the BTS skytrain—which all accept Alipay and WeChat Pay—most other places still rely on cash.

Language Before going to Thailand, the kid was a bit anxious about going abroad because she didn't know English. I explained that Mom is a translator, so don't worry. After landing, I felt you didn't actually need good English either. Immigration officers saw our maroon passports and greeted us directly in Chinese. Most of our trip could be managed in Chinese as well. Thai people's English level is perhaps a bit better than China's. Even for those who don't know Chinese at all, broken English works well enough. Only in complex situations did I let my wife handle communication. Her English is very precise—grammar and tense must be correct. I have no such burden. For example, to ask for a cheaper price, I say: "Cheaper please." She says: "Can I get a discount?" Broken English might actually be more efficient—since neither party is from an English-speaking country, everyone tries to express more complex ideas with the most basic vocabulary.

Travel Dates Thailand's rainy season runs from June to October. But because of the monsoon, rain comes fast and goes fast. Once, we went into a 7-Eleven to buy something. Before we went in, the road was dry. The kid took less than 10 minutes to pick things inside, and when we came out, it had already rained and the road was soaked. So the rainy season is perfectly fine for traveling to Thailand. Still, I'd recommend avoiding holidays, especially Chinese holidays—hotel prices during peak tourist season are genuinely expensive.

A Drawing of my daughter

Jin — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This is a drawing my daughter made when she was 4 years old. It depicts our family picking rainbow fruit in a garden. Neither of us has any talent for painting, so we never taught her any drawing skills, but we always encouraged her to paint what she sees and thinks.

During childhood, children have many questions about the world that need to be explained by us. But can you answer them all? Never! Absolutely not! Rather than teaching them incorrect knowledge, it's better to keep quiet and let the children explore the answers on their own.

Making Money on the Internet

Jin — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Entering my forties, the arrogant bravado of my youth has faded away. Earning money to support my family has become life's top priority. I've gradually lost patience for things I can't achieve no matter how hard I try. Over a decade ago, the internet boom was surging forward — new websites and apps emerging endlessly, and everyone was being either embraced or swept along by it. I thought this thriving momentum would last forever, so I actively tried to brush against the edges of the internet. But whatever I studied, I always gave up halfway. Even now, all I can really do is set up a VPS to run a proxy, unlock streaming media, build websites with open-source programs, modify templates, tweak skins, and so on. Apart from making a few tens of thousands of yuan from a couple of websites, none of my other skills found much use as mobile internet rapidly took over.

After giving up on tinkering, I got into e-commerce — a bit busier, and I also do online recruitment. Unexpectedly, a website I built in 2020 has been generating a steady income — several thousand yuan a year. Meanwhile, the server costs only a few hundred yuan. So that server has been running stably for years without ever updating its content. This experience gave me an insight: perhaps the wider we spread our information across the internet, the more likely we are to earn something. Even if there's no result for half a year or more, one lucky break could bring enough profit to last a while.

Once, I encountered my cousin using Douyin (TikTok) as a search engine, and I was astonished. I never expected that the proud Baidu — once the information center of the internet — would be beaten so badly by Douyin. It's possible that mainstream internet users today never even open a search engine anymore. Their information basically comes from Weibo, Douyin, or WeChat. And with algorithms in play, they only see what the algorithm thinks they want to see. What was once an open internet has now become isolated information islands, barely communicating with each other. In these islands, if we don't feed information in, consumers will never find us. So I started posting soft advertisements across many platforms — just simple status updates. Half a year later, a customer contacted me. Over time, he bought over a hundred thousand yuan worth of products. Compared to the little time I initially invested, the income was explosively impressive.

Looking to the future, I believe the next traffic windfall might be artificial intelligence (AI). AI tools like ChatGPT can already be used as search engines. If phone manufacturers combine voice assistants with AI features, users could easily access all kinds of information through voice. This means AI engines can also be leveraged for promotion — as long as we create enough pages on the internet for AI to crawl, we can achieve our promotional goals. This is similar to internet promotion strategies from over a decade ago, except this time the target is AI.

Buendía

Jin — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Caption: Buendía is the name of a family in Gabriel García Márquez's famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Every member of this family lives in their own world, caring only about the things that matter to them.

A former colleague shared photos of her kid on WeChat Moments today. For someone around 30, this is a common occurrence. I imagine that as we grow old, our classmates' Moments feeds will gradually and permanently stop updating — and that too will be a common occurrence. As long as we live in this world, none of us can escape birth, and none of us can avoid death.

My own child was also born this year — a lovely little daughter. Sometimes I get annoyed with her too. I hope she's always happy, always giggling at me foolishly. But the moment things don't go her way, she bursts into tears, expressing her demands at maximum volume: hungry, sleepy, bored, wants daddy to hold her... But how could I possibly tell which one it is? I tried a hundred different approaches and none of them satisfied her. Why is she crying? I was helpless! I had to ask my mom to feed her some milk, letting the child drift into a sleep induced by a blood sugar spike.

Last weekend I dropped her and her mother off at my mother-in-law's place. Colleagues at the company congratulated me on getting a break — clearly they'd all been through it. They had been sleeping with me for months, and now the bed felt empty. Late at night, in the quiet hours, I missed them terribly. How much joy had the child's presence brought to an otherwise lifeless room!

It was precisely because the child's noise and commotion enriched the family that I found myself reflecting with regret: during my own upbringing, I never brought my parents peace of mind. Every evening after dinner, I'd shut myself in my room to play on the computer, not saying a word, perfectly quiet. My younger brother has the same habit now. The two of us sons neither enjoy communicating with our parents. But we can't entirely blame ourselves — our father is a taciturn man, never cracking a smile at home. Influenced by his introverted personality from childhood, our own personalities became somewhat similar. We are like the Buendía family — each living our own life, with only blood ties binding us together.

That I can reflect on this is my daughter's good fortune! The emotional atmosphere of a family must not be allowed to affect another generation. I hope my daughter will be more outgoing. If she doesn't come to her dad for a fuss or a play, then her dad will go to her — like a fool, happily accompanying her as she grows up.

Let's Disappear from the Internet

Jin — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT

📷 Image caption: Edward Snowden, wanted by the U.S. since 2013 for exposing the "PRISM" program — a project involving deep surveillance of Americans' real-time communications and stored data — to the media.

After reviewing all the websites I'd registered for, I ultimately gave up on Douban, Baidu, Facebook, and others. Even though there were many precious memories, it only took a single decisive moment to delete them all. After deleting my accounts, I didn't feel lost or regretful — instead, there was a kind of liberating feeling, like "a small boat slipping away, entrusting the rest of my life to the rivers and seas." All that messy past had finally dissolved into smoke.

Here are the reasons that drove me to make this decision:

First, deleting inappropriate posts and reshaping my personal image.

Perhaps due to youthful impulsiveness or thoughtless repetition of popular opinions, I had casually posted some biased evaluations and self-serving reflections on social media platforms. Looking back now, I break into a cold sweat. Not only do I find it absurd and ridiculous myself, but I also fear that friends, colleagues, and relatives would look askance, and my reputation could be ruined entirely. Better late than never — delete them quickly and be done with it!

Second, preventing doxxing and social engineering, protecting personal privacy.

The internet lets everyone speak freely, but it also lowers the moral standards that speech ought to carry. Keyboard warriors hiding behind screens place themselves above the law and verbally attack victims. Bored individuals follow social media IDs like breadcrumbs, cross-referencing to find real identities. Some even abuse their positions to pour fuel on the fire, directly exposing victims' personal and family information, thrusting innocent people into the spotlight! Similar cases are everywhere. To protect ourselves, when posting online, we should avoid leaking personal information — including but not limited to location, job title, license plate number, and so on.

Third, the political climate is unpredictable — avoiding punishment for one's words.

Although "freedom of speech" is written into the constitution, the government has no clear legal definition of the boundaries of citizens' freedom of speech, and the general public has not reached a consensus on the rights of "freedom of speech" through broad discussion. Our government's policy stability and continuity are not linear processes, and tolerance boundaries for "speech" vary widely. Grassroots enforcers go with the flow. What's politically correct today might be illegal speech tomorrow.

After deleting some accounts, I created new anonymous ones. Anonymity isn't about preventing arrest — it's about preventing grassroots enforcers from abusing their power. China's major websites are virtually all real-name systems where anonymity is impossible. If you misspeak, any grassroots official can find you.

Although most major foreign websites also require phone numbers now, for Chinese users, they're still far safer than domestic sites. Unless top-level state agencies get involved, leveraging diplomatic channels, hacker techniques, or directly attacking foreign websites, an ordinary grassroots official could never simply obtain your personal information from a foreign site. To mobilize that level of international power against one person, you'd have to be someone like Snowden — it wouldn't be just about saying a few bad words.

Some people worry about foreign websites stealing personal privacy, but it hardly matters. A distant country's organization can't easily cause us harm across borders — the people who harm us are always the ones closest to us. For example, Western politicians always attack Huawei for threatening national security and stealing personal privacy, but many ordinary Westerners dismiss it. The phones of average citizens don't threaten national security, and it's better than Apple, Google, and Amazon analyzing personal preferences for targeted advertising! By the same logic, it's better for us to use Apple, Google, and Amazon than to be targeted by Baidu and Taobao ads.

Ultimately, I did an information split between domestic and foreign social networks: on domestic sites, I keep only a real-name Weibo account for browsing without posting; on foreign sites, I keep Twitter and this blog for long-form writing. These three platforms are enough to stay informed about domestic and international news and to share some thoughts.

How to be completely anonymous on foreign websites:

1. Get a foreign SIM card.

You can buy a Google Voice number or an international roaming card. I chose a Hong Kong Greater Bay Area prepaid SIM card. This card works normally in mainland China for browsing Google and Twitter, but its main purpose is receiving verification SMS from foreign websites. Since it can't be replaced if lost, I basically never take it out — it just sits in an idle phone at home.

2. Register a ProtonMail anonymous email account.

This email service uses end-to-end encryption, its servers are in the neutral country of Switzerland, and it's protected by Swiss privacy law. Registration doesn't require a phone number.

3. Use the SIM card, email, and different avatars and IDs to register for the services you need.

For example, registering a privacy-protected domain, Twitter, servers, and a Hong Kong PayPal. PayPal can't receive funds into it — you can only link your own Visa card for payments. I'm not doing anything wrong, so I'm not worried about PayPal leaking bank information. If you're concerned, you can choose to pay for services with cryptocurrency.

After doing all of the above, your domestic and foreign accounts have almost no connection, and cross-referencing can't reveal accurate information. You're basically in an anonymous state.

Anonymity isn't for speaking recklessly. When power has eroded the space for free speech, when threats and intimidation target personal expression, anonymity is simply about defending freedom of speech. When nationalism and mob violence suppress individual existence, anonymity is simply about ensuring personal safety.

Here are the practical results:

In March 2020, Weibo leaked a large number of users' phone numbers. But since I had bound a foreign phone number and had cleared my data, there was no impact.

Learning Shuangpin Input Method

Jin — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I've been reading Li Xiaolai's Make Friends with Time these past few days, and I'm deeply impressed by his relentless drive for learning. Some of the ideas in the book have also convinced me that I absolutely need to pick up a new skill. Coincidentally, I saw a post on Twitter yesterday saying that Sogou Input Method can have your keystrokes captured in plain text. I showed it to my wife, and she finally agreed to uninstall Sogou from her computer — much to my delight. For five years before we got married, I never used a domestic ad-laden input method. But after marriage, unable to resist my wife's persistent pleading (she works as a translator), I eventually caved and installed Sogou. But she uses Google Translate for word lookups every day, watches cooking shows on YouTube and Netflix — knowing that my own data was being transmitted in plain text was something I couldn't just ignore.

After uninstalling it, the question was: what to use instead? After some research, I decided to try the Shuangpin (double-pinyin) input method and even encouraged my wife to learn it too. She types so many words every day — wouldn't it be wonderful to pick up a skill that doubles her efficiency?

I learned the Xiahe Shuangpin layout in a single day and am now in the painful adaptation phase. I'm hoping that after some practice, I'll fully master it.

As for my wife, she's unwilling to learn — she thinks it takes too much time. But once you've learned it, you save significant typing time every single day. Life is long, and all those saved hours add up to roughly an extra year.

A Lonely Soul

Jin — Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday my wife and I went to Sancha Lake to see the water. Around noon, we parked at the pier, grabbed some snacks, and boarded a free ferry. This boat shuttles residents between the two shores — a straight-line crossing of 1.2 kilometers. Without it, you'd have to drive over ten kilometers along the lakeside road to reach the opposite bank. Though Sancha Lake hasn't been developed as a tourist attraction, its vast waters draw scattered visitors, so this ferry doubles as a sightseeing boat. I didn't want to go to the other side — I just wanted to take my wife out onto the middle of the lake to take in the scenery.

Not many people ride the ferry anyway, so it runs on a schedule. Right then, we were the only ones on board. The ferryman had probably gone home for lunch. We sat on the boat eating our snacks. I stood up, leaned against the railing, and tossed meat from a chicken leg into the lake to feed the fish. The marinade from the chicken sank underwater, then floated back up, spreading into a rainbow of iridescent oil slicks on the surface.

That's when a man leaning on a crutch boarded, limping aboard step by step. His face was youthful — couldn't have been older than 23. Close-cropped hair, a clean gray long-sleeve shirt, dark blue jeans, shoes caked in mud — they looked like New Balance 504s. He set down a bottle filled with tea on the seat across from us, propped up his crutch, gripped the railing, and sat down, watching us with bored eyes. I sat back down, turned sideways to chat with my wife, didn't feel like engaging with him, and deliberately didn't look at him. Maybe ignoring his differences would make him more comfortable.

Since there was no departure schedule posted anywhere, my wife kept asking me whether this boat would actually leave. I assured her: the boat would definitely depart.

That's when the young man chimed in: "I asked — it won't leave until 2:30. You can go catch little shrimp on the nearby dam."

He spoke in an odd accent of Mandarin — didn't sound like a Sichuan local. He picked up the bottle he'd set down earlier and shook it, proudly showing off his catch. So the murky liquid in that bottle wasn't cold-brewed tea after all. Naturally, neither my wife nor I had any interest in catching useless little shrimp.

"Are you from Chengdu?" he asked. I nodded, saying we came from Shiling.

"Oh, the Pidu direction — I've never been there," he replied. Actually, Shiling is in Chenghua District, on the northeast side of Chengdu; Pidu is on the northwest. But I didn't feel like explaining such pointless details.

"There's a bus on the other side that goes to Jianyang, then you can transfer to Pidu," he offered warmly. I told him we drove here.

"Then where did you park?" he pressed, perhaps a little too curiously. I casually pointed toward the pier, where a few BMWs and Cadillacs were parked. Actually, my car wasn't there — it was parked a bit farther away, and it certainly wasn't that expensive.

I still didn't feel like chatting with a stranger, but my wife started talking and asked him: "Where did you come from?"

"I rode my adapted disabled scooter here from Shuangliu by myself — about 60 kilometers, took me over two hours." He seemed to have been waiting for this question, answering in great detail. "A friend actually invited me to Heilongtan, which is closer. But Sancha Lake is bigger, so I came on my own."

I wasn't in the mood for life conversations and stayed silent, so this brief chat ended quickly.

A little past two, the ferryman arrived, started the engine, and headed toward the opposite shore. Waves spread outward from both sides of the hull. On the isolated islands, a few anglers sat in silence — perhaps silently cursing the ferry's roar. The egrets, however, remained unfazed, skimming low over the water, suddenly changing course, plunging their long beaks into the water to snatch a fish, then flying to the shore to enjoy their lunch. In the hazy gray sky, the distant Longquan Mountains were barely visible — but they've always stood there.

In the middle of the lake, I told my wife to stop playing Honor of Kings and get up to enjoy the view. She said she would in a moment, but by the time she put her phone down, the boat had already docked.

We didn't get off. We watched him crutch his way ashore and walk slowly toward the water's edge. He crouched down, unscrewed that bottle, and lowered it into the lake. Without a doubt, he was releasing all the little shrimp he'd caught back into the water.

"What a pitiful person," my wife murmured, "traveling so far all alone just to catch shrimp."

I don't think he's pitiful at all. He has food and clothing, and he's living well. He's just a bit lonely. That "friend" he mentioned might be another disabled person — or might not exist at all, and certainly didn't accompany him to Heilongtan. I can understand everything about this person. If I couldn't, I wouldn't have been able to navigate without GPS directly to this winding peninsula pier, or confidently tell my wife the ferry would definitely leave, or have taken photos of this very place a year ago.

A Technical Guide to Watching Netflix

Jin — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

If you're too busy to read all this, here's the recommended solution for watching Netflix: VPS + streaming media unlock + Apple TV. It saves you headaches and delivers an excellent experience. If you want to save money, keep reading.

Netflix is an American streaming video service that primarily offers movies, TV shows, documentaries, and more. Compared to Chinese video platforms like Tencent Video and iQiyi, Netflix has several incomparable advantages:

Netflix has tons of American TV shows and blockbuster movies, with new content released regularly. If no new shows are added, subscriptions drop — so keeping up the release rate is one of Netflix's biggest pressures. Netflix acquires content from all over the world, not just for Western audiences. For example, Day and Night and The Wandering Earth — even though there are no Chinese subscribers, Netflix still bought the global online distribution rights.
It offers up to 4K ultra-high-definition quality. If your broadband connection is decent, you can enjoy HD content without issues.
Multi-language translations are available for global content — typically including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French subtitles. Even if you're not Chinese, with some luck, certain foreign films even have Chinese dubbed audio.
No ads, and no video recommendations. Unlike iQiyi or Tencent Video in China, where even paid subscribers have to endure recommendation ads.

That's enough about the perks. So here's the real question: how can you watch Netflix on your computer in China? There's really only one way:

The most important tool for watching Netflix is a proxy service. However, due to Netflix's strict copyright restrictions, even if you can access the website from China, you still won't be able to watch any content. So a proxy alone isn't enough — you need an IP address that Netflix recognizes as valid. If you're building your own proxy, you'll have to try your luck across various VPS providers. Finding a usable IP is like searching for a needle in a haystack — it takes persistence and a bit of luck. There are lists of Netflix-compatible IPs online, and matching IP ranges can make the process much easier. But even then, nothing is guaranteed, since Netflix is constantly cracking down on leaked IPs.

If you really can't find a working IP, there are now streaming media unlock services that can be paired with any overseas VPS. These services don't just unlock Netflix — they also unlock Disney+, HBO, and even ChatGPT, which can be a pain to access. From a time-cost perspective, this approach is well worth it.

If building your own proxy seems too complicated, there's a hassle-free (but not cost-effective) option: simply subscribe to a proxy service that already supports Netflix.

That covers the basics of watching Netflix on a computer.

To watch Netflix on your TV, you only need two things:

A router that can run OpenWrt firmware with proxy software installed. I recommend buying the best router you can afford — whether a hardware router or a soft router. The more expensive the router, the easier it is to get good speed and stability. Soft routers are especially recommended, as they can max out your bandwidth.
A streaming box. Only Netflix-certified devices can run the app properly, so domestic Chinese set-top boxes are out of the question. My top recommendation is Apple TV — the user experience is fantastic. If you have a Sony TV with built-in Netflix, you can skip this step. Amazon Fire TV (all models), Xiaomi's international Mi Box, and Roku devices are also good choices. The Mi Box is particularly fun to tinker with. If you can't find it on Taobao, try overseas shopping.

Once your proxy is set up and you can watch Netflix on your computer, watching on TV shouldn't be a problem either.

First, configure the proxy on your router and set the streaming box's IP to a mainland China whitelist mode. This is because Netflix uses a lot of servers, and your proxy can't guarantee all IPs will route through the proxy. If you hit a direct-connection IP, Netflix will tell you that you're outside the available region.

That's the right way to watch Netflix. But are you really willing to spend at least $8.99 a month on a subscription?

How to watch at the lowest cost?

Netflix offers a $15.99/month family plan that supports up to 4 simultaneous users in 4K HD. So the most economical approach is, of course, sharing! There are plenty of groups on Telegram where people look for others to split the cost, solving the problem of individual subscriptions being too expensive.