Ready Player One Review

My formative teenage years coincided mostly in the 2000s, and feverishly playing World of Warcraft, Fable and Diablo — so even though I didn’t get most of the references to the Eighties, I totally understood and felt what they stand for. Ready Player One is a fantastic mixture of nostalgia and sci-fi, aptly labelled by USA Today as ‘Willy Wonka meets the Matrix’. The fast-paced writing and its quality made the book an OASIS-like simulation for me: instead of VR goggles and haptic gloves, I turned page after page and was fully-immersed inside the mind of Wade Owen Watts, who’s Parzival inside the OASIS world. Even though some plots are obvious, the book is thrilling and a one big glorious celebration of geekiness. Take me back.

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Forgotten patch of land

Forgotten patch of land

The hardest thing to get in Shanghai is silence and solitude, yet there’s this strip nearby our apartment that does provide these things — a patch of land that city developers had no use for. The first time I came here and entered, suddenly something felt weird until I realized it was the absence of […]
March 27, 2026
Cobblestones and Lions in Longmen

Cobblestones and Lions in Longmen

I know I take too many photos, and I know I should remove some for brevity. But it feels to me that each of these views is worth capturing, as if to store it in a jar for storage. When I no longer live in China, I want to look back on these trips, to […]
February 18, 2026
Chinese New Year shopping in Majin

Chinese New Year shopping in Majin

We’re in Majin Village (马金镇) in Zhejiang, a day before the Chinese New Year starts. Everyone’s busy doing some final shopping or getting a haircut before the festival — and the weather reaching 22 °C in February helps bring people outside. Meat, spices, offerings, flowers, yoghurt, cookies, barbeque, trinkets, posters, vegetables, soap, new shoes — […]
February 17, 2026
Dutch Signs in Xixinan

Dutch Signs in Xixinan

It’s a foggy morning in Xixinan Village 西溪南村, a village near Huangshan. I’m tired of sleepless nights with a 5-month old baby, but I equally want to take this opportunity to take some photos, so I’m outside the door at 06:30. Watertowns like this are usually crowded during the day, but deserted this early. Xinanxi […]
February 16, 2026