It is still far too early to pop the champagne, but my stock account is undeniably in a better place than it was during the hardest months of June and July. I hope I can manage to make at least some profit in September.…
Hello.
I’m Liu Xiyang. My family roots are in Honghu, Hubei. I grew up in Guangzhou and lived there until I finished high school at 18 (1999-2017). I later came to Japan to study, moving through language school, undergraduate study, and graduate school, and earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in business administration. I now live in Setagaya, Tokyo, and have been in Japan for 9 years (2017-2026).
Film, photography and video, and fiction are all interests of mine. I also dream of directing, working behind a camera, and writing, though unfortunately I have no particular talent for any of them. Basketball is the sport I love most, but I have not touched a ball since finishing high school; these days I settle for a few light workouts each week. In recent years I have entered the financial markets and become deeply interested, but the returns have been bleak and I have yet to turn a profit. In short: my interests are broad, I’m willing to study things, and I’m probably fun to talk to, but I have mastered none of them and achieved nothing.
Welcome to my small corner of the web. It holds a few ideas that have made it into the world. If any of them makes you smile, all the better.
Now
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I seem to be going through one of the more uncertain periods of my life. Nolan’s The Odyssey has been everywhere lately, and a lot of people have been talking about and sharing stories of their own “Odyssey periods.”
To hope that I can simply make it through mine smoothly would probably be a luxury, so I am not going to wish myself an easy journey.
Thinking about uncertainty also brought Wang Yangming’s enlightenment at Longchang to mind. I used to understand the episode as the moment when he finally thought things through and came to believe that “heavenly principle is itself human desire,” rather than continuing to blindly pursue the idea of “preserving heavenly principle and extinguishing human desire.”
Recently, however, I came across another interpretation. According to it, what changed at Longchang was that Wang Yangming began to face his present self as he was. He stopped placing the motivation to live in his expectations for the future and started looking instead at the reality in front of him. If there is a road, walk it. If there is an obstacle on the road, get over it.
In a way, this feels like an accidental meeting of East and West. Odysseus could neither predict nor prepare for the hardships that awaited him on his journey home. Wang Yangming’s life at Longchang did not improve after his enlightenment either; if anything, some parts of it may even have become worse.
And if I were to end this by saying that Odysseus eventually made it home and Wang Yangming ultimately became one of history’s great sages, that would probably be another form of “marking the boat to look for the lost sword.” I would still be trapped in the same future-oriented fantasy: enduring the present for the sake of some happier life that is supposed to arrive later.
So if there is one ending that can belong equally to those who succeed and those who fail, to the great and the ordinary, to those who reach their destination and those who fall somewhere along the way, perhaps it is this:
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Xichuan Technology
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Our eyes may be the best sensors in the world, but memory is a poor recording device.
That is why we need cameras, to preserve the best moments as they happen.
WeChat Mini Programs
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Travel Cost Split Calculator
A WeChat Mini Program for splitting trip and meal expenses by each member’s payments or by individual expense items. It supports individual and grouped calculations, then returns the average cost and a simple transfer path.
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GTO Preflop Poker
A WeChat Mini Program for studying Texas Hold’em strategy, with basic rules, GTO lessons, cash-game and tournament simulations, and a real-time calculator.
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Taibu
Zhouyi divination × Bazi—ask the hexagram about small things, and yourself about big ones
底牌
资产盘点 × 决策推演——把牌摊开,再决定怎么打
微信 AI 助手
A personal AI assistant that runs alongside the Windows WeChat client. It reads direct messages and explicit group-chat mentions, routes each question to the appropriate LLM, and can invoke Web Search, market data, and other Skills before sending the generated answer back through the desktop client.
Quant Command Center
A locally deployed, multi-market set of panels covering Japanese, U.S. and mainland Chinese equities, foreign exchange and CFDs. Prices come through multiple sources, indicators are calculated on my machine, and trading discipline stays visible on the interface. Whether a number is delayed intraday data or a completed close is stated plainly. It neither predicts the market nor places orders for me. Its job is to put the relevant facts in front of me before I decide.
Japan Goods Decision Chain
From finding underpriced listings online, to deciding what to pay in a shop, to recording the final sale—a personal toolchain covering the full cycle of buying and selling second-hand goods in Japan. The radar continually scans completed and active Yahoo! Auctions listings, builds a transaction-price range for each model, separates it by condition, and sends an alert when something is clearly below market. The shop side manages routes and on-site notes, puts an item’s market position in front of me while I am standing there, and records the purchase on the spot. The sales side keeps the physical-item record, photographs and copy in three languages, plus every transaction from purchase to close; cost, actual proceeds and profit are calculated line by line.
Contact
If you would like to talk about something you found here, email is the simplest way to reach me.
[email protected]
Douyin: 夕颜辉
Handle: dyctvecep1sf