About
The 25th Frame
I’m zhouyang.
Thirteen years. Three companies. Microsoft. Google. NVIDIA. Free cafeterias, laundry rooms you never used, and a salary that made your parents proud. Every morning I’d walk into a glass tower, open a laptop, and build things that millions of people would use without ever knowing my name.
And every evening I’d walk out thinking: is this it?
Then I quit. No dramatic exit — just a clean break. If you’ve seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, you’ll remember the 25th negative. The frame photographer Sean O’Connell called “the quintessence of life.” The one worth chasing.
This blog is my 25th frame.
Why I write
I grew up in Shanghai. Shanghainese food, Hangzhou tea, the sharp bite of baijiu at family gatherings — these aren’t hobbies. They’re the soil I grew out of.
After a decade in Silicon Valley and Seattle, I noticed something that bothered me. The English-language web is full of articles about China, but almost none of them feel true. They’re written by outsiders looking in. They tell you China is a market. A competitor. A geopolitical story.
They never tell you what a bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles tastes like at 7am in Gansu, steam rising into air so cold your fingers go numb. They don’t tell you why a farmer-turned-distiller in Guizhou spends forty years perfecting a single baijiu recipe he’ll never sell outside his village. They don’t tell you why the first sip of Longjing every spring makes a Hangzhou local stop talking mid-sentence and close their eyes.
I want to fix that.
For my Chinese friends: I’m sharing everything I learned inside those glass towers — AI, programming, indie hacking, building things from scratch. In Chinese. No jargon. Just the stuff that actually works.
For readers everywhere else: I’m documenting three corners of Chinese culture that can’t be explained in a think-tank report. The food. The tea. The baijiu. One dish, one pot, one pour at a time.
What you’ll find here
| Section | What it is | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Tech | AI, programming, indie hacking — real experience from real projects | Chinese developers |
| Chinese Cuisine | 109 iconic dishes, in English, with photos | Anyone who eats |
| Chinese Tea | Six tea types, a thousand mountains, the rituals in between | The curious |
| Baijiu | The world’s most consumed spirit, four aromas, stories in every cup | The adventurous |
Four topics. One thread: things worth sharing.
The big-three badge
I mention Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA because they’re part of the story. I saw how the best engineering organizations in the world build things. Some of that knowledge is worth passing on. That’s it. No flex.
From Shanghai, still chasing the 25th frame. Still hungry — for knowledge, for stories, and for that perfect bowl of noodles.
Contact: zhouyangimt@foxmail.com