Three years ago, I wanted to write a book. Over the years, I wrote more than a hundred thousand Chinese characters, on and off, but never really put them in order. I used to think I had to figure out a great many things before I could know how to write. Gradually, I realized that life may not work that way. Some things only become visible after we have lived through them; some questions do not need an answer right away. So I thought I would begin here.
I lived in Taiwan for more than twenty-five years. From college onward, I believed, quite naturally, that being rich meant you had made it. At twenty-five, I made my first NT$100 million, roughly US$3.2 million. In the years that followed, I made quite a bit more, and I also lost a very large amount. At first I thought those experiences had simply changed the way I understood money. Later I began to notice that the more interesting part was not the numbers themselves, but the self that rose and fell with them. When I gained, happiness arose. When I lost, pain was real. But if the money kept changing, and my feelings kept changing with it, who exactly was the “I” saying “I gained” and “I lost”?
Would getting into NTU make me somebody?
I was never especially good at school. I was often near the bottom of my class. In high school, my grades were usually in the bottom 10 percent, and one semester I came close to failing out. I made it through only because I passed the make-up exams. So the identity “I’m someone who gets great grades” was never really available to me. But I did wonder whether getting into National Taiwan University (NTU), widely regarded as Taiwan’s top university, would finally make me impressive.
So I actually put in the effort. I remember deleting all my social media apps and almost every game on my phone. By the end, about the only thing left to “play” was memorizing English vocabulary. And eventually, I really did get into NTU.
Once I got there, though, I quickly realized that studying was not nearly as interesting as I had imagined. I did not take academics very seriously at NTU. The day Kobe Bryant played the final game of his career, I happened to have either a midterm or a final. I do not even remember which. I skipped it. At the time, watching Kobe play one last game mattered much more to me than taking another school exam.
Over my years in college, I took roughly 190 credits. About 35 percent of my grades were Fs, another 50 percent were Cs, and my GPA hovered around 2.0 to 2.2. Looking back, there is something funny about that. I worked very hard to get into NTU, but once I was there, I did not care nearly as much about doing well at NTU. In my mind, being “the top student in my department at NTU” did not seem that much more impressive than simply being “an NTU student.” If being number one did not feel much more impressive, why spend so much time maintaining that identity?
My thinking really was that simple. Looking back now, I do not think I ever wanted grades for their own sake. I was searching for something that could make me feel like I was somebody. NTU had been one answer. Once I got there, I began to see another answer that looked even more direct: money.
What about money?
In college, I started studying how to make money. I discovered that Texas Hold’em seemed to offer a real opportunity, so I spent a great deal of time learning the game.
Interestingly, poker is a very practical game, and also a somewhat contradictory one. Over the long run, stronger players win money from weaker players. But if I went around telling everyone how good I was, players who were worse than me would naturally be less interested in playing with me. If I wanted to make money from poker, playing well was not enough. Ideally, other people also had to think I played badly.
That created an absurd situation. I spent enormous effort becoming better, yet once I sat down at the table, I wanted people to think I was terrible. I would even deliberately let some online accounts build up ugly-looking records so that I appeared easy to beat. The more someone believed they were better than me, the more willing they were to sit down and play.
So how was I supposed to introduce myself? Academically, I was near the bottom. In poker, I needed people to believe I was weak. After thinking it over, there seemed to be only one identity left that felt worth mentioning: I was an NTU student.
There was a contradiction here that I did not see at the time. I kept looking for something that would prove I was impressive, but every time I got one thing, I soon seemed to need the next. Eventually, money became the simplest answer. You did not have to explain your grades or convince anyone how well you played cards. A number could just sit there, and somehow it seemed to say everything.
At least, that was what I believed then.
And once I was actually rich?
I was very lucky. I made what felt like a huge amount of money while I was still very young. But I obviously could not walk around introducing myself by saying, “I’m rich.” Letting people know you have money usually buys you nothing and often creates new problems. So apart from a few very close friends who more or less knew I was already financially independent, almost no one knew how much I actually had. And because my assets themselves fluctuated so much, there were plenty of times when even I was not entirely sure.
So how was I supposed to explain who I was?
At that point, I did not have a career, I was not seriously pursuing school, and I did not have a job I could use as an introduction. The fact that best described my life, “I have a lot of money,” was also the one thing I could not comfortably say. So cars, travel, and expensive things gradually became another form of self-introduction. I did not have to say, “I’m rich.” They seemed able to say something on my behalf.
One year, I spent more than NT$4 million (about US$125,000) on travel alone, and more than NT$4 million on cars that same year. Over the next few years, I spent most of my time traveling and went to many places around the world. A lot of the life I had once imagined really did happen, one piece at a time. If I wanted to buy something, I could. If I wanted to go somewhere, I could go.
But after I had gone from place to place and bought thing after thing, the familiar question came back.
Then what?
I traveled the world. Then what?
Something still seemed to be missing.
Then I thought: right, I still had one very clear identity. I was Taiwanese. But around that time, I began to feel dissatisfied with that identity too. Taiwanese people did not seem visible or influential enough on the world stage. So I wondered whether changing nationality, or simply living somewhere else, might be better.
Looking back, the pattern is obvious. NTU was not enough, so I turned to money. Money was not something I could openly advertise, so I used lifestyle to express it. Once I became used to that too, I shifted my attention to nationality and where I lived. My business partner moved to another country. I left Taiwan and moved to the United Kingdom.
I have a very wealthy friend whose net worth is close to US$100 million. He immigrated to Canada, but after a few years he realized he was still not satisfied. He began thinking that once he got his passport, he might move back to Asia, or perhaps go to the United States. The interesting part is that before he left his original country, his thinking had been almost exactly the same: maybe the next place would be better.
Last year, my own net worth reached a peak. I started thinking that perhaps the UK was not the best place either. Maybe I should move to Monaco, Qatar, or Dubai, where at least the taxes are lower. Or perhaps to an island off the coast of West Africa, where at least the climate is closer to what I like.
The number of options kept growing, but the thought underneath them barely changed:
Maybe the next place will be better.
Something began to shift
At the end of 2025, my net worth went through the largest drop I had ever experienced. A market I was invested in fell 80 percent in about thirty minutes. Looking back, I am almost grateful I was not using leverage. Even a little leverage probably would have wiped me out completely.
By then I had already spent years watching my assets swing wildly. A fivefold gain in a year, or an 80 percent drop from the peak, was not unfamiliar to me. After you watch it long enough, you begin to go numb. The number goes up, and you feel good. The number goes down, and you feel bad. Then some time passes, and it all starts to feel ordinary.
I had even come up with an answer for myself a long time ago: I probably could not spend all this money in one lifetime anyway, so why overthink it? Eat whatever I want. Go wherever I want. Live comfortably and enjoy the rest of my life. What could be wrong with that?
There was nothing obviously wrong with the answer.
But in 2026, I began to notice that what unsettled me was no longer whether I had enough money. If the money really was enough, if I no longer had to work, if I had already been to most of the places I wanted to see and could afford the things I wanted to buy, then what?
I had always been able to give myself the next answer. Get into NTU. Make more money. See more of the world. Move to another country. Build a freer life. Each time, I believed that if I moved just a little farther ahead, something would finally feel more complete.
But as those things actually happened, one after another, I found I no longer knew where I was headed.
For the first time, I asked myself seriously: if one day all of this disappeared—the money, the identities, the experiences, the person other people thought I was—what would be left?
Or more directly:
If none of those things are me, then who am I?
What if I’m still missing something?
Of course, I could say that I simply have not had enough yet. I have never been to Antarctica. I have never bought a Lamborghini. I have never had $100 million, $1 billion, or some even larger number. If that is true, how could I be sure that more money is not what I really want?
That argument is not wrong.
But slowly I began to see that if I kept following that question, it would never produce an answer. No matter how much you get, there is always something you have not gotten. If you have never been to Antarctica, you can go to Antarctica. Once you have been there, there is still the Moon, and even Mars. Money works the same way. After $100 million comes $1 billion, and after a billion there can always be more. When I was a kid, Bill Gates was practically synonymous with “the richest person in the world.” Later I realized that even the person in that position keeps changing.
The list seems endless.
The world can always be a little bigger. Life can always be a little better. The number can always be a little higher. If the answer is still “what’s next,” then “what’s next” never disappears.
So the question I eventually became curious about was no longer:
What am I still missing?
It became:
Who is this “I” that always feels something is missing?
For now, I leave the question here.