The book that blew my mind away

While doing the ritual pre-CNY cleaning, while cleaning my book shelf, there lies the most important book of my life. A book that has influenced me to this day, a book that has opened my mind. It is not even a famous book. It is a book about Einstein's Theory of Relativity, by Fujio Ishihara, a Japanese author that I don't know and translated by someone I don't know into Mandarin. Instead of pure formulae and complex calculations, the book chooses to focus more on the implications of the theory and presents them in an easy and accessible way. Imagine knowing the existence of Theory of Relativity at 11 years old. After reading this book, the 11 year-old me first felt my own insignificance in the vastness of the universe, my view of the world around expanded exponentially like the the Big Bang. This book made me wonder what was the true nature of time, space, and yeah, the ultimate question of all, the meaning of life. This book made me imagine that I was floating endlessly in the universe, in the empty void of the spaces between galaxies.

This is also the very first science-y book I bought. From there, I was just craving more and more content related to it, which led to more books about black holes, classical physics, quantum physics, etc.. I still remember vividly how I would save up my pocket money just to buy and read more about this kind of books. Although I don't really know the author of the book, I am forever thankful to him for writing this book.