Chapter 8: What Audacity

But at dawn the next morning, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, Wei Dong went back to that free market. He’d spent the previous afternoon wandering about again, even poking around with Gou Dan after dinner near the hospital, but found no other venues for such semi-black market trading. People claimed such business could only be done at some of the rural markets on the outskirts. But that was exactly how Wei Dong had been caught in his previous life. He’d reflected on it countless times since then: besides the crackdown on speculation and profiteering in those years, targeting such markets was also about protecting the state-run supply and marketing cooperatives. By selling in large quantities at those fairs, he’d threatened their business, so of course they called in the authorities.

Only these spontaneously formed underground markets were relatively safe. To guard against those streetwise ruffians, Wei Dong even disguised himself a bit. He bought some cheap shirts for a buck and twenty cents each at the clothing wholesale market on the dock—one for Gou Dan, one for his mother, and one for his bedridden father. He put one on, wrapped his head in a towel, smeared some wall dust and mud on his face, loaded sixty pounds of cured pork into a basket, and set off. Head bowed and eyes lowered, he carried the basket stuffed with dirty laundry and newspapers, squatted at a corner roadside of the lively dockside market, and started pulling out the meat for sale. Within half an hour, everything was sold out!

He even made it back in time to see his father wheeled into surgery.

At last, he got an explanation—he’d noticed that most of the wholesale markets in the dock area were closed in the previous days because they only operated in the early morning, catering to vendors who needed to catch the earliest bus or boat back to open their shops. Street vendors had already begun to take risks selling clothes, cookware, and other wares. The oversupply of industrial goods in Jiangzhou City had trickled into the market, and if you had the guts, you could make good money selling them. The closer you were to the big city, the lower the risk of being caught. By the afternoon, most of the stalls and shops were shuttered, and only loafers and petty crooks lingered. But in the early morning, the place was packed to the rafters; those lowlifes were too busy with their own deals to bother with ordinary passersby.

Sitting outside the operating room, Wei Dong quietly shared his business plan with his mother: “No rush. I’ll make a run every few days—if need be, I’ll bring Gou Dan. We make five or six hundred for a hundred pounds of meat. Once Dad’s health is restored, the whole family can do this together and, sooner or later, we’ll make our fortune.”

He held in his hands more than seven hundred yuan, a thick wad that left his countrywoman mother stunned. “This… This isn’t illegal, is it? We’re not supposed to be profiteering, right?”

Wei Dong slipped the money into his pocket and admitted, “It’s a bit risky. If we get caught, we could end up in jail. That’s why I wouldn’t dare let Gou Dan and the kids all come with me—what if I got someone else into trouble? But… in a couple of years, things should be fine. For now, we’ll save up, do some business, and the family will be better off.”

At this point, that was as far as Wei Dong could see. Daring to break free from the peasant’s lot, risking speculative trades between city and countryside, he was already ahead of nearly everyone else. As long as he didn’t get caught, becoming a “ten-thousand-yuan household” was within reach. He wasn’t greedy for more.

Perhaps chasing after the tycoons’ wild ventures wouldn’t be as stable as quietly selling cured pork. He remembered the most legendary feat of the greatest tycoon—after serving twenty years in prison, everyone thought he was broke, but it turned out he still owned over two hundred apartments in the capital! Neighbors and former colleagues gossiped endlessly about those two hundred apartments, but what struck Wei Dong, sitting quietly in the corner, was those twenty years behind bars.

They hadn’t been to prison—they didn’t know that pain.

So Wei Dong felt a natural contentment with modest wealth. Being lucky enough to pull his father back from the edge of disability, he was already deeply grateful.

Of course, when he looked down at his hands, he still couldn’t let go of that third great pitfall in his life…

Just then, the surgery ended.

The chief surgeon came out, exhausted. “The operation was likely successful. The key is how his spinal nerves react once the anesthesia wears off, and he’ll need to rest in the hospital for a while. Only after his lumbar injury heals can he move again.”

Many working-class patients rushed back to work and ended up with lasting ailments.

Wei Dong wasn’t worried at all. He thanked the staff profusely, and helped the nurse return his anesthetized father to the ward.

Gou Dan, who’d been waiting by the door, rushed to help move him onto the bed.

Wei Dong had already made up his mind: “Mom, you’ll stay here to care for Dad. We’ll go back and return in a few days. This way, we won’t get too tired. Here, let me show you how to buy meals outside.”

But his mother, watching on, still felt for her son and Gou Dan who’d risked so much for the money. “If only there were a stove here, I could cook for myself.”

Back then, state-run institutions—even hospitals—lacked any notion of patient service; family members brought food for the sick. For city dwellers, this was manageable, but patients from out of town had to fend for themselves. It was said the military hospital had a canteen, but you needed ration coupons.

Wei Dong, almost instinctively, said, “Then let’s rent a room!”

In later years, families seeking treatment from out of town did just that—it was much cheaper than staying in a hotel.

Though rare, it wasn’t unheard of. Food stall owners and fruit vendors, all outsiders, rented rooms in local homes. Following someone’s lead, Wei Dong managed to rent a utility room in a nearby residential building. With a coal stove, they could cook and make soup, and his mother—who would otherwise have had to sleep on a hospital chair—could finally rest properly.

Now, Wei Dong was developing the mindset of spending a little for his parents’ comfort. Besides, it was hardly any money—just fifteen yuan a month!

So he let his mother rest, while he and Gou Dan cared for his father as he came to after surgery.

At first, Old Wei couldn’t feel much in his limbs. Wei Dong told him not to worry, and the two young men worked hard to massage his legs.

They nearly made him leap out of bed in pain!

“My bones are broken in several places!”

Wei Dong, quite skilled at massage, grinned and said, “Good! If you can feel pain, that’s good.” But he stopped Gou Dan from continuing—this guy, who ate meat at every meal yet never did any work, was so eager to help that he filled every hot water flask on the ward.

The next morning, before dawn, the two of them carried over the remaining seventy or eighty pounds of cured pork. Gou Dan squatted by the back wall, basket in hand, ready to bolt down an alley if something went wrong. Wei Dong sold the meat in small quantities along the roadside, ready to grab and run at a moment’s notice.

Once again, everything sold with ease.

One canteen buyer even took forty pounds at five yuan per pound, paying twenty pounds’ worth with national ration coupons—an extremely precious commodity.

The buyer pointed him toward the factory district across the river, saying he could deliver directly there next time, and that those factories would buy as much as he could bring.

Helping load the ferry, Wei Dong felt he’d found a reliable channel and carefully stashed away his cash and coupons. With the bewildered Gou Dan in tow, he bought some trendy goods at the now-quiet wholesale market, filling both their baskets and a new backpack. He also picked up some staple foods, meat, and vegetables for the hospital, left his mother with some money and ration coupons, and helped tend and massage his father until evening before they finally boarded the passenger boat back to Shangzhou.

Before leaving, Wei Dong bought two yuan’s worth of marinated meat and dishes outside the hospital, as well as a bottle of white liquor for fifty cents.

Gou Dan was overjoyed, sniffing around him like a dog.

They found a sheltered corner on the ship’s deck, laid out a mat, and happily tucked in.

Wei Dong just tasted a bit, letting Gou Dan feast and drink—he couldn’t afford to let his guard down even for a moment. After all, he had six hundred yuan strapped to each thigh!

Twelve hundred yuan in 1983—its buying power would be equivalent to seventy or eighty thousand four decades later… no, in Wei Dong’s memory, in a few years one could buy half a house near the tax bureau compound with that sum! A traditional brick house with its own foundation, no less!

Suddenly, he realized something.

Small business, slow and steady profit, and then, in a few years, when things opened up, buying those old street houses—waiting for redevelopment, demolition, or renovation—would eventually turn thousands into tens or even hundreds of thousands.

He knew which houses around the tax bureau compound had been rebuilt over the years.

He wanted to think this over more, but Gou Dan kept interrupting. With food and drink before him, and the excitement of seeing the provincial capital in summer, he chattered away, gesticulating wildly, describing the wonders he’d seen—the big cars with two “braids” sticking up, the things hanging outside shops that looked like two steamed buns.

Normally, three sticks wouldn’t get a word out of him, but now he drank half a bottle of white liquor over several hours, talking non-stop. He even saved half a parcel of meat wrapped in lotus leaves to take home to his parents.

Leaning in a corner by the anchor chains, Wei Dong watched his silly, happy friend and felt content himself.

Of course, he kept his legs pressed together at all times, sitting sideways like a woman.

At dawn the next day, they arrived in Shangzhou. Wei Dong finally took Gou Dan to the tax bureau compound.

After all, he’d lived there for forty years without moving, and even though “nothing was as it used to be,” that didn’t stop him—backpack slung over his shoulder—from finding the place exactly.

But there wasn’t much to see at the tax bureau compound. Over forty years, all the “colleagues” had come and gone, the tax office, dormitory, and service hall had been rebuilt several times.

Wei Dong walked along the street, surveying the construction site—it looked exactly as it had when he’d been released from prison and started working as a laborer.

He turned his attention to a storefront called “Wan Shang Trading Company.”

From the provincial capital to the prefectural city, down to county towns and rural markets, even over the next forty years, Wei Dong had never seen a shop like this.

He almost wanted to exclaim, “You’ve got guts!”