Chapter 7
Edward Quan ·
Not just for technical work. She began consulting me about purchasing, sales, and distribution.
One day, after a little liquor, she caught my hand.
“When I get the operating contract for this factory, be my deputy.”
I smiled. “You’re talking drunk.”
“No.”
Her eyes shone.
“Do you believe this place could become something big?”
“Yes.”
Of course I did.
She’d done it before.
The third thing mattered most.
I met someone.
In the summer of 1981, I went to the provincial capital for stock.
In a corner of the wholesale market, a young man crouched on the ground, eyes red.
Boxes of fountain pens lay scattered beside him.
“What happened?” I asked, crouching too.
He looked up.
His face was dusty, but his features were handsome.
“I was cheated.”
He sniffed.
“Spent every bit of my savings on pens. Opened the boxes, and more than half were broken.”
I picked one up.
The nib was bent. Not ruined—deformed by pressure in transit.
“These can be fixed.”
“What?”
“Just bent nibs. Straighten them with pliers, and they’ll work.”
He stared.
“You can do that?”
“Yes. I’ll fix all of them. No charge.”
His eyes widened.
“Why help me?”
I thought for a moment.
“I’ve been cheated too.”
A lie.
I simply wanted to help.
I couldn’t quite say why.
Perhaps his openly wounded expression reminded me of something.
Not Song Yao.
Song Yao had never looked like that before me.
His tears had been for somebody else.
This man was different.
Every bit of hurt was written on his face. Nothing hidden.
Real.
That was the word.
Crouched on the market’s concrete floor, I spent two hours straightening the nibs of more than two hundred pens.
He watched beside me. After a while, his eyes stopped being red.
“You’re good with your hands.”
“It’s how I earn my living.”
“What’s your name?”
“Xu Heng. Yours?”
“Lin Shu.”
I hadn’t known that name in my first life.
That summer of 1981, I’d been lying paralyzed in hospital, two crushed vertebrae, doctors saying I’d never stand again.
I’d missed him then.
Not now.
Lin Shu came from the provincial capital. His mother was a university professor. His family was comfortably off.
But he couldn’t sit still.
When university entrance examinations resumed in 1978, he’d passed and studied Chinese literature. Two years in, he found it insufficiently exciting and went into small-scale trading.
Pens first. Then stationery. Later, book distribution.
He was bold and quick-minded, but inexperienced. He often got the worst of a deal.
We began keeping in touch.
Whenever I went to buy stock, I visited him.
At first, to help.
Then, out of habit.
He talked. I listened.
He hurried. I took my time.
He decided by instinct. I did the accounts.
Very different.
Very well matched.
One day, he asked, “How do you know everything, Xu Heng? Bicycle parts, sewing machines—even fountain pens.”
“I’ve lived a long time.”
“You’re twenty-nine. How long could you have lived?”
I smiled.
Twenty-nine, plus fifty years of memories.
Long enough.
I couldn’t tell him that.
In 1982, Fang Zhiguo took over the machinery factory under an operating contract.
As before—but six months earlier.
I’d solved several critical technical problems, giving her superiors more confidence.
Once the contract was settled, she came to me first.
“Deputy director?”
“Yes. One condition.”
“Name it.”
“We change the product line. Farm tools to bicycle components. Later, motorcycle parts.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“How do you know there’ll be a market for motorcycle parts? The roads are full of bicycles. How many motorcycles are there?”
“Not many now doesn’t mean not many later.”
She stared at me.
“You…”
Then she nodded.
“All right. Tell me how. I’ll listen.”
We shook hands.
Last time, she’d needed two years of trial and error to find that direction.
I’d saved her two years.
In that era, two years were worth a great deal.
The first batch of bicycle chains left the factory in autumn 1982.
High quality. Low cost.
Demand outstripped supply immediately.
At year’s end, profit had tripled.
Fang Zhiguo slapped her office desk three times with delight.