Chapter 12: I Dare to Do Extraordinary Business

Because September had arrived, students were back in class and teachers at work.

Wei Dong was moved to the street across from the Tax Bureau compound to "pick up odd jobs." Every day, he watched as Shi Linyan, delicate and graceful, donned her sunhat and headed to school. He kept a distance of over a hundred meters, following from afar.

He continued to observe the astonishingly high rate of heads turning in her wake, trying to spot if any gaze among them was particularly unusual.

It wasn’t difficult; Shi Linyan’s wardrobe, with a new dress every week, was so eye-catching that she stood out both at school and on the streets.

Because of this, Wei Dong was also forced to change his outfit every day!

Of course, having lived in the city’s rented apartment for over half a month, the few undershirts and vests he’d brought from the provincial capital had been washed so often they were wrinkled and faded, blending into the background.

No one noticed the porter standing a hundred meters or so away.

So, sometimes he wore his headscarf, sometimes not. He sat by the middle school gate, feigning to "look for work," no longer bothering to attend lectures at the trading company across the street.

If anyone did call for a porter, he’d rub his legs and arms, complaining of exhaustion, and relocate to the shade of another tree to keep his vigil on the school gate.

Not a second was missed.

Only after escorting the new English teacher home at the end of the school day would he hurriedly grab a quick bowl of noodles and return to his post.

If she left after six in the evening, it meant she was heading to her night class, and he’d follow her all the way until nine when she returned home.

Only on evenings when, after waiting until seven, Shi Linyan still hadn’t appeared, would he aimlessly wander over to the trading company to "watch TV."

Soon, a clear routine emerged: Shi Linyan had night classes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; the rest of the time, she stayed within the Tax Bureau compound.

But oddly, her only day off—Sunday—was the busiest of all. She flitted about like a butterfly: bookstore, department store, library, youth center, attending classes, serving as a counselor, leading clubs.

Wei Dong nearly got a cramp in his legs trying to keep up from morning till night!

It puzzled him—hadn’t this woman, until marriage, childbirth, and old age, been known for never leaving the house? Now she was sprightlier than Er Feng? It made no sense!

And so two more weeks slipped by, his anxiety mounting.

Wei Dong kept recalculating: he’d been arrested in late June, spent July and August in jail, and had only been released these few days in mid-September.

Ashamed to return home, he’d wandered the streets until he stumbled upon work at the Tax Bureau construction site. Many details had grown hazy—why hadn’t he noticed the trading company before?

Every night, the 14-inch black-and-white TV would play the news, drawing a crowd of dozens or even a hundred. If he’d passed by and seen that TV, surely he would have remembered...

Lost in thought, he suddenly noticed an unusual number of people at both ends of the street!

Unlike everyone else, glued hungrily to the TV, Wei Dong was only there to pass time and observe the big shots. So he immediately spotted, among the cluster of white uniforms, the newly reassigned Deputy Director, along with several plainclothes men sporting red armbands.

The net was closing in!

Wei Dong instantly realized this was a police dragnet—blocking both ends of the street to trap their targets.

He quickly grabbed a stone from the ground and hurled it a few meters ahead, hitting Big Shot square on the head.

Every day, all the trading company employees were required to watch the news together, taking notes and holding committee meetings, supposedly as their main theoretical support in resisting the outdated market management.

Central policies had repeatedly urged economic reform and liberalization, but here in this remote backwater, the local authorities remained stubbornly dense.

Thud—the stone hit its mark.

Yu Qili, aged forty-two and, unusually for a native of eastern Sichuan, nearly six feet tall with a slicked-back mane, looked clever at a glance.

Wei Dong’s aim was true.

With a yelp, Yu Qili leapt up and spun around, immediately spotting the youth with the carrying frame by the brick pillar, and likely catching sight, too, of the figures drawing closer from either side.

The police moved at a measured pace. This old stone-paved street, closed to vehicles, was lined with brick houses wall to wall; once both ends were blocked, there was no escape.

The commotion drew the attention of the Deputy Director and the other white uniforms, who turned away from the trading company’s gate and headed straight for Yu Qili.

Wei Dong instinctively tried to hide behind the brick pillar, silently warning Yu Qili that if he kept a low profile, he might just slip into the back rooms unnoticed.

But now—too late.

Wei Dong finally understood why Yu Qili hadn’t left an impression: he himself had only started working as a porter after Yu Qili had already been taken away.

History had changed not one bit, despite his earlier warning in the public restroom.

Some people simply wouldn’t listen.

Yu Qili was certainly an extraordinary character. He didn’t try to hide; instead, he loudly confronted them: “Which department are you from? What do you want?!”

But only Wei Dong, crouched behind the pillar, could see that, in the dark alley illuminated only by the TV’s glow, just before the flashlight beams reached him, Yu Qili slipped a notebook behind his back and tossed it into the carrying frame.

Then, facing the encircling flashlights, he began shouting, “I protest your illegal actions...”

Wei Dong could only swear silently. Stubborn as a mule.

He watched, dumbfounded, as over a hundred people were mobilized for this operation, with badges and even guns on display!

They slapped on the handcuffs and dragged the man away. The Deputy Director tallied everyone present, making sure no one from the trading company slipped through—not even the two female clerks.

Only the man with the droopy mustache put up a struggle when being cuffed, but after a few whispered words, he obediently submitted.

Having been arrested before—though never in a raid of this scale—Wei Dong was so shaken he could barely speak.

But it was precisely this normal reaction that saved him; every suspicious gaze swept past, no one bothered to check the headscarf he’d left in the carrying frame.

He was dismissed with the crowd of bystanders, watching as the once-thriving trading company had its doors and windows sealed and locked, the storerooms packed to the brim.

Thank goodness the pigs and sheep were taken elsewhere each night; otherwise, who knew if they’d have been sealed inside as well.

Wei Dong, trembling all over, returned to his rented room, haunted by a sense of narrow escape.

Had he taken any initiative to involve himself with the trading company—running errands, trying to be clever—he’d have been arrested that night, no doubt!

Those who have never been to prison can never truly grasp the power of the iron fist of authority.

Wei Dong drew a hard line within himself: from now on, he would never break the law again.

No matter how indignant or sympathetic he might feel, no more passing messages or hiding notebooks...

Already in bed, he suddenly remembered the notebook.

He got up, retrieved it from the carrying frame, and listened carefully at the door.

He wrapped the room’s lone lightbulb with newspaper before daring to turn it on and flip through the notebook—just as one would furtively read illicit novels or listen to foreign broadcasts in those days, when such acts could bring arrest.

The blue plastic cover bore a gold-embossed sailboat, so worn it was nearly smooth. But on the title page, the forceful calligraphy of "Investigation leads to knowledge, sincerity corrects the heart" and "Cultivate oneself, govern the family, order the state, bring peace to the world" spoke volumes of its owner.

Wei Dong thought only a middle-schooler would be so pretentious, and quickly leafed through the pages.

The first half was filled with dense notes—"Joint ventures in agriculture, industry, and commerce are the right path to commoditizing and socializing the economy..."—all reminiscent of political science exams, or news broadcasts. He flipped past them impatiently.

Page after page, line after line, slogans of "The spring breeze of reform sweeps the land, all the people strive together" filled the book.

Wei Dong yawned, bored by the officialese, and turned to the back.

On the last page, a single line caught his eye: "We must enable the Chinese people to enjoy world-class products as well."

The words flashed by, but were enough to make Wei Dong turn back.

The remaining pages were filled with contact details—names of organizations, addresses, bank accounts, phone numbers, telegram codes—but his gaze kept returning to that one sentence.

He felt a sudden respect.

This was 1983. Forty years later, Chinese people would not only enjoy world-class products, but manufacture them, too.

Back then, few had even seen what "world-class" looked like.

Yet here was someone with the resolve and vision to pursue it.

Perhaps that was what they called "having a broad perspective."

An ordinary man like Wei Dong could only admire such ambition.

But that wasn’t his path. He mulled it over briefly, then focused on the list of addresses.

Nearly every entry had a note—(supplier) electric welding cables, (needed) steel, large quantities of steel...

A bewildering array of supply and demand information, hundreds of pages and thousands of entries!

Wei Dong felt like he was leafing through a martial arts manual as he read late into the night, finally finding an entry for (needed) titanium-copper bimetallic composite plates!

The next day, after "escorting" Shi Linyan to school, he went to the post and telecommunications office diagonally opposite the middle school to make a long-distance call, inquiring about the exact specifications needed by a non-ferrous metal components factory in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Wei Dong had made a dozen or so trips to sell cured meats to factories across the river from the provincial capital, passing a non-ferrous metal processing plant each time.

It had no name or phone number, just a mailbox—rumored to be the storefront for a third-line defense plant hidden in a nearby mountain air-raid shelter, now so impoverished they’d take any job for cash.

Behind the deserted counter lay a few cold-rolled seamless titanium tubes.

Was this the titanium they needed?