Chapter 58: My School of Life

Unless absolutely necessary, Wei Dong would never choose to sell his goods through those traditional sales channels at the department stores. Besides, the mainstream department stores barely acknowledged him, seeing him as a country bumpkin, and instinctively assumed that those legendary figures of the reform era, rising among a crowd of competitors, had nothing to do with him. Lacking connections and influence, he was certain he’d never stand a chance in those conventional arenas.

That’s why he naturally gravitated toward an unconventional approach. In fact, it was much closer to the influencer strategies that would be popular forty years later. You had to go where the crowds gathered if you wanted twice the result for half the effort—and only by finding a spot nobody else had noticed could you really rake in the profits.

So as he wandered around the city center of Pingjing, what caught Wei Dong’s eye was completely different from what caught the attention of people like Gou Dan. The oil merchant had stubbornly followed him all the way to Pingjing, now too intimidated to utter a word, wrapped in his greasy army coat as he guarded the big truck. Wei Dong simply treated him as a security guard, which worked out well—his brothers could wander around the square and city tower, taking photos, and the reporters snapped plenty of pictures of them as well.

In the end, they returned to the newspaper office somewhat disappointed, finding a random guesthouse nearby to sleep in, since the newspaper didn’t care about food or lodging. They decided to head back to Shuchuan the next day.

But the young men who took turns sleeping in the truck to watch over their belongings woke early the next morning to an unexpected situation: “The gatekeeper won’t let us go. He says the leader has a new task for Brother Dong,” one reported.

Wei Dong cursed under his breath, slipped on his shoes, and trudged the few hundred meters back. After decades as a security guard in a government compound, he was used to brushing off official slogans—interviews were just for show, and making money was what really mattered. It was like being about to get off work, only to be handed another assignment. Of course he was annoyed.

Sure enough, the message was to head over to University Avenue to participate in a symposium with students from several of Pingjing’s universities. The old security guard of forty years was fuming inside, though he kept a polite smile on his face and, as always, brought along ten cameras for the event. What else could he do?

He told Gou Dan to stay behind with the oil merchant and guard the truck until he returned. The two young men, carrying cameras and breakfast, eagerly followed Brother Dong, wide-eyed with wonder as they entered the university campus.

The atmosphere among the students was entirely different from what he’d experienced at previous symposia. Wei Dong, who in two lifetimes had never set foot in a university, had spent the past few days giving away cameras—ten a day, like tossing buns to dogs—as gifts. In front of the business and cultural elites gathered for the reform symposiums in Pingjing, a thirty-yuan camera was little more than a toy, accepted with an air of condescension, destined to be forgotten in some corner. Back at West Lake, he’d dared to throw out a hundred cameras because he knew that for every hundred he gave away, hundreds or thousands more would be sold.

But now, he knew it was pointless, yet still had to hand them out under the enthusiastic endorsement of the Sunlight Daily. Of course he was unhappy—every hundred or two hundred yuan represented countless hours of sweat and hard-earned sales of preserved meat.

Yet as the host introduced him at the university symposium—“This is Comrade Wei Dong, a leading young figure in economic reform who has successfully helped a military factory transition to camera production, with monthly sales exceeding ten thousand units”—the hall erupted in thunderous applause, the energy and excitement in the air almost palpable. Most of the reform pioneers who had come to Pingjing were in their thirties or forties, some even in their fifties or sixties, passionately recounting how they had led their factories or offices into a new era, but it all felt rather distant.

Not even Wei Dong’s disheveled hair could hide his youthful vigor. Unlike everyone else, who wore formal Zhongshan suits, the occasional rare Western suit, or at the very least, crisp blue or green military uniforms, he sat in a padded jacket, looking like a wildcat among them. Naturally, the university students were curious about this peer among the reformers.

There were no grand conference centers in those days—just an ordinary university lecture hall, packed to the brim. Three to five hundred seats were filled, with crowds standing in the aisles and doorways, all eyes bright with curiosity and anticipation. Pingjing was a place where, every day, people from all walks of life and countless talents came and went to exchange ideas. The newspaper could have slotted Wei Dong into any number of similar events, and there were no strict rules or controls—so long as he stuck to the topics already prepared for the press, he would be fine. The years since the beginning of reform had ushered in an era of unprecedented openness; in short, there were no established rules or precedents.

Watching the old hands at these events, either slouching through the motions or pretending to take notes, Wei Dong was lazier than any of them—why bother making an effort? But this was something new, something fresh. Rising from behind a makeshift row of desks, he bowed and greeted them: “Hello, everyone. I’m Wei Dong…”

A new round of enthusiastic applause and cheers broke out. His standard Mandarin was impeccable.

This, a detail he’d always taken for granted, turned out to be a hidden strength. At that time, everyone still spoke with thick regional accents—there hadn’t yet been the repeated exposure to television, computers, or social media to standardize speech across the country. The contrast with his messy clothes made it all the more striking.

The students had no inhibitions. “How old are you?” someone called out.

“Which university are you from?” another asked.

This was a symposium, not an awards ceremony—no need for formal speeches. So Wei Dong sat down and, speaking into the microphone wrapped in red cloth, introduced himself: “Last June, after the college entrance exam, I should have been just like you, waiting for my acceptance letter, ready to start university. But my father…”

The room, which had been lively a moment before, fell instantly silent at the mention of his father’s accident. All attention focused on him, a collective sigh of sympathy rising from the female students.

This was how it should be. At previous events, people had sipped tea and knitted while he spoke, so he’d just said a few words and wrapped up. “We come from all over the country. I wonder if anyone here is from Shuchuan, or East Sichuan. Where I’m from is a typical impoverished area, isolated, lagging behind in thinking, with the winds of reform barely making it over the Kui Gate into the Sichuan basin. If you dared to do a little side business, it was still considered illegal speculation…”

The other reform pioneers present, all meeting for the first time, listened attentively. One of the older men chimed in, “It was the same for us a couple of years ago—worse still before that, the old SRB influence lingering.”

Wei Dong didn’t dwell on the past: “But it was precisely because I took my father to Jiangzhou for surgery that I encountered the spring breeze of reform that had blown into the planned cities. It opened my eyes. I had a high school education, I was strong, and I had an urgent drive to succeed. Since I missed the path to higher education, I focused on bringing a better life to my family. With my friends, I sold local products all over this industrial city and came into contact with many factories in transition. That’s when something interesting happened—even though all were factories, their situations were worlds apart…”

To say the hall was silent would be an understatement—you could hear a pin drop. No one knew how much sweat it had taken to sell those local goods, but to be able to observe and find interest in the various factories while doing so was an extraordinary perspective.

The journalists and officials from the newspaper nodded quietly to one another, snapping photos. In truth, Wei Dong was simply observing as someone with the hindsight of a later era: “Cigarette factories, paper mills, and shoe factories—those closely tied to people’s daily lives—were doing quite well. Engine factories, textile mills, and dye works were a bit worse off. But military factories, third-line construction plants, and chemical factories were on the verge of shutting down. Why was that?”

At other symposiums, no one would have paid attention to such questions, but the students’ eyes were full of thought, eager to get to the bottom of things. “Yes! Why is that?” someone called.

“We have the same situation in our area!”

“I think our chemical factory’s doing alright, isn’t it?”

“Let’s not interrupt—Comrade Wei is talking about the overall situation…”

Wei Dong nodded. “Yes, I’m only speaking in general terms. The closer a product is to daily life, the more likely it is to survive. The further removed from ordinary life, the harder it is. This is all about adapting to the market. Before the reforms, the state handled all purchasing and distribution—the government supplied raw materials, took away the finished products, and everyone was guaranteed a job and a meal. Now, suddenly, every factory has to source raw materials and sell products themselves, and most simply can’t do it. For example, say your factory used to produce aluminum alloy parts for satellites and aerospace. Now you’re told to go sell them yourselves. What would you do?”

A country boy who’d never attended university was now posing a question to the students.

At that moment, Wei Dong found it amusing—and privately triumphant. Even without a university degree, here he was, seizing the golden opportunity of the era. There was, too, an unconscious urge to share, the same impulse people would have decades later to post on social media, to show off a little.

After all, he had made over a hundred thousand yuan in the past six months but couldn’t talk about it—now, at last, here was a chance to present it openly, to show that every bit of it had been earned honestly.

The room exploded from complete silence to a burst of excitement. The students were electrified by a real-world example so close to their lives, and everyone began voicing their opinions at once. Even the professors and university administrators crowded by the door were taken aback, edging closer to hear what was being said.