Chapter 1: Leaving Home

I spent seven years in there, and because I behaved well I earned a reduced sentence.

The day I got out, they gave me a phone, and I received several calls from unfamiliar numbers.

They were all from bosses I had worked with before, desperately trying to keep me on their side. Some were offering salaries as high as one hundred thousand a month, and one even promised two hundred thousand a month plus a car.

Most of those calls came from two places: Panjiayuan in Beijing, and Shenyang Road in Tianjin.

I thought about it for a while, then refused them all.

Getting into this trade in the first place had been a mistake. Even if it could make a man rich overnight, it exacted a price. Seven years had passed, and I had gone from a clean-faced young man to a middle-aged fellow with a belly.

The girl I once knew now had a child old enough to run errands.

I had neither kin nor dependents, and in the end I chose Dali.

I bought a tiny storefront by Erhai Lake and opened a little supermarket. Whenever business was slow, I would go down to the shore, feel the lake breeze on my face, and live a leisurely life.

The shop is on Cangshan East Road, next to Lemat. If any friends ever come by, I will serve you tea.

Not long ago, had they not discovered the civilization of ancient Shu? Had they not unearthed the golden mask that caused a sensation across the country? In truth, my path to sudden wealth had some connection to those things.

It came down to two words:

antiques, and tomb raiding.

A few years back, Ghost Blows Out the Lamp, Grave Robbers' Chronicles, and The Golden Eyes were all huge hits on television and in film. Now that I have some free time, I might as well write about the things that happened in this line of work.

I never saw the Heavenly Palace atop Cloud Peak, nor the sacred tree of the Qinling Mountains. I never had golden eyes, either. But I entered the antique trade at sixteen, and I did indeed witness many things ordinary people could never understand.

Let me begin from the start.

I was born in a small mountain village in the northeast of our country, not far from Mohe, where the winters are so cold they can freeze a man to death.

My grandmother raised me. I never saw my parents, and I did not care to ask their names.

There is a saying that affection skips a generation. As a child, I was mischievous beyond measure, unwilling to heed my teachers, and my grades were miserable. I was always near the bottom of the class.

The nation's poverty-alleviation policies were good. Back then, the village arranged subsistence support for us, something like more than eighty yuan a month, plus some special orphan hardship subsidy of over a hundred yuan a month. Our family survived only with great difficulty.

At that time, treasure-hunting programs were on television every day, and I watched them with utter fascination. Those odds and ends people had once dismissed as junk jars and bottles turned out, according to the experts, to be worth tens of thousands, antiques that could be traded for houses and cars.

I kept lying to my grandmother, saying the school required study materials. She gave me money, and I ran to the bookstore and used it all to buy books about antiques.

The first book I remember reading was a thick volume called Fifty Famous Ancient Coins.

Ancient coins were what we called copper cash in our village. That book opened my eyes and I became obsessively enamored with antiques.

I rummaged through our house, and I also fooled my classmates, who could not read. I told them that for fifty fen apiece they should steal copper coins from their own homes and sell them to me. I would buy them.

I scrimped and saved. I never ordered any dishes at the cafeteria. Later, I sold a pile of textbooks for seven yuan. I was so poor at studying that my teachers only sighed and said the child was finished, that if he did not study properly, he would only become a tumor on society.

I dismissed my teacher's words with contempt. In my heart I was dreaming of getting rich. Even if I became a tumor, I would be a rich one.

The year I turned eighteen, my grandmother had an accident while sweeping snow in the yard and broke her leg. Between medical bills and surgery, it would cost more than three thousand yuan.

For a family like ours, we could not even scrape together six hundred!

I remember it vividly. My grandmother lay on the kang beneath a thick quilt, and at night she would still cry.

My eldest aunt had opened several farm stays in the snowy country near Mohe, and business was good. So I went to her house to borrow money, to buy medicine for my grandmother.

Though no one said much openly, once I overheard my uncle-in-law speaking in secret. He called me a bringer of bad luck and said our family was a fallen household, that the money he lent us might as well be thrown away. He even told my aunt not to have much to do with us.

One winter night that year, I sat alone on a rock for three hours. Though I was dressed warmly, it was of little use in Mohe's thirty-below-zero cold.

Young and reckless, I had my pride smashed to pieces by the words of my relatives.

Clutching the borrowed money, I swore in my heart: I, Xiang Yunfeng, will make something of myself!

Later I dropped out of school. To be precise, I did not even have a junior high diploma. At best, I was a primary school graduate.

Of the three thousand yuan, after paying for my grandmother's surgery and medicine, seven hundred and fifty-three yuan remained. I secretly kept that money.

With those seven hundred-odd yuan, I did not merely collect copper cash. I also went to neighboring villages to buy porcelain and silver dollars from other households.

Villagers only knew that silver dollars were valuable. As for bottles, bowls, plates, and the like, most of them knew nothing about them and did not care.

After reading books and watching appraisal programs every day, I gradually developed a basic eye for things.

For one hundred yuan, I bought a pair of tall blue-and-white plum vases from the late Qing period. For less than two hundred, I picked up several small pastel-glazed condiment jars painted with ladies from the Republic of China era. For one hundred and eighty, I got three mid-Qing folk kilns' blue-and-white bowls. Unfortunately, all three had spiderweb cracks and were not well preserved; each had firing lines.

Earlier, I had also saved a small bag of copper coins, probably more than two hundred in all. Most were Song and Qing coins, with Daoguang, Guangxu, Qianlong, Chongzhen, and Yuanfeng making up the largest share. These coins were common, and I knew they were not worth much. What pleased me most were three Yongzheng pieces in excellent condition. I knew Yongzheng coins were worth something, but I did not know exactly how much.

After buying all those things, I had spent a little over five hundred yuan, and I still had 240 left. At the time, the average monthly wage was only a little over three hundred.

I happened to be on good terms with a female classmate, and she helped me by lending me two large thirty-inch rolling suitcases.

Altogether there were eleven pieces of porcelain and a small bundle of copper cash. I wrapped them carefully in bedding, layer upon layer, afraid they might break, and stuffed in plenty of foam.

In the end, I filled two large rolling suitcases and a backpack completely.

My grandmother could not understand what I was doing. She said I was neglecting my proper work and even said she had raised me for nothing.

My aunt also learned of it, and most of the villagers began pointing at me behind my back.

Enduring contempt, burdened with humiliation and misunderstanding, on the morning of the seventeenth day of the twelfth lunar month, I left Mohe with the things I had collected.

In my mind, Beijing people were the richest, so of course I should sell my antiques to them. Besides, I had long been yearning for that legendary place, Panjiayuan.

There was no direct train from Mohe to Beijing. I had to take a train to Siping first, then go from Siping to Beijing West.

The whole journey was more than two thousand kilometers and took over fifty hours. To save money, I chose the cheapest hard seat.

I carried two large rolling suitcases and a big backpack on my back. My hair was greasy, my clothes were plain and shabby, and passengers in the station kept pointing at me and whispering.

I had never traveled far from home before. It was my first time on a train, and I was alone.

After buying the ticket, I had less than a hundred yuan left on me. If I could not sell my things, I would not even have enough to buy a return ticket.

Much less food.

Meals on the train were expensive. I did not dare spend money, so I kept drinking hot water from the cup I brought with me. When I was truly starving, I bought a two-and-a-half-yuan bag of fried dough twists.

For a farm boy seeing Beijing for the first time, everything was new and strange. Even the security scanners at the station were something I had never seen before.

I was young then, but I was not shy around strangers. I dared to talk to people.

So I asked how to get to Panjiayuan Antique Market. The ticket clerk was very kind; she told me to take the subway and explained how to transfer.

Take Line 9 from Beijing West, get off at Liuliqiao to change to Line 10, then get off at Panjiayuan Station.

Fortunately, my memory was not bad, and I did not take many wrong turns. Back then, the subway still cost only two yuan no matter how far you rode, as long as you did not exit the station nobody cared.

After leaving the subway station, the sidewalks were lined with anti-slip pits. Carrying my backpack and dragging two huge suitcases, I struggled with every step.

After crossing Huarui Bridge, I finally saw the golden-lettered stone tablet standing beyond the north gate.

Panjiayuan Old Goods Market.

At last, I had arrived.