The World of the Common Folk

Chen Chen woke up to find himself a poor young man selling flatbreads on the streets of Lin'an. All he had was a pot, a shoulder pole laden with dough, and a small silk shop on the verge of going under.

No System, no golden finger. All he could rely on was a ledger, a silver tongue, and two feet willing to walk.

He found his first way out in the fraudulent books of Shen's firm, borrowed his first shipload of grain from the Grand Canal's grain guild, and carved out his first sea route through the storms of the South Seas. He took on unscrupulous merchants, unraveled an imperial case, quelled pirates, and opposed the maritime ban. At the Golden Throne Hall, he discussed copper prices with the emperor; in the merchants' guildhall, he signed treaties with foreign nations.

Ten years later:

In Lin'an, he owned silk shops, free schools, and weaving workshops;

His Chen banners flew in ports across the South Seas;

The Satsuma Domain in Japan had signed a copper treaty with him;

The court had bestowed on him a golden plaque honoring his service to commerce, praising him as a capable merchant.

Yet these were not what he valued most.

It was the character for "ledger," scrawled crookedly on a stone slab by his eleven-year-old son beneath the old osmanthus tree in the back garden; it was the retired Hanlin scholar with a white beard teaching the Book of Songs for free at the school Chen had founded; it was the old sailor, who had spent forty years at sea, handing over the nautical charts of his lifetime to Chen's son

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.