“I’m just a petty thief in this Great Harmony society. From the day I took up this trade, I never expected things to end well for me. And I’ve never believed in that bullshit about thieves having a code of honor. If I get caught one day, heh, I deserve to be killed!”
“Ha... ptooey... Buddy, one bowl of beef noodles and two sesame flatbreads. Extra chili and cilantro, and two ounces of sweet potato liquor.”
This is the art of stealing, a trade built on taking what belongs to others, a profession everyone loves to hate. A thief in the Great Harmony society, chasing money at the expense of everything else, sacrificing the rook to save the king.
Eyes, ears, hands, feet, and breath working as one: scouting a place, keeping watch, striking up a conversation; fencing stolen goods, splitting the take, and getting rid of the evidence. Every method of theft and every step in the process reveals the true lives of the people at the bottom of society’s dark side in that era.
Follow Li Pingfan as he uses a thief’s skills to make his way through the underworld, and a thief’s cunning to navigate the line between black and white.
