In the 1980s and 1990s, the southwestern mountain city of Yuzhou was enduring the growing pains of reform and opening up. Among the stilt houses where the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers met, state-owned factory chimneys belched black smoke, while the neon lights of dance halls mingled with the flashlights of black-market traders. This was a vortex of power and desire, where officials and businessmen colluded beneath a protective umbrella, and criminal forces wove a suffocating web.
