In the winter of 2019, when the last coal truck in the Hegang mining area stalled, 16-year-old Li Shi was lying on the scrapped mine truck to steal the gearbox. The burn scar on his right hand was shiny in the minus 30°C air, like a piece of pig iron that could never be polished.
In the summer of 2023, the waves on Qingdao's Golden Beach swept away the polished exhaust fumes from Benda Ship Shop. Li Shi, lying on his back in the ditch of the maintenance room, saw a pair of feet wearing AJ1 shoes through the gap in the motorcycle chassis - that was Xinru, a girl sent by the Traditional Chinese Medicine Physiotherapy Center to sell graphene waist protectors. The mugwort sachet hanging around her neck was leaking snow from the black soil of Northeast China.
