The Funny Second Young Master

In 1924, the Shen family, the wealthiest silk merchants in Gusu, had a notorious young troublemaker who took Jiangnan by storm: their second son, Shen Yanzhi. This young master had returned from studying abroad, but instead of touching an abacus, he preferred cricket fighting. Dressed in a fine suit, he still liked to squat outside Xuanmiao Temple and munch on crab-shell pastries. Now he was racing around the courtyard as twenty-four rosewood abacuses came flying after him. “The Shen family’s century-old business will be ruined by you sooner or later!” the eldest son shouted, chasing him through three courtyards with a cane. On the blue-brick ground lay an enamel snuff bottle shattered into eight pieces. Clutching the family’s ancestral purple-clay cricket jar, Shen Yanzhi vaulted over the wall to escape. His pale moon-white robe caught on a golden osmanthus tree, revealing half a pair of Western-style underpants embroidered with a spring scene by Tang Bohu. Who would have thought this incorrigible second son would disguise himself as a fortune-teller at Changmen Wharf and talk the Green Gang’s rival shipping crews out of a violent clash with a few witty remarks? Or that he would ransom an embroiderer held by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce with a basket of crab-roe soup dumplings? At a poetry gathering at Hanshan Temple, he even left the pompous literati hopping mad: “Your poems’ tones and rhythms are more tangled than the foot-binding cloths sold by the old ladies on Guanqian Street!” On the night a Japanese merchant ship approached Taihu Lake, the whole city of Gusu saw the Shen family’s ever-burning red lantern suddenly fall. The second son, who usually spent his days joking around, stood atop the highest tower in the Shen Garden. The young man had cast off his playboy’s disguise, and blazing torches were reflected in his eyes. In his hand was half of a Hetian jade abacus, the piece his eldest brother had pressed into his hands on his deathbed... This is the story of a playboy who conceals his edge amid the lilting Wu dialect and protects his homeland along winding garden paths. Here, the bloodstained romance of Suzhou pingtan meets the business intrigues stitched beneath Suzhou embroidery, and the most incorrigible second son in Gusu learns how to use crickets