In the winter of 1990, Shanghai factory worker Lin Jianguo carried his coworkers' hard-earned savings into the black market for stocks, where a fake “08653” subscription certificate devoured all his hopes. Buried in debt and with his family destroyed, he plunged into the steel-and-concrete jungle of Pudong's development, using his own flesh and blood to pave a road to redemption
At the bloody dawn of the Shenzhen new-share frenzy, he watched a migrant worker with a broken leg die in a brokerage office;
On the freezing night when the 327 Treasury bond trade blew up, a construction foreman fell from a hundred-meter steel frame into the slaughterhouse of capital;
At the altar of the internet bubble, he stooped to sweep up the tuition money and dreams of students crushed underfoot.
After thirty years of ups and downs, he saw the true nature of the cycle:
The alluring gold-rimmed glasses in Xiangyang Park, the street hawkers in Shenzhen selling “bloodstained chips,” the ruthless tycoons at the bond victory banquet, the mad-dog lecturers in the internet craze... The reapers changed their faces, grinding “invest at your own risk” into dust and turning ordinary people into ashes at the temple of wealth.
As the song “Our Workers Have Strength” rang out above the altar,
the man who had crawled out of the ashes clenched the bloodstained fragments of the fake certificate.
The backs of the ants had never truly bent
Standing atop the ruins, he raised his tempered sickle against the giant beast!
Open this book, and you will hear the bones of 300,000 retail investors beneath the Huangpu River clanging in the torrent of capital!
Disclaimer: This story takes place in a fictional setting. Its characters and plot are works of art and have no direct connection to real historical events or people.
