Reborn in 1985: I Made a Comeback by Finding Treasures in Antiques

On the first day of the Lunar New Year in 1985, Lin Weidong, a big shot who owns an entire antiques market,

reborn in a little house in the steelworks workers' neighborhood as a poor laborer.

“Weidong! Get home quick. Your wife's boss, Wang Weiguo, has his eyes everywhere, heh!”

His wife is humiliated, his sister is abused by her husband, everyone mocks him, and his father-in-law looks down on him... But he's no longer the spineless Lin Weidong he used to be! The decades of experience he gained running an antiques market in his previous life have become his golden finger, giving him a chance to change his fate.

“I'll trade you three glass marbles for that,” Lin Weidong says, eyeing the “monkey stamp” in the boy's hand.

“Pinky promise! Whoever backs out is a little dog!”

Lin Weidong hooks their fingers together and thinks, “Damn, I offered way too much...!”

“Start with the kids” is the first opening he finds in this golden age.

From a peddler at the ghost market to the owner of an auction house, he also grows his fortune amid the stock market and real estate booms...

Every bit of Lin Weidong's profit reflects his uncanny grasp of the times.

“Mr. Lin, let's go ask the other residents about their demolition demands.”

“There's no need. This whole alley belongs to me.”

As national treasures lost overseas return at his auctions, and the lights of his private museum illuminate an authentic work by Wang Xizhi,

Lin Weidong gazes out at the sea. “The times have hidden so many treasures. I'm just the person who bends down to pick them up.”

This is a story about building a business empire from the dust, and a comeback legend steeped in the sights and sounds of the 1980s.

(A faithful portrayal of life and human relationships in the 1980s. Spotting hidden treasures, antique appraisal, no System, and no brainless power fantasy. This is not a scholarly work on antiques; the author welcomes readers' corrections.)