With 185 yuan and 37 cents from his father's grain sales in his pocket, Wang Ergou, a middle school graduate, plunged headfirst into a special economic zone in the 1990s.
Dreaming of "getting rich overnight," he instead endured the unscrupulous contractor Zhao Dahu's wage deductions and the bullying of his coworker Liu San.
On a typhoon night, Liu San's treacherous scissors sent Wang Ergou plummeting from a great height.
With his life hanging by a thread on a reinforcing bar, he discovered Zhao Dahu's damning hidden accounts. Covered in mud and blood, he wielded the ledger like a blade, risking his life to force out his blood-soaked "first pot of gold."
Dragging his injured arm behind him, he traded his work clothes for a suit. Starting out as a low-level site supervisor, he learned the trade under an honest mentor and struggled to survive amid the schemes of the underworld.
During the golden age of real estate, he assembled a team and became a contractor. He fought his way through the quagmire of fronting construction costs and chasing debts, matching wits with all kinds of bosses as he built his initial fortune.
But when he rose to become a property developer worth billions, the end of "getting rich overnight" was no paradise.
The sins of his early years, lost to greed, family ties, and infighting all came back to haunt him.
The chill of the broader economic downturn pushed him to the brink of collapse.
From the fields of northwestern Shandong to the special zone's battle for survival, from contractor rivalries to a real estate crisis, Wang Ergou carved his mark into the concrete of his era with his own flesh and blood.
Time and again, he got back up, building his life with a bricklayer's grit. In the maze of wealth, he searched for redemption, and at last, atop a towering skyscraper, he found a place of peace.
