The Joy of It All

The winds of a new era can carry people to the clouds, or grind them into dust. Zhou Benyi is the son of a merchant from a small Jiangnan town. In the early years of reform and opening up, when people were “feeling their way across the river,” his father tried to seize an opportunity, only to be framed by a competitor amid fierce market competition and a lack of clear regulations. Branded a “speculator,” his family’s business was confiscated. His father, consumed by injustice and resentment, soon died in despair. The disaster stripped the Zhou family of the very foundation on which they depended. All Zhou Benyi is left with is a cold, brutal reality. His mother is gravely ill. Although the college entrance exams have been reinstated, his family’s background and sudden loss of income make university completely out of reach. A job in the government? Even more impossible. In a time of upheaval, when boldness and unconventional connections are prized, his lack of physical strength and any particular skill becomes a fatal weakness. The strain of his family’s decline, coupled with the neighbors’ gossip, quickly drives his relationship to the breaking point. “That Zhou boy” becomes a topic of pity and quiet scorn over tea among the locals. Just as despair swallows him, a seasoned mentor appears. Perhaps he is an old hand who weathered the turbulent years and knows all the ins and outs of the world, or perhaps an early “middleman” with a sharp nose who has already tasted success by working the gaps in policy. He sees in Zhou Benyi a clear-eyed nature, almost cold in its lucidity, forged by hardship, and a keen gaze that despair has not yet entirely blinded. A new underworld opens its doors to him, one woven from the price differences of the dual-track system, approval documents, information gaps, networks of personal favors, and the rules of a nascent market: a world rife with both opportunity and danger.