Espionage: King of the Black Market

In 1938, in Shanghai's foreign concessions, street thug Chen Ye makes dirty money selling information. By sheer accident, he sells a top-secret Japanese deployment map to the Military Statistics Bureau as scrap paper. He plans to take the money and run, but the station chief, a “living Yama,” puts a gun to his head and forces him into the world of espionage. He cares nothing for duty to country, only gold bars and silver dollars, yet his streetwise cons, photographic memory, and gift for talking the dead back to life let him walk a tightrope between the Japanese, their collaborators, the Military Statistics Bureau, and the Communists.

He uses fake intelligence to lure out senior Japanese officers, cracks open Unit 76's back door with Green Gang code words, and turns the black market into an intelligence exchange. By day, this “money-over-life” gangster runs a black-market business, throwing his weight around; by night, he becomes the mysterious “Pixiu,” stirring up the espionage world. When he realizes that every piece of intelligence he sells saves Chinese lives, the hand clutching his gold bars begins to tremble. “I hustle for money so I can stay alive, but anyone who lays a hand on a Chinese person will have to answer to my gun!” From then on, Shanghai has a new figure who leaves the enemy trembling: gold bars in one hand, a gun in the other, the black-market king who trades intelligence for lives!