Tiexi's Past: from Labor Reform Prisoner to the Richest Man in Northeast China

In the winter of 1978, I squatted outside Shenyang Railway Station and ate frozen bean buns. Behind me was the vast snowfield, and in front of me was the hometown I could never return to. Others returned to the city, carrying honors and certificates of merit; I, Wang Xiangdong, carried a release certificate from the labor camp in my file, and in my arms I only had the aluminum lunch box that the squad leader of the Corps gave me before leaving. Neighbors in Tiexi Courtyard pointed and said: "The unlucky old Wang family is back." But they don't know... This aluminum lunch box contains the steamed buns given to me by three women, as well as half of my life's debts and sins. The night before Liu Lijuan got married, she placed a new pair of cotton shoes in front of my window. Chen Xiaomei stayed with me day and night in Russia, and said "I'm waiting for you" before leaving. And that southern woman used all her wealth to exchange for the last bit of my conscience. From setting up a street stall selling peanuts and being chased out of three streets by the city management committee, to selling jeans at Wu'ai Market and earning 3,000 a day; From taking over his father's rusty wrench in the wave of layoffs to building the first clothing wholesale stall on the ruins; From being penniless, to coveting the entire world... It took me 45 years to turn that rusty aluminum lunch box into a business empire worth tens of billions. My father, an eighth-level fitter who had been stubborn all his life, said until his death: "Son, the lunch box is not rusty. Your mother secretly cleans it every day." The aluminum lunch box will rust, but the taste of potato stewed eggplant will not change; the chimney will fall down, but the friendship we have endured together can last a lifetime in Shenyang, which is minus 30 degrees Celsius. "Dad, we workers' sons should not let our voices drop when we fall down." "But what if the factory also collapses?"