Life Revisited

The fog in Chengdu never wipes away completely.

Chen Guanfu had lived in the city for fifteen years and still wasn’t used to its dampness. But he had no plans to leave.

At forty-one, he was a partner at Chenxi Capital, having invested in some of the era’s sharpest sectors: artificial intelligence, commercial spaceflight, and self-driving cars. His résumé was polished like a carefully formatted PowerPoint presentation. People in the industry called him a “hunter,” someone who could see which way the wind was blowing before a trend took off. He neither denied nor confirmed it. Only now and then, late at night in his study, he would use cold tea to write on the desktop, then wipe the words away without leaving a trace.

Is a person’s cultural identity their destiny?

If the answer is yes, then all these years spent teaching him business logic, strategic analysis, and insight into human nature were just pouring water into a dry well. If the answer is no, where is the fulcrum that could shift it?

Capital is technique, philosophy is the Way, tea is a mirror, and alcohol is a spear. He grew up amid the sandstorms of the Helan Mountains, became a master of his craft at conference tables in Shanghai, and learned to coexist with exhaustion amid the bustle of Chengdu.

Yet at this age, he still had to ask:

Can one person really be changed by another?

If not, what does it mean to meet?

If so, what is the price?

The story begins on a foggy morning in Chengdu. At the time, Chen Guanfu had no idea that what awaited him was not the end of an investment, but a long reexamination of his entire system of values.