I Just Want to Be a Good Silver

Shuibei, Shenzhen: the bustling world of China's silver trade. Liu Haizhou had spent ten years making his way in this world. He understood silver, and he understood people even better. At a glance, he could tell whether a silver artifact was real, but he couldn't see through the secret behind an old silver lock. Engraved with the words “Zhaodi,” the lock drew him into a decades-spanning mystery surrounding a missing family. From the stalls of Shuibei to the old streets of Longgang, from the raging seas of the silver market to the silent lives of three generations of women, he discovered that every old silver object he handled concealed a painful past that no one wanted to discuss. A spectrometer can reveal an object's purity, but it can't see into people's hearts. Silver has a price; loyalty and affection are priceless. In a world where truth and falsehood are hard to tell apart, all he wants is to work with silver and live an honest life. A moving story that captures the world of Shuibei and the fates of three generations of women.