The 1970s: I Start by Collecting Scrap, Getting Rich and Raising My Wife

After Yang Feng, the troublemaker from the compound, was blinded in his right eye and kicked out in the winter of 1977,

the good days of his family’s enemies, the head of the security department and his household, came to an abrupt end.

While everyone else was getting by as best they could, Yang Feng moved into a dilapidated courtyard house.

Yang Feng was either snapping up overlooked treasures or on his way to find more.

In just half a month, he had become a top-tier star in Beijing’s underground antiques scene and assembled his own appraisal dream team.

While others worried about finding a place to live, Yang Feng was quietly opening a hidden compartment in an old Qing dynasty bed made of small-leaf red sandalwood, pocketing late-Qing promissory notes and a solid-gold fish ornament inlaid with rubies, made by the Imperial Household Department’s workshops.

Then one day, everyone discovered that the poor, one-eyed kid the compound had looked down on had become the true power behind Beijing’s antiques trade.

The most mysterious high-end seller at the Ruifuxuan black market? Yang Feng.

The honored, licensed guest most respected by Liu the Sixth, a big shot from Panjiayuan? Yang Feng.

The stunning female appraiser who appeared out of nowhere at Liulichang and never forgot anything she saw? Yang Feng’s own apprentice.

Even Lin Chunsheng, the renowned master carver of Beijing, was eager to carve a top-grade Tianhuang stone for him for free.

Black-market buyers hailed him as their grandmaster, and old hands in the antiques trade worshipped him as a god.

While his enemies in the compound were still busy plotting against him, spreading rumors, and fighting over property,

Yang Feng surveyed his piles of Xuande censers, Duan inkstones, and small Ming dynasty imperial kiln wares. He had money now, and beautiful confidantes, too.

It would be a shame not to take over the entire seventies!