Zhou Dajiang had never had much luck. At thirty-five, he lost his job, won his labor arbitration case but couldn’t get the money, lost everything on a fast-food restaurant, and bought an unfinished apartment. With nothing to show for it, he slunk back to his hometown. His one remaining hope was the gold he and his uncle had panned for in the river when he was a child. His uncle had said, “It’s not worth the effort.” Zhou had refused to believe him.
In a dream, he found a gold mine at the river’s source. When he woke, he burrowed into a cave and hacked away with a pickaxe, only to pass out from lack of oxygen and nearly die. His childhood friend Dahou dragged him out and slapped him several times. “You can’t even tell gold from quartz. What are you panning for?”
He came to. He gave up panning for gold and learned to raise chickens from Dahou instead. Starting with five hundred chicks, he worked from dawn to dusk. A few years later, he was selling free-range chickens in Shenzhen and had opened eight chain restaurants.
That autumn, his aunt found his uncle’s belongings: a hand-drawn map and a stone streaked with gold. His uncle’s notebook contained a single line: “There is gold at the river’s source, but it must not be taken. Take it, and the river will die.”
He found the river’s source, and a secret that had been hidden for half a lifetime. The brothers turned against each other, fought, and made peace. When Dahou’s mother fell gravely ill, Zhou mortgaged his restaurants to raise money for her medical bills. When gold panners threatened the river bend, the two of them sealed the cave at the source overnight.
From retreating from the city to returning to the village, from raising chickens to protecting a river, it took Zhou Dajiang most of his life to understand: real gold isn’t in the river. It’s in the soil, in the sweat, in a brother’s slaps and embraces. It may be tiny as a needle’s point, but it’s always shining.
Interesting story!
Gold panning, wonderful childhood memories!