Stranded on a Desert Island: I Built an Empire with Fenjiu

A storm. A cargo ship. Twenty-six lives. Only he survived.

When Fang Tianzhen woke, he was covered in wounds. His left shoe was gone, and his mouth was full of seawater. He had washed ashore on a deserted island. Around him lay broken planks, his dead coworkers, and blue-and-white porcelain bottles drifting across the sea.

An entire shipload of Fenjiu, bound from his homeland for the West, had been scattered across these waters.

He was alive. The sole survivor.

There was no rescue, no equipment, no food. He had only his own two hands, a kitchen knife he had fished from the sea, and a mind on the verge of madness from loneliness. But he had liquor. He stacked more than a hundred bottles of blue-and-white Fenjiu into a wall around his camp, like a tiny blue-and-white castle.

He learned to start fires and catch birds. He learned to weave baskets from vines and make traps from sticks. He carved out a cave, built a toilet, and raised rabbits. Alone on the island, he became a one-man production team.

He drank 56-proof aged Baifen, gnawed on roasted bird legs, and watched the stars and the moon, searching the sea for passing ships. On the cliff face, he carved one mark after another: 5.20, 5.21, 5.22... Each mark was proof that he had survived one more day.

He had to stay alive. Until someone came to rescue him.

Or until he found a way to leave on his own.

This is a story about loneliness and survival, about how one person slowly drags himself out of the mud of despair. It is also a story about liquor. After all, without all that Fenjiu drifting across the sea, he might not have lasted this long.