In his previous life, he spent every day being pushed around. His wife, Guifen, worked herself to death. Scammers swindled him out of the huanghuali chair his father had left behind, and in the end he died alone in a rented room. As he lay dying, he could think of only one thing: in this life, he had let everyone down.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in 1990. His notice of redundancy had just arrived, and he had only 27.5 yuan in his pocket.
But he discovered he could “see” things in antiques that other people couldn't: genuine pieces glowed with a precious light, while fakes were shrouded in darkness.
He turned a broken bowl bought for five yuan into five hundred, and sold a copper censer bought for thirty yuan for four hundred. From setting up a street stall in Panjiayuan to hanging out a sign that read “Houshengtang,” he became known to everyone in the antiques trade as Shopkeeper Zhou. When people asked how he made his fortune, he said, “You examine things one by one, and you live your days one at a time.”
His wife no longer had to brave the wind at the market. No one could lay a finger on his father's chair, and the poor fellows all along the street had food to eat thanks to him.
This is the story of an honest man, trampled into the dirt by the times, who uses an eye that can tell genuine from fake and a heart that stays true to his principles to piece his broken life back together, one fragment at a time.
