In September 2005, Lu Mingyuan woke up on the creaking iron bunk in his dorm room. The crack in the ceiling was just as he remembered it, the song “The Mouse Loves Rice” drifted in from outside, and the white sneakers on his feet were coming apart at the soles. Everything was exactly as he remembered, except that he now had twenty years of the future in his head.
In his previous life, he had tightened screws, delivered takeout, and driven for Didi. In his thirties, he was cooped up in a shared apartment, watching other people take off at just the right moment while he couldn’t even catch a feather. Now, back on his university campus in 2005 with the 2,400 yuan he had earned hauling bricks over the summer in his pocket, he decided he wouldn’t miss his chance this time.
Stall Number One on the commercial street was the first opening he pried wide. He refurbished and resold secondhand MP3 players, making a hundred yuan per unit; he bought chargers and data cables for four yuan and sold them for ten, making small profits through high volume. His competitors ranged from Zhao Kai, who set up a stall on campus, to local distributor Zhou Hongbin, then from regional chains to nationwide manufacturers. He fought his way forward, step by step. From a tin-roofed campus stall to 21 shops in university districts; from Jiangcheng electronics stores to an interprovincial campus network; from his own accessories factory to a diversified industrial group.
He spent fifteen years on this journey, catching every wave along the way: digital hardware, hand-drawn creative IP, the rise of e-commerce, commercial real estate, and the integration of culture and tourism. But more important than any trend was the girl who sat drawing on the commercial street. Su Wan was an art academy student and an original hand-drawn artist. The moment he accepted his first hand-drawn sticker from her, their fates became entwined. She drew him handing over goods behind his stall, sketched the crowds coming and going on the commercial street, and filled an entire sketchbook. Later, those drawings became a creative brand, became
