I Signed the Divorce Papers, Then Sold My Old Patent for Three Billion

At forty-two, Zhou Jiming is an engineer at Hanhai Medical Equipment. His wife thinks he's going nowhere, so she takes their daughter and divorces him. Under their agreement, she gets the house and he gets the car, with a tiny note attached: the file path on Gao Shijie's computer. His former boss's lover has become his ex-wife. Not long afterward, Beijing's Guanheng Law Firm calls: Noden Automation Group wants to buy his invention patent, offering three billion yuan. Zhou Jiming doesn't answer. Instead, he heads to an old factory in the south of the city, where a machine tool has lain dormant for six years and a group of veteran craftsmen still work. From the old factory to Mingheng Tech, from a team of twelve to a national standards setter, this is a story about finding validation.