I Was a Hoodlum Once, Too

In 1990, on the playground of the town's middle school, I knocked the mayor's son flat with a brick, and lost my place at school along with him.

My name is Chen Weiguo, but everyone calls me Monkey. After dropping out, I had to scrape by around town, running a video arcade and gathering a crew of brothers, making a living with my fists and my brains.

In other people's eyes, I was a street punk, a gangster everyone feared. But I knew better. In an era full of opportunities and pitfalls, if I wanted to survive and climb out of the mud, I had no choice but to fight my way forward.

I started out at a video arcade in town, then fought my way into the county seat and on to the provincial capital. Arcades, nightclubs, real estate deals... I seized every trend and made it work. The brothers who once followed me got to share in the good life, while I settled the score with everyone who had once trampled on me.

I fought and struggled through the gray areas, rising from a penniless boy at the bottom to a position others could only look up to.

At the height of my success, countless people called me Boss.

But in the dead of night, I often wondered: the thing I wanted most in this life was simply to be an ordinary person.