In the late 1980s, in an old Shanghai lane in Hongkou, twenty-year-old A Bao had just quit his job at a neighborhood factory. His father had died in a workplace accident when A Bao was thirteen, and his mother, Zhou Fengying, had raised him and his older sister with nothing but a sewing machine. A Bao only wanted to make enough money so his mother would never have to work that sewing machine again.
He followed his mentor, Lu Defa, into the world of independent trading and headed south to Guangzhou. He made his first hundred thousand yuan on a deal reselling color TV purchase permits, then lost all his capital after someone swindled him with a fake contract. The ticket back to Shanghai was sent by his mentor.
Over the next decade and a half, he learned how to read the rules at the import-export company's approvals desk, made his first million in the frenzy over stock subscription warrants, multiplied his fortune several times over with land in Hainan and Pudong, and nearly jumped off a building during a financial crisis. He built his own empire step by step, while putting relationships, friends, and one woman after another on the line.
From a little wonton stand at the entrance to his lane to the top floor of a Pudong office tower, A Bao made fortunes and lost everything. Every time he got rich, it planted the fuse for his next collapse, and the ledger in his heart was one he could never balance.
This is a sweeping story of business warfare, changing times, and human relationships. A Bao's thirty years of ups and downs tell the story of how one Shanghai man was lifted up by his era, and how he learned to pick himself up again.
