In 1960, Liu Mingchao returned to Nanluoguxiang with a pay slip for 29.5 yuan in his pocket. His family had scraped the last bowl of coarse rice from the bottom of the jar, and his little sister had both hands soaked in paste.
Everyone thought the Liu family was doomed.
No one knew he carried a brass key in his pocket, with a world hidden inside it. No one knew he held the next sixty years in his mind. And no one could have guessed that, for decades to come, every household in this alley on the verge of starving would depend on him to keep its lights on.
It began with trading wild greens for a few cigarette coupons, with a broken-down machine tool, and with a chess game played by an old gatekeeper.
Step by step, Liu Mingchao turned the lights of Nanluoguxiang into a river of stars, one by one, until they illuminated the whole street.
This is the 1960s. This is the vibrant, everyday life of the capital.
Nanluoguxiang: Years in the Sixties, a tale of the day-to-day lives of alley residents, and the flavor of an era simmering in the warmth of ordinary life.
