Where the Great River Bends: A 1986 Chronicle of Building an Industrial Fortune

1986, Qingshan Machinery Factory. When Shen Shouren wakes up, he has only twenty-seven cents in his pocket. He owes the bathhouse eighty yuan in rent, his father's workplace injury compensation is being withheld, and kids at the factory school call his younger sister a “temporary worker's brat.” In his previous life, he managed a restaurant chain and a household goods distribution business. This time, he doesn't want to become some big shot. He just wants his family to have hot meals. Others think running a private business is shameful, but he sets up a breakfast stall, serving glass noodles with soy sauce alongside sesame flatbreads. He makes seventeen yuan and forty cents in a day. Others are afraid they'll lose money taking over a business, but he takes charge of an old bathhouse on the verge of closing. Hot water, shaves, warm towels: workers come out saying it's better than a guesthouse. Later, he takes over a toothpaste factory that's about to go under, making soap and shampoo until he gets the “Qingshan Brand” into supply stores in three hundred communes. No copying hit songs, no mining, no property speculation. When the great era arrives, he focuses on making a living from a bowl of glass noodles, a sesame flatbread, and a tube of toothpaste, offering the things workers truly want.