The Day I Was Laid Off, I Took Over the City's Dirtiest Mess

Chen Mo spent eight years at the recycling station of Huanxing Chemical, collecting scrap metal, cardboard, and everything else people threw away. He thought that was simply his lot in life. Then, on his thirty-fifth birthday, he was laid off. The reason: the apprentice he'd trained for a year and a half had taken his place. His ex-wife then showed up, holding that apprentice's hand, to collect his delivery truck. He tore up the wedding invitation, thinking it was just an angry outburst. Then he found those barrels by the wall. Then the hospital told him that the scavenger who had helped him carry stretchers for four years had a blood lead level forty times over the limit. And then he realized what he'd held in his hands all these years: a map of every scrap collection point in the city, and connections among the people at the very bottom of Tianrui. Nobody thinks much of garbage collectors. But they're the only ones who can get into places everyone else is barred from. That night, on Bridge Seven of the old national highway, dozens of phones were raised, their screens' glow joining into a single sea of light.