From Bricklayer to Saint: From Construction Site to the Whole World

Zhang Wei is a migrant laborer hauling bricks and cement in a workers’ shack in Steel City. The night the shack collapses, the old gatekeeper heaves up a beam with one hand, teaches him the “Tamped-Earth Stance,” and leaves him half a volume of the Secret Manual of Lu Ban’s Construction Techniques: he can diagnose damage by sound and settle a situation with a single move. A hidden ledger brings to light his father’s old case, and reveals a chessboard stretching from Steel City to Eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf. He takes on real estate titans, battles international giants, evacuates overseas Chinese amid artillery fire, and rebuilds on the ruins, bringing the rules of a working man to the whole world. By the time he has hauled bricks to the very end, he has become the unseen hand moving the pieces behind the world. What will not collapse is the human heart; what will not fall is the bigger picture.