I Restored This Bowl and Made a Name for Myself on This Street

The day his master died, he left behind a repair shop six months behind on rent, an unpaid debt, and a three-month deadline. Chen Shouzhuo only knew how to do one thing: repair. But when his fingertip touched a blue-and-white porcelain bowl shattered into three pieces, a few lines of text suddenly appeared before his eyes: its origins, what had caused the break, and the last person to handle it. No one on this street had ever told him things like that. When a scrap dealer tried to lowball him, Chen Shouzhuo named the bowl’s origins right to his face, and its price went up twentyfold. It wasn’t luck. From that day on, the people of Locust Shade Street knew there was something only he could restore. The auction house in the new district knew there was a contract that had to be signed at his price. A shop that could be repossessed at any moment had become a threshold no one on this street could ignore. He was the worst haggler on the street. If someone offered three thousand, he couldn’t bring himself to ask for eight hundred. If someone bought something for five yuan and resold it for eight thousand, all he could do was watch. It wasn’t until after his master was gone that he touched the blue-and-white porcelain bowl shattered into three pieces. A few lines of text appeared beneath his fingertip, telling him where it came from and whose hands it had passed through. Three years later, no one on this street could take a job without asking him first if he would accept it.