Li Jianming was born in 1975 and graduated from Renmin University. He was assigned to the Chengde County Planning Bureau. After five years, an institutional restructuring eliminated his position, and a transfer order pushed him out to Xinglong Town.
On the day he reported for duty, no one came to meet him, and no one mentioned a welcome dinner. He crouched outside his dormitory repairing a rusted lock, but even by midnight, he still had not fixed it. The next day, local contractor Wang Huaian passed by and asked his workers to replace the lock. It was only a few dozen yuan, and Li Jianming tried to pay, but Wang Huaian waved him off. "It's no big deal."
It all started with that lock.
When Li Jianming got his car serviced, Wang Huaian "happened to" pay with his card. When Li Jianming's father was hospitalized, Wang Huaian cleaned up after him and tended to his every need. After winning 28,000 yuan at the mahjong table, he did not return it. For his mother's seventieth birthday, he gave her three black bags containing 360,000 yuan. His mother said, "Hold on to it for me." When Li Jianming was 600,000 yuan short of the price of a home, Wang Huaian sent him the money the next day, without asking for a note. From the township to the county bureau, from the county bureau to the municipal bureau, from there to vice mayor, and from vice mayor to chairman of a state-owned company: at every step, someone "happened to" settle the bill for him.
His father named him Jianming, after the saying, "Listen to all sides to gain clarity; trust only one side and you will be left in the dark." He remembered it all his life, yet in the end, he only listened to the part that suited him.
In the spring of 2028, a car came to pick him up, saying, "We'll take you to see something different first." Sitting in the back seat, he watched the mountains pass outside the window and remembered that afternoon, twenty-six years earlier, when he tried to fix a lock.
