The Five Brothers' Dream

Ma Yide had thought he could remain a little longer in Rende’s home.
He had just returned from the Yellow Mountain. His spirit had calmed somewhat, and his body was gradually recovering. His start date at the Provincial Chemical Construction Import and Export Company was still a month away, so he planned to use the empty interval to reread several books on economics and to write out, from beginning to end, the accounts of his defeat in the ancient Western Regions—to calculate clearly where exactly he had lost.
Unexpectedly, the company suddenly sent notice.
“Comrade Ma Yide, please report back to the company ahead of schedule.”
The personnel officer on the phone sounded urgent, yet carried a note of happiness. “The Autumn Trade Fair is about to open. The foreign trade section is short of hands. You studied foreign trade and know English, so come back first and help.”
When Ma Yide put down the receiver, his heart gave a sudden leap.
The Autumn Trade Fair.
In Canton in those years, those words carried a special weight.
It was not an ordinary sales exhibition. It was the place in all the South where the breath of commerce was strongest, where foreign merchants gathered most densely, and where the smell of renminbi and foreign exchange was heaviest. Every spring and autumn, Canton seemed to become a port suddenly thrown open. Hotels filled, railway stations grew crowded, and the streets gained many foreigners with blond hair, blue eyes, deep-set features, and high noses. There were also more foreign trade cadres carrying sample cases, wearing white shirts, and hanging identification badges from their chests.
The day Ma Yide reported to the company was early autumn.
Canton’s summer heat had not yet fully withdrawn, but the sky was much clearer than in high summer. Wind came from the Pearl River, passing arcaded buildings, banyan trees, and newly paved roads, bringing a little dampness and also the fresh scent of a new age. Shops along the streets were increasing, their signs growing brighter: Hong Kong-style pastries, electrical appliances, clothing, cassette tapes, all crowded together. Bicycles flowed through intersections like tides. Buses moved forward belching black smoke. Young men wore flared trousers and white sneakers, and girls’ skirts lifted softly in the wind. Canton after reform and opening was like a young man who had just learned to do business: the grayness of the old era still remained upon his face, yet the light in his eyes could no longer be hidden.
The Provincial Chemical Construction Import and Export Company occupied an unremarkable office building.
It was not tall: cement walls, iron railings, and stairways carrying the mixed smell of document paper, ink, tea leaves, and old electric fans. Compared with the large foreign trade companies of provincial machinery, silk, and light industry, the Chemical Construction Company was hardly illustrious. Others had broad exhibition spaces, abundant samples, and export volumes easily reaching tens of millions. Their own space was small, their sign not bright, and their main products were merely oils, basic chemical raw materials, coating additives, rubber additives, resins, industrial waxes, and the like.
But to Ma Yide, this was already another world.
The chief of the foreign trade section was surnamed Lu. He was in his forties, with thinning hair and thick glasses, and spoke rapidly.
He pushed a stack of materials before Ma Yide. “Little Ma, this is the product catalogue for the Autumn Fair. Many of our export chemical products come from small and medium-sized private enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. People there are quick-minded. The factories are small, the costs low. The goods may not look pretty, but the prices can compete. European and American buyers mainly care about stable supply, qualified specifications, and quotation. First memorize the English names, specifications, packaging, and payment terms.”
Ma Yide opened the catalogue. Written densely upon it were castor oil, tung oil, rosin, paraffin wax, zinc oxide, calcium carbonate, phenolic resin, paint solvents, industrial glue, and chemical auxiliaries. After each product name came English, specifications, origin, packaging method, and reference price.
The more he read, the brighter his eyes became.
This was different from Hami melons.
Melons could rot, ferment, and turn into yellow water inside a railcar. Chemical products had risks too, but they depended on contracts, specifications, shipping schedules, and letters of credit. The ancient Western Regions venture had been jianghu (country of rivers and lakes); this, before his eyes, was proper foreign trade.
Seeing how seriously he was reading, Section Chief Lu softened his tone. “The company is small, and its foundation is thin. The salary is not high either. You have just arrived; your basic monthly wage is under five hundred. If you do well, there will be a year-end bonus. Last year, someone in the section received more than ten thousand. If the market is good this year, perhaps it may reach twenty thousand.”
Under five hundred.
A bonus of ten or twenty thousand.
When these two figures collided in Ma Yide’s heart, they rang sharply.
Under five hundred was the present day. Ten or twenty thousand was the hope ahead. If he could receive a ten-thousand-yuan bonus in one year and live frugally, Third Uncle’s fifty thousand would no longer be a bottomless pit. If he worked harder, within several years the debt could be cleared. Moreover, in foreign trade, one stood inside a company and looked out upon the world. If, in the future, he truly understood the routes and rules, then when he did business again, he would no longer rely only on a chest full of hot blood.
On the day the Autumn Trade Fair opened, Canton was like a city celebrating a festival.
Outside the exhibition hall, traffic surged and colored flags fluttered. A huge banner hung at the entrance, white characters on a red background, dignified and striking. Foreign trade companies from every province arranged their displays by category. In the machinery hall were diesel engines, machine tools, and agricultural machinery parts. The silk hall shone with brilliance; satin flowed like water, and qipao, scarves, and embroidery glowed softly beneath the lights. The light industry hall was the liveliest: ceramics, toys, luggage, furniture, and enamel goods dazzled the eye. By comparison, the chemical hall looked plain. There were no pretty colors on the counters, only bottles of samples, bags of powder, pieces of resin, and stacks of specification sheets.
But Ma Yide knew that the less beautiful a thing appeared, the more likely it was to hide real profit.
Wearing the white shirt issued by the company and an identification badge on his chest, he stood for the first time behind the Provincial Chemical Construction Company’s booth. On the table lay English catalogues, quotation sheets, sample bottles, and name cards. Several veteran salesmen were receiving buyers. Some spoke in English, some gestured in half-formed Japanese, and others relied on interpreters. Foreign buyers came in wave after wave. Germans examined specifications in great detail; Americans asked about supply volume; French buyers cared about packaging; Southeast Asian buyers were most concerned with price.
A blond buyer picked up a bottle of tung oil sample and asked, “Origin?”
Ma Yide understood and immediately replied, “Zhejiang province. Small factory, but stable supply. We can provide specifications and samples.”
The buyer glanced at him, apparently not expecting this young man to answer so smoothly, and continued asking about packaging and payment terms. Ma Yide was nervous, and sweat lightly dampened his back, yet he forced himself to answer sentence by sentence according to the materials he had memorized the night before. When the buyer left a business card and walked away, Section Chief Lu stood beside him and nodded lightly.
“Not bad. You have courage.”
Those four words tasted sweeter than honey in Ma Yide’s heart.
At noon, the sunlight outside the exhibition hall was strong.
Autumn in Canton was not cool like the North; when the sun struck the concrete ground, heat still rose from it. Yet the wind had lost some of summer’s stickiness and carried a little freshness. Small stalls outside the hall sold soda, boxed meals, and tea eggs. Foreign trade cadres squatted beneath the shade of trees, eating from lunch boxes while discussing orders. Some said there were more European buyers this year than last. Some said light industrial products were being forced down hard in price. Some said the machinery section had signed a large order. Others complained that chemical goods were not attractive, unlike silk and ceramics, which drew crowds the moment they were displayed.
Ma Yide sat on the steps eating his boxed meal and watched the flow of people coming and going. Yet there was no discouragement in his heart.
He liked this atmosphere.
Everyone was busy, everyone was calculating, everyone was searching for opportunity. In the air after reform and opening, there seemed truly to be an invisible force of growth. Those words that had once appeared only in textbooks—market, contract, foreign exchange, letter of credit, agent, export quota, profit margin—had now become real sounds, ringing among exhibition halls, dining tables, telephones, and abacuses.
He suddenly thought of what Lee Hong had said on the Yellow Mountain: a grand age is often hidden in a mountain porter’s shoulder pole.
Then at this moment, the age was also hidden in a quotation sheet, a sample bottle, and one halting sentence of English.
When he returned to the dormitory that night, Ma Yide did not go to sleep at once.
He spread the business cards he had received that day across the table, then took out his notebook and recorded each product’s cost, quotation, likelihood of closing, and customer region. At the end, he could not help starting a new page. At the top he wrote:
Debt Repayment Plan
Third Uncle’s loan: fifty thousand dollars.
Recovered from damaged melons: about ten thousand, but almost nothing remains after miscellaneous expenses.
If monthly salary is under five hundred, after food and lodging, two hundred can be saved.
If year-end bonus is fifteen thousand, all to be used for repayment.
If the second year’s bonus is also fifteen thousand, plus ordinary savings, most of the debt should be repaid within three years.
At this point, he stopped writing.
Under the lamplight, he seemed again to see the railcar of rotten melons at Canton North Station. That had been his defeat, and also his tuition. Now, sitting in the dormitory of a foreign trade company, he no longer dreamed of turning over his life in one night, no longer stared only at tenfold price differences, but began learning how to calculate one stroke at a time and walk one step at a time.
At the end of the notebook, he added several small lines:
The Provincial Chemical Construction Company is small, but it has a gate.
Behind the gate are Jiangsu-Zhejiang factories, European and American markets, and the rules of foreign trade.
First repay the debt, then learn real ability.
If one day I do business again, I cannot rely on courage alone. I must rely on vision, credit, contracts, and patience.
Outside the window, the autumn night of Canton was bright with lamps. Somewhere in the distance, a radio was playing a Cantonese song. Downstairs, someone returned by bicycle, and the bell rang lightly once. Ma Yide closed his notebook, and his heart suddenly became still.
He knew that he had once again arrived at a new starting point.
This time, there were no sixty tons of Hami melons, no dazzling illusion of tenfold profit, and no youthful impulse to gamble with fate. There was only a small office desk, a stack of English materials, a monthly salary of less than five hundred yuan, and the patience a young man had picked up again.
Yet in his heart he clearly understood: roads that can truly lead far often begin precisely like this.