The Five Brothers' Dream

The true opportunity for Ma Yide to turn his life around did not come from the exhibition booths of the trade fair, nor from the quotation sheets of small factories in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It came instead from an ordinary household remark that he happened to overhear.
That evening, a fine rain was falling over Canton.
Rende had just returned from a night shift, fatigue still showing on his face. Guo Jiawen had also just come back from an interview at the television station, a stack of scripts in her hand. Ma Yide had been sitting by the window, leafing through a copy of International Marketing, though his mind was not on the book. Outside, the kapok leaves had been washed bright by the rain. Downstairs, white steam from the wonton stall rose thread by thread into the air. The provincial city’s night had a moist and noisy vitality.
Guo Jiawen placed the scripts on the table and said, “Today I went again to interview a meeting on urban-village redevelopment. The city’s biggest headache now is these villages: Tangxia, Liede, Shipai, Xiancun—the farmers’ houses are being built higher and higher, the lanes are so narrow that fire engines cannot get in, and more and more migrant workers are living there. The city wants to expand, but the villages cannot simply be demolished all at once. Pull one hair, and the whole body moves.”
Rende poured a glass of water and asked, “Your father must be under great pressure over this.”
Guo Jiawen nodded. “He is in charge of urban construction and firefighting, so none of these things can be avoided. Old-city redevelopment, allocation of new housing, compensation for villagers, settlement of migrant populations—every one of them is a hard bone. He said that what Canton lacks most right now is not only buildings, but rooms where ordinary people can temporarily set themselves down.”
When these words fell into Ma Yide’s ears, it was like an abacus bead suddenly striking.
Rooms where ordinary people can temporarily set themselves down.
He put down his book and asked, as though only casually, “Where do all these migrant workers live?”
Guo Jiawen said, “Where else can they live? In the urban villages. Four or five people squeeze into one room. Downstairs there are little restaurants, bicycle repair shops, hair salons, grocery stores, and above them the buildings are added upward, floor after floor. By day everyone goes out. At night, when the lights come on, they look like beehives.”
Ma Yide asked again, “Is the rent expensive?”
Guo Jiawen glanced at him. “Why are you asking this?”
Ma Yide smiled. “Just asking.”
But in his heart, a hand had already begun to move swiftly over an abacus.
Canton was growing.
Factories, construction sites, restaurants, wholesale markets, clothing stalls, building teams, domestic work, transport—everywhere needed people. Once people came, they had to live somewhere. Work-unit housing was not allotted to them. Commercial housing was beyond their reach. Proper guesthouses were too expensive for them. Urban villages were dirty, chaotic, and crowded, yet they had one greatest advantage: they were cheap, close by, and convenient for staying alive.
As for the houses in the hands of the villagers, many were only rough shells or half-old rooms. They were not needed for the owners’ own use, and renting them out one by one was too troublesome. If someone could lease them all at once, whitewash them, divide them, add beds, repair wiring, install water meters, and then sublet them to migrant workers—was there not a steady business hidden inside?
That night, Ma Yide did not sleep well.
He took out his account book, turned the lamp brighter, and began writing page after page.
Suppose he leased from a villager one three-story farmers’ building, with five rooms on each floor, fifteen rooms altogether. Monthly rent for the whole building: one thousand five hundred to two thousand. Contract term: one to three years. Whitewashing, repairs to doors and windows, wiring, beds—initial investment around ten thousand. If each room were rented separately, one room could bring two hundred to three hundred a month. If divided into bunk spaces and charged by bed, each person could pay sixty to eighty a month. Once fully rented, monthly income of three or four thousand would not be difficult. After deducting the original rent, utilities, wear and tear, and management costs, a net surplus of more than a thousand a month would still remain.
And if he did ten buildings?
Twenty buildings?
He calculated until the latter half of the night, his palms growing hot.
This time, he was not dazzled by the phrase “tenfold profit.”
Again and again, he wrote down several words:
Near. Fast. Scattered. Small. Stable.
Near, because the source of goods was right there in Canton, with no fear of railway floods.
Fast, because once the rooms were cleaned up, they could be rented out, and cash would return quickly.
Scattered, because rent was collected room by room, and the risk was dispersed.
Small, because the starting capital did not have to be large.
Stable, because the flow of people would not stop. So long as Canton continued to develop, people would always need a place to live.
The next day, while the company was not busy, he asked for half a day off and rode his bicycle to Tangxia.
Tangxia at that time was not yet the later place of high-rises standing one after another. At the village entrance, electric wires crossed and tangled like a mass of hemp hanging in midair. The lanes were narrow and deep. Old blue-brick houses and newly built red-brick buildings crowded against one another. Some exterior walls had not yet been plastered, exposing cement and brick seams. Clothes hung densely from balconies, water dripping into the alleys below. Downstairs were stalls selling rice rolls, noodle soup, herbal tea, tobacco, and liquor. Beside a shoe-repair stand stood a public telephone booth. Accents from other provinces rose and fell in all directions—Hunan speech, Sichuan speech, Central Plains speech, Guangxi speech, Hubei speech—mixed together like a pot of porridge at a rolling boil.
Ma Yide stood at the alley entrance and saw a young worker carrying a bedding roll on his back, asking from house to house.
“Any rooms?”
“Full.”
“A bed space is fine too.”
“Bed spaces are full too.”
The worker walked away in disappointment, his forehead covered with sweat.
Ma Yide’s heart stirred. He felt that what he had seen was not one person, but a river. The flow of people was water, and the urban village was low ground. Water always comes to low ground. Whoever builds the channel first receives the water.
He then went to Liede.
It stood near the Pearl River. The ancestral hall in the village was still there, and old men played cards beneath an ancient banyan tree. Yet beside it were newly built roads and construction-site walls. The old and the new were like two currents colliding in the same narrow lane. The buildings that farmers had added upward stood taller and taller, each one pressed close to the next, until when one lifted one’s head, only a thread of sky could be seen. And yet, the more it was like this, the more people came looking for rooms. Because it was near construction sites, docks, restaurants, and markets, workers would rather live crowded together than spend money riding buses every day.
Ma Yide wandered through the village for three days. He asked prices, memorized routes, counted rooms, chatted with the owner of a small grocery, spoke with migrant workers, and listened in teahouses to local villagers talking idly.
One villager, smoking a cigarette, said, “The rooms are empty anyway, but renting them out one by one is troublesome. Tenants come today and leave tomorrow. Water and electricity fees are hard to collect. Quarrels are annoying too.”
The moment Ma Yide heard this, he knew where the opportunity lay.
He found two old university classmates.
One was Chen Shaokun, smooth-tongued and good at dealing with people. The other was Liang Hairong, careful in his work and accurate with accounts. The three sat down in a teahouse by the street and ordered a pot of strong tea and two dishes of peanuts. Ma Yide spread out a map and circled Tangxia, Liede, and Shipai.
After hearing him out, Chen Shaokun’s eyes shone. “You mean we become second landlords?”
Ma Yide shook his head. “Do not say it so unpleasantly. We are doing housing renovation and subleasing. The farmers save trouble, tenants have somewhere to live, and we earn a management fee and the price difference.”
Liang Hairong frowned. “What about money? Renovation needs money. Deposits need money. Advertisements also need money. You just lost on the Hami melons.”
Ma Yide smiled faintly. “That is why we cannot start big. First do one building. I will use my wages and what little I have left. Each of you puts in some. If it is truly not enough, I will explain to my third uncle, but this time I will not borrow a large sum.”
Chen Shaokun asked, “And the risks?”
Ma Yide raised his fingers and counted them one by one.
“First, the contract must clearly state the lease term, one to three years, and the rent cannot be raised randomly midway. Second, whether the rooms can be divided and whether water and electricity can be changed must be discussed clearly beforehand. Third, we do not rent dangerous buildings and do not touch places with extremely poor fire safety. Fourth, tenants pay one month’s deposit and one month’s rent in advance; cash flow cannot break. Fifth, we place small newspaper advertisements. Better to rent quickly at a small profit than leave rooms empty.”
When he reached this point, even he paused.
He suddenly realized that the defeat in the ancient Western Regions had not been paid for in vain. If it had been the old him, he would have seen only the price difference. Now, he looked first at risk, and only then at profit.
The first building was deep inside a narrow lane in Tangxia village.
The owner was surnamed Liang, a local villager in his fifties, wearing a white undershirt and a pair of plastic slippers. His family owned a three-story building. The second and third floors were empty, ten rooms in all. The walls were blackened, several door locks were broken, electric wires hung in disorder, and the toilet pipes often leaked. Uncle Liang found it troublesome and had never properly rented the place out.
When Ma Yide came to negotiate, Uncle Liang looked him up and down. “You are a young outsider. What do you want with so many rooms?”
Ma Yide smiled. “To save you trouble. Rent the whole floor to me, and I will pay you every month. Small repairs are my responsibility. I manage the tenants. You only collect rent.”
“What if you run away?”
Ma Yide took out his work-unit identification card, then his personal identity card, and then the draft contract. “I work at the Provincial Chemical Construction Company. I cannot run away. We sign for one year at a time, and I pay two months’ deposit first.”
Uncle Liang narrowed his eyes and studied him for a long time. At last he said, “You young people have great courage.”
Ma Yide smiled. “I have suffered losses from great courage. Now my courage is not so great. The accounts are calculated more carefully.”
When the first contract was signed, Ma Yide did not feel the hot-blooded excitement he had felt when shipping melons. Instead, there was a quiet tension in his heart. He knew this was not a gamble.
It was a trial.
Next came whitewashing, repairing doors, changing locks, pulling electrical wires, cleaning toilets, and buying wooden beds.
They found two masons and bought lime, cement, paint, iron wire, and lightbulbs. Once the walls were painted white, the rooms immediately brightened. Screens were nailed to the windows, the floor swept clean, and two bunk beds moved inside. A worn farmers’ room suddenly had the appearance of being “livable.”
Chen Shaokun laughed and said, “How is this renovation? It is simply washing the house’s face.”
But Ma Yide said seriously, “Workers are not afraid of small rooms. They are afraid of dirt, disorder, no locks, and being driven out. As long as the place is clean, safe, and cheap, people will come.”
The advertisement was placed in the most inconspicuous corner of the classified section of the Canton Daily:
Tangxia, near bus stop. Single rooms and bed spaces for rent. Clean and safe. Preferential rent. Contact number: …
Those few characters were so small that they were almost drowned among job searches, recruitment notices, transfer advertisements, and missing-person announcements.
But the next day, the telephone rang.
First came a girl from Hunan who worked in a garment factory, asking whether there were bed spaces for female workers. Then came two young men from Hubei, carpenters on a construction site, who wanted a single room. Then came a cook from Guangxi, newly arrived in Canton and anxious to settle down. In only three days, seven of the ten rooms were rented. In less than a week, all were full.
When the first rent payments were collected, Ma Yide spread the bills one by one across the table.
Monthly rent to the landlord: one thousand two hundred.
Estimated utilities and miscellaneous fees: three hundred.
Total income: more than two thousand nine hundred.
After deducting amortized costs, nearly one thousand yuan still remained for that month.
Chen Shaokun slapped the table in excitement. “This is much better than going to work!”
Liang Hairong could not help smiling too. “The key is that it is steady. Next month we collect again.”
Ma Yide did not smile immediately. He put the money away and said only, “Do not rush. Let us watch it for three months first. Having the rooms fully rented is not ability. If the tenants do not make trouble, the landlord does not raise rent, and the neighbors do not complain, then it counts as ability.”
Sure enough, problems soon arrived.
Some people fell behind on rent. Some drank and made noise in the middle of the night. Some secretly pulled electrical wires to cook, nearly burning out the socket. Ma Yide rushed over at midnight to deal with it. Standing in the hot, stuffy stairwell, smelling kerosene stoves and sweat, he suddenly remembered what Guo Jiawen had said about the fire hazards of urban villages. That very night he set rules: no random wiring in rooms, no open flames, no clutter in public corridors; every room must have a lock, corridor lights must be added, and water and electricity must be checked uniformly at the end of each month.
Chen Shaokun thought he was being too serious. “We are not the neighborhood committee.”
Ma Yide said, “If we want to do this for a long time, we cannot only collect money. The people living in these rooms are people, not goods.”
The moment the words left his mouth, even he felt somewhat surprised.
Before the ancient Western Regions, perhaps he really would have treated people as numbers.
After the first building ran smoothly, they rented a second, then a third.
Contracts were negotiated from one year to three years. Their sources of rooms expanded from streets of Tangxia to Liede, and then to Shipai and the areas around Tangxia. By day, Ma Yide worked at his unit; in his spare time, he visited factories and read faxes. After work, he rode his bicycle to the urban villages to collect rent, inspect rooms, and handle disputes. Weekends were even busier. From morning until night he ran about, sweat soaking through his shirt and his soles wearing thinner by a layer. Yet in his heart there was an unprecedented steadiness, because this time, every step could be seen, touched, and calculated.
The small advertisements in the Canton Daily appeared more and more often.
Sometimes they wrote only, “Near factory, bed spaces for rent.” Sometimes, “Single room with window, suitable for couple.” Sometimes, “Female workers’ dormitory, safe and clean.” Those few words were like grains of rice scattered into the cracks of the city, drawing wave after wave of people looking for shelter. The telephone rang from morning until night. Some even came through hometown introductions, carrying their bedding rolls directly to find him.
Gradually, Ma Yide understood that the true great tide of Canton was not only in the exhibition halls of the trade fair, not only in banquets with foreign merchants, and not only in those bright new buildings along the Pearl River.
It was even more in these damp, crowded, low, noisy urban villages.
Thousands upon thousands of migrant workers poured in from the inland provinces. They did not first ask about ideals, nor about their future. The first thing they asked for was a bed, a lamp, and a corner where they could put down their luggage.
Whoever could give them that corner held in his hands one of the lowest, and also truest, demands of the age.
In less than half a year, Ma Yide already managed more than a dozen buildings.
After one year, more than twenty.
The flow of rent grew larger and larger. At first, money came in by the hundreds; later, thousands and tens of thousands moved through their hands. The three men’s division of labor also became clearer and clearer. Chen Shaokun handled negotiations with landlords and recruitment of tenants. Liang Hairong handled accounts, utilities, and deposits. Ma Yide handled contracts, expansion, and the overall plan. At the end of each month, the three shut the door and calculated accounts. The table was piled with rent books, deposit slips, utility bills, and advertising receipts. The sounds of the abacus, the calculator, and turning pages mixed together. To them, it was more beautiful than any music.
Ma Yide finally repaid his third uncle’s money.
When he wired the last payment from the bank, he stood before the counter for a long time without moving. Those fifty thousand yuan had once pressed upon his heart like a mountain. Now the mountain had finally been moved away, yet he did not feel the wild joy he had imagined. He felt only a soreness in his chest.
That evening, he called his third uncle in Hong Kong.
“Third Uncle, the money has been fully repaid.”
On the other end of the line, Ma Gaohui was silent for a while. Then he laughed.
“Good boy. You have stood up again.”
Ma Yide said softly, “This time it was not by gambling.”
“Then by what?”
“By small money, hard work, and people needing rooms to live in.”
Ma Gaohui burst into laughter. “Now you understand. The greatest business under Heaven is not necessarily found in the most respectable places.”
In less than two years, Ma Yide had unexpectedly become a millionaire.
Of course, that million was not golden cash lying glittering in a trunk. It was building after building of lease agreements, deposit after deposit, string after string of steady rent, some revolving capital, and an ever-growing network of housing sources. Yet in that age, this was already enough to astonish people. At the Provincial Chemical Construction Company, he was still the little foreign trade clerk earning less than five hundred a month and reporting to work on time. But after work, riding his bicycle through the lanes of Canton’s urban villages, he had become, in the eyes of many landlords, “Little Ma who knows how to get things done,” and in the mouths of many migrant workers, “Boss Ma.”
Once, he stood on the rooftop of a farmers’ building in Liede village.
In the night, Canton lay before him. Far away, the lights of high-rises glittered brilliantly; nearby, the countless bulbs of the urban village were packed densely together, like a river of stars overturned upon the human world. In the narrow lanes below, the smell of fried noodles, diesel, laundry powder, sweat, and Cantonese songs from radios all mingled together. Those who had come to Canton from all directions were now lying in the rooms he had rented, each dreaming his own dream of making money, settling down, and rising in the world.
Ma Yide held the cement railing and suddenly thought of the wave of rotten heat that had rushed out when the Hami melon carriage was opened.
That railcar of rotten melons had once shattered his dream of becoming rich. But without that defeat, perhaps he would never have learned to revere risk. Perhaps he would have forever chased distant price differences and never seen the truest need of the city beneath his feet.
Wind came from the direction of the Pearl River, carrying dampness and dust.
In his heart, he silently calculated another account.
One building, ten thousand a year.
Ten buildings, one hundred thousand.
Twenty buildings, two hundred thousand.
If he continued to roll it forward, continued to expand—if one day it was not only renting, but buying, renovating, and truly participating in the growth of the city…
At this thought, he suddenly stopped.
He knew that once again he was standing at the doorway of desire.
Only this time, the light inside the doorway was no longer as illusory as Hami melons.
It was darker.
Deeper.
And even more enticing.
Ma Yide lightly flicked the old iron abacus he carried with him.
Pa.
In the night, that sound was as crisp as another piece placed upon the board of fate.
He looked toward Canton rising in the distance and said softly:
“So the greatest business is not at the edge of Heaven. It is among the people.”