The Five Brothers' Dream

That year, in the wind of Focheng, there was the smell of copper, iron, plastic, machine oil, and money.
The factory buildings of Shenmoon Appliances Group spread along the provincial road like an ever-expanding city. By day, when the iron gates opened, more than a dozen production lines roared at once. Electric fans, rice cookers, water heaters, and range hoods came off the conveyor belts one after another. By night, the factory compound was ablaze with lights. Blue smoke rose slowly from the workshop roofs, making half the sky look as though it had been burned red. Every day, trucks arriving from all over the country came one after another, lining up from the factory gate to beyond the town, and from beyond the town deep into the provincial road. At the longest, it was said the line stretched more than twenty kilometers. Drivers dozed in their cabs; purchasing agents with leather briefcases squatted by the roadside eating boxed meals. Everyone knew that if one could load goods from Shenmoon Appliances, those goods would turn into cash upon return.
At that time, Shenmoon Appliances was the pride of Focheng city, and also its legend.
In the loudest advertisements during prime time on Central Television, there was Shenmoon Appliances. On the most prominent counters in shopping malls across the country, there was Shenmoon Appliances. On the dowry lists of newly married couples in county towns, there was also Shenmoon Appliances. What people spoke of with even greater relish was that national leaders had once visited Shenmoon Appliances for an inspection. In Zhang Jianqiang’s office, several large photographs still hung: he wore a dark suit, bending slightly at the waist, standing beside central leaders, smiling with both restraint and force. Whenever visitors came, he would intentionally or unintentionally guide them to that wall and point to the photographs, saying, “The state thinks highly of us private enterprises. We cannot make the state lose face.”
The words sounded grand. Only those who had followed him knew that Zhang Jianqiang’s road had been one rolled out of the mud.
When he was young, he had served in the army. After demobilization, he was unwilling to return to the village and guard a few thin mu of land. In the early eighties, when he first went to Japan, others bought watches and suits; he, piece by piece, carried back small Japanese household appliances. Rice cookers, electric fans, water heaters, microwave ovens—anything that could be dismantled, he dismantled; anything that could not be dismantled, he smashed open. He spread the parts across an entire room and studied circuit boards, switches, casings, and screws as though studying the weapons of an enemy army. He did not have an engineer’s diploma, but he possessed a nearly barbaric intuition: if the Japanese could make it, the Chinese could make it too; if the Japanese sold it to Chinese people for one hundred yuan, he would make it for thirty.
The first workshop was nothing more than several old warehouses. Workers were recruited from the villages. Technicians were dug out from state-owned factories. Drawings were produced one hand-sketched sheet at a time. By day, Zhang Jianqiang ran to banks for loans, to supply and marketing cooperatives, to industrial and commercial bureaus and tax offices. By night, he guarded the prototypes in the workshop. When a machine burned out, he cursed. When the circuit finally worked, he laughed. When a product sold, he could not sleep all night. Later, he applied for patents on a set of structures formed through dismantling, improvement, and trial production, and registered the brand “Shenmoon Appliances.” At that time, few people truly understood what patents meant. They only knew that whoever occupied the market first could survive.
Yet the real war often did not begin in the workshop. It began in the marketplace.
After Shenmoon Appliances became popular, Happy Home Appliances, Midea, and a group of electrical appliance factories both local to Focheng and from elsewhere seemed to emerge overnight. Everyone was staring at the same piece of meat: household appliances. A technician might be at Shenmoon Appliances today and at another factory tomorrow. A mold factory might open a mold for Shenmoon Appliances in the morning and quote a price to its rival in the afternoon. A distributor might pound his chest in Zhang Jianqiang’s office one moment, then go to another factory the next to force down prices. The commercial world of that era did not have all the pretty words that came later. What it competed on was speed, courage, connections, and ruthlessness. Whoever shipped first, occupied counters first, and secured bank credit first might drive the others to death.
The patent dispute broke out against precisely such a background.
After Happy Home Appliances launched a new product, its exterior appearance, internal structure, and core control method were all extremely similar to a patent Shenmoon Appliances had applied for in its early years. At first, Zhang Jianqiang did not show any change in expression. He merely sent people to buy back a sample machine and called technicians to dismantle it overnight. Parts were laid out one by one across a long table. An engineer lowered his head and pointed at several key structures.
“President Zhang, this is not just similar. They followed ours.”
Zhang Jianqiang did not immediately slap the table. He stood before the window, smoked half a cigarette, and fixed his eyes on the trucks lining up in the far reaches of the factory compound. After a long while, he said, “They are not stealing one machine. They are stealing ten years of our life.”
The lawsuit soon reached the court.
At that time, Ma Lide had just found his footing in the Intermediate People’s Court of Ruizhou. Young, tall, handsome, and not given to many words, he was always modest and courteous before leaders, and smiled exactly enough before colleagues. He wore a white shirt, his cuffs clean, his leather shoes polished bright. Walking through the court corridors, he already had some of the steadiness of a man of officialdom. He was not yet the presiding judge, but because he knew the case files, understood procedure, and had strong command of writing, he was assigned to assist in handling this highly influential patent property dispute.
As soon as the case arrived, Lide knew that this was not an ordinary lawsuit.
On one side was Shenmoon Appliances, the richest enterprise in Focheng, a major local taxpayer, with the rice bowls of several thousand workers connected to its factory gate, and behind it a chain of interests involving countless townships, banks, and distributors. On the other side was Happy Home Appliances, equally deep-rooted, fiercely rising, not a character that could be pressed down easily. On the surface, they were fighting over a patent. In reality, they were fighting over the right to speak in the market, over who could stand upstream in Focheng’s home appliance industry, over whose brand would be pasted in Chinese family kitchens for the next ten years.
The case files rose to half a man’s height. Patent certificates, technical appraisal reports, sales contracts, advertising records, distributor testimonies, product structure diagrams—dense stacks pressed down upon Lide’s desk. He read slowly, and he read carefully. Others looked at the legal provisions. He looked at the flow of interests behind the provisions. Others looked at who was right and who was wrong. He looked at who would die if he stepped back, and who would win if he stepped forward.
The first time Zhang Jianqiang met Ma Lide was in a small meeting room at the court.
That day, Zhang Jianqiang came in with his lawyer, technical consultants, and two deputy general managers. His presence was forceful. He was not tall, but his shoulders were broad, his face sun-reddened, and his speech carried a soldier’s directness. As soon as he sat down, he pressed one hand heavily upon the case file.
“Comrade Ma, this is no small matter. If this case is not judged clearly, then in the future no one in Focheng will dare invent, no one will dare build a brand. Everyone will go copy. Who will still honestly put in money?”
Lide did not rush to state a position. He only poured him a cup of tea and said, “President Zhang, the court looks at evidence.”
The sentence was very light, yet it made Zhang Jianqiang pause. He had seen too many people who pounded their chests, and too many who spoke in circles. A young man like Ma Lide, who was not in a hurry to please, made him look twice.
In the following months, the case became like a pot of hot oil continually boiling.
Shenmoon Appliances kept supplementing evidence. Happy Home Appliances brought in a stronger team of lawyers, arguing that the technical solution was a general industry design and did not constitute infringement. The media began catching wind of rumors. The chamber of commerce stepped forward to mediate. Banks, too, were watching. More subtle still, some local departments did not want the matter to become too large. Both companies were signboards of Focheng. If either collapsed, it would look bad. Yet if the matter were lightly let go, it would be tantamount to admitting that the market could be seized by copying.
Lide moved among these currents. On the surface, he only organized materials and communicated procedure; in truth, every sentence had to be measured. He reminded Shenmoon Appliances that anger alone could not win a lawsuit; the core points of the patent, technical differences, and calculation of losses all had to be solid. He also reminded Happy Home Appliances that if the evidence continued to remain vague, the consequence would not be compensation alone, but damage to market credibility. Everyone felt that this young man was polite. No one dared to look lightly upon him.
At the most crucial pretrial meeting, the two sides disputed endlessly over a set of core components. Happy Home Appliances’s expert insisted that this was only ordinary improvement. Shenmoon Appliances’s engineer was so angry his face turned blue, yet for the moment he could not explain clearly where the true point of innovation lay. The air in the meeting room was heavy, as though rain were about to fall. Lide flipped through the diagrams, then suddenly stopped. Pointing to an inconspicuous connection method in the two structural drawings, he asked, “Why is this point completely identical on both sides? If it is a general industry design, where are the early public materials? If it was independently developed, where are the research and development records?”
The meeting room immediately fell silent.
It was not a judgment, yet it was like a knife cutting open the hardest bone of the entire dispute. The expression of Happy Home Appliances’s lawyer changed. Shenmoon Appliances’s technician suddenly lifted his head. Zhang Jianqiang looked at Ma Lide, his gaze shifting slowly from surprise to deep scrutiny. He understood that this young man was not someone who only recited legal provisions. He could see the true vital point.
Later, the case did not end in the life-or-death manner the outside world had imagined. The court’s attitude, the pressure of technical appraisal, market opinion, and the balance of local industry ultimately pushed both sides toward a complicated result: Happy Home Appliances acknowledged that some products contained disputed elements and made adjustments and compensation; Shenmoon Appliances preserved its patent rights and market reputation, but did not force the other side into a dead end. When announced to the outside, the wording was calm, like a rational resolution under a system. Only those within the game knew that during those months, how many people had slept through no nights, how many telephones had rung after midnight, how many cups of wine had been drunk in exchange for one sentence that could not be written into the case file.
Zhang Jianqiang won, but he was not complacent.
He knew this was not the last battle. The tide of China’s household appliance industry had already risen. Today it was Happy Home Appliances; tomorrow it might be Midea; the day after, it might be some small factory whose name no one had heard. Technology would be caught up with. Advertising would be imitated. Channels would be fought over. Even talent would be poached. In the end, running an enterprise was not merely making products. It was building defenses. It was not guarding one factory. It was guarding a lifeline.
After the case closed, Zhang Jianqiang specially held a banquet in the Shenmoon Appliances Building, inviting people from the court, the chamber of commerce, and several local friends. Lide originally did not wish to go, but a leader said, “For appearances, you should still attend,” and so he went. That night, the banquet hall of Shenmoon Appliances was brilliantly lit. Beneath crystal chandeliers sat some of the people in Focheng who were best at making money. They spoke of output, loans, exports, CCTV advertisements, and also of the winds in Beijing and local policy. Lide sat among them, listening little, remembering much.
After this case, Ma Lide became a judge capable of standing on his own.
It was also on the night that this commercial war ended that he first met Zhang Yaoyao.
She came down the stairs wearing a pale dress, her hair loosely pinned. In her brows and eyes there was a brightness nourished by wealth, yet no vulgarity. She had come to deliver a document to her father. As she passed Lide, Zhang Jianqiang called to her, “Yaoyao, come, meet him. This is Ma Lide. Young and promising.”
Zhang Yaoyao had just graduated from Lingnan University, where she had studied accounting, but she had long since become her father’s right hand. She lifted her head and looked at him, then smiled politely. That smile was very light, like a clean wind suddenly entering the banquet hall.
Ma Lide rose, bowed slightly, and said, “Miss Zhang.”
At that time, he did not yet know that this woman would become, in his later fate, a chess piece both gentle and sharp. Nor did Zhang Jianqiang know that this young assistant judge before him, seemingly steady and modest, held in his chest not only law, but also deeper desire and more distant calculations.
Late that night, Lide walked out of the Shenmoon Appliances Building. Outside the factory compound, the long line of trucks had still not dispersed. Drivers smoked in the lamplight. In the distance, the machines in the workshops were still roaring. He turned back and looked once at the building where photographs with central leaders hung upon the wall, and suddenly felt that a new age of China had begun precisely amid such roaring.
Some would grow rich inside it. Some would fall inside it. Some would create brands. Some would copy legends. Some would believe in rules. Some would make use of rules. Some would risk their lives in the sea of commerce. Some would stand on the bank of power and watch the tide.
And Ma Lide, standing upon that bank, realized clearly for the first time:
Money was not merely money. Money was a road.
Power was not merely power. Power was a gate.
The truly formidable person was not the one who rushed into the waves, but the one who could see clearly the direction of the tide.
That night, the wind of Focheng blew hot.
But his heart was hotter than the wind.
Soon, he and Zhang Yaoyao began to fall in love.