The Five Brothers' Dream

In the afternoon, the corridors of the Ruizhou Intermediate Court were filled with a faint layer of light. The Lingnan sun slanted in through the high windows and fell upon the terrazzo floor like a length of old silk—bright, yet not dazzling.
Ma Lide had just come out of the courtroom, still holding a case file under his arm, when he heard the duty officer at the entrance say, “Mr. Ma, there is a gentleman surnamed Ma looking for you. He says he is your elder brother.”
Lide was slightly startled. He lifted his head and looked over. Sure enough, he saw his second brother, Ma Yide, standing to one side of the hall. Yide wore a light gray short-sleeved shirt. The buckle of his belt had been polished bright. In his hand, he held a bulging kraft-paper envelope. On his face was the habitual smile of a businessman, but the smile was not entirely steady.
The two brothers had grown up together for many years. With one glance, Lide could tell that Second Brother had run into trouble.
“How did you end up finding me at the court?” Lide asked in a low voice.
Yide first smiled and said, “I happened to be passing through, so I thought I would come see you.”
Lide did not expose him. He only led him downstairs to a small tea room. Once the tea was poured, Yide finally sighed and pushed the kraft-paper envelope toward him. Inside were several contracts, topographical maps, minutes from a village committee meeting, and a few wrinkled photographs taken at the site.
It turned out that Yide had recently established Runde Real Estate Development Company and was ambitiously expanding toward southern Canton. What he had set his eye on was a piece of land beside the road near Nanhai Town. In the past, that place had been fishponds and vegetable plots. The terrain was low and wet, but it happened to sit right next to the newly built highway. Yide felt that once the road was open and people began flowing through, the place would sooner or later become shops, warehouses, and housing. He had run everywhere and finally negotiated a preliminary intention with the town authorities. His thought was to seize the soil while others still could not see the gold hidden in it.
Who would have expected that as soon as clearing of the land began, the villagers surrounded the site.
Some said the ancestral fishponds had not been clearly accounted for. Some said compensation for young crops was too low. Some said the village cadres had signed without the consent of the whole village. At first there had only been a few quarrels. Later, people brought bamboo chairs and sat down in front of the bulldozers, refusing to move. The construction team could not enter. The materials trucks could not retreat. The town government was caught in the middle, pressed from both sides.
Yide had originally thought that the hardest thing in real estate would be money. Only at this point did he understand that beneath land there was not only soil. Buried there also were human feelings, ancestral graves, livelihoods, and old accounts from decades past that could no longer be clearly explained.
Lide flipped through the materials, his expression calm.
“Second Brother,” he said, “working with land is not the same as renovating old houses. With old houses, you close the door, repair and patch them yourself, rent them out, and that is the end of it. Land is different. Move one hair, and you move an entire village; move a village, and you move a whole town. You only see the red lines on the planning map. They see the boundaries left by their ancestors.”
Yide’s face grew warm. He wanted to defend himself, but in the end held back.
In truth, this was not the first loss he had suffered. In earlier years, he had collected several old houses in Canton, simply renovated them, and rented them out. At that time, there were many outsiders coming into the city, and as long as the houses were cheap, there was no fear of having no tenants. Wanting to save trouble, Yide handed the houses to an intermediary to manage and collected rent each month. Later, something happened: someone used his rental property for prostitution and other shameful business. The Public Security Bureau traced the premises to the landlord’s name and fined him several thousand yuan. The money was not a large sum, but it was like a slap in the face, leaving Yide unable to lift his head for several days. Only then did he understand that business did not end when one handed over the keys. Wherever money came from, risk would follow.
Yet once a person had smelled the scent of real estate, it was difficult to turn back easily. Southward from Canton, roads were being laid, factories were rising, markets were expanding, and everyone knew that land would become more valuable with each passing day. Yide was unwilling to remain only in old-house rentals. He wanted to seize this age. He also knew that his own ability was limited; and so, at the most difficult moment, he still thought of his younger brother.
Lide closed the materials and was silent for a while.
“This matter,” he said, “I cannot make the decision for you, and still less can I help you pressure people. To solve it, you must not frighten the villagers away. You must explain the matter clearly. Compensation, procedures, promises—not one of them can be vague. If the town is willing to coordinate, that is a step for you, not a knife.”
Yide nodded, answering with his mouth, while in his heart he had already relaxed by half. He knew that since his brother was willing to say these few words, the matter still had room to turn.
Later, Lide did not personally appear at the site. He only made one phone call to a town cadre he knew. On the phone, he spoke with great measure. Not one sentence crossed the line. He merely said that his elder brother was somewhat rough in doing things, that a young company did not understand local conditions, and asked the town, in accordance with law and regulations, to do more coordination. If Runde should add compensation, let it add compensation; if it should correct something, let it correct it. But he also asked that the enterprise be given an opportunity to make things right.
The person on the other end understood. He also gave Lide enough face.
Several days later, the town government came forward and called a meeting among the village committee, village representatives, and Runde Company. The meeting lasted from morning until afternoon. Tea was changed several rounds; the ashtray was filled and emptied again. The villagers laid out their grievances one by one. At first Yide still wanted to argue, but a town cadre pressed him back with one sentence: “To do long-term business, first you must know how to listen.”
In the end, Runde added a portion of compensation for crops and lost work, promised to give priority to hiring laborers from the village, and rechecked several boundary points. The villagers removed their bamboo chairs. The construction team also withdrew for several days, waiting until the procedures were completed before entering the site again.
The matter was settled just like that.
There was nothing earth-shattering, and there was no clear victor or loser. At dusk in Nanhai Town, wind blew across the fishponds, and the water surface flashed with broken golden light. Yide stood by the roadside, looking at the construction fencing rising again in the distance, and a complicated taste suddenly came into his heart. He understood that he had not forced his way through by ability alone. He had borrowed his younger brother’s name, borrowed the steps offered by the town, and borrowed this age’s tolerance toward the word development.
That evening, he specially invited Lide to dinner.
After several rounds of wine, Yide lifted his cup, his voice lower than before. “Third Brother, this time it was thanks to you.”
Lide did not clink cups with him. He only looked at him and said, “Second Brother, I can help you once, but the road still has to be walked by yourself. From now on, when you do business, do not only look at where the money is. You must also look at where the human heart is. If money presses down upon the human heart as it moves, sooner or later the cart will overturn. Only when the human heart supports the money can the road go far.”
Yide listened and did not speak for a long while.
Outside the window, streetlamps lit one by one, illuminating newly opened restaurants, unfinished buildings, and roads covered in flying dust. It was an age in which everyone wanted to rush forward. Whoever ran too slowly feared being left behind by the times. Whoever ran too fast feared stepping into emptiness.
The two brothers sat amid the lamplight—one newly entered officialdom, the other newly wading into the sea of commerce. Both believed they could see the road ahead, not yet knowing that the true forks of fate are often hidden precisely inside these seemingly settled little storms.