Another way to hell

Chapter 01

From Changtian Tower to Taizi Villa, it takes fifty minutes by car, an hour by bus, or a half-day on foot. Xiao Ran, after downing half a kilo of Wuliangye, completed his life's journey on this road.A Hong Kong truck driver, squatting by the roadside shivering, was unable to utter a word when questioned by the traffic police. Pointing at Xiao Ran's bulletproof Mercedes, he foamed at the mouth, his chin trembling, unable to speak. Reporters surrounded the wreckage of the luxury car, clicking away with their cameras. Under the flash of the lights, Xiao Ran lay in a pool of blood, his eyes wide open, one hand gripping the steering wheel, the other strangely hooked across his chest, with a row of blood-red bite marks on his arm.

By dawn, the scene had been cleaned up, the car towed away, the blood washed clean. Xiao Ran's body lay quietly in the morgue, his face a lifeless gray, devoid of any expression. In the early morning sunlight, people hurriedly walked through the streets, glancing at their watches and biting into their freshly bought buns.

This was Shenzhen, the city at eight o'clock, dangerous and beautiful, an overturned bowl, a flower with a snake coiled around it.

No one knew that Xiao Ran had died. At that moment, Liu Yuan was still asleep, Chen Qiming was wearing an apron and frying eggs in the kitchen, Luo Keer was applying Lancôme nail polish on her feet with her hair in disarray, Wei Yuan opened the purple curtains and stretched languidly by the Houhai, then began to dance to the music doing aerobics. In Anshan, thousands of miles away, Han Ling hesitated as she walked out of the house, always feeling like she had forgotten something, but she couldn't remember what it was.

The face of the deceased was about to be forgotten, and the living laughed and walked forward with determination. Whether you do good or evil, whether you are rich or poor, you will all reach the same end: bloodstained ground, bones gone, or decayed into pus, or turned to ashes.

The deceased was none other than ourselves.

Xiao Ran's first five thousand yuan was steeped in guilt. At that time, he was a purchasing agent at Yashi Qinglan Company, a soap company that produced miraculous soaps claimed to slim down, enhance breasts, and even cure hemorrhoids, widely deceiving the working class across the nation on television. Their boss, Niu Qiao, weighed over three hundred pounds, known as "Meat Niu." Every time at the nightclub, Meat Niu would instruct the madam, "Get me a busty one, get me a busty one." Then he would smack his two purple-black cow lips, with saliva almost dripping. The demand for busty women stemmed from their scarcity, and Meat Niu complained to his friends more than once that his wife had neither front nor back, she was simply a dried-up stick, could be used as a mirror with a coat of shiny paint. So Xiao Ran had his concerns about their breast enhancement products. It was 1992, after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour, Shenzhen was like a rapidly expanding loaf of bread, with countless companies being established every day, and countless people with dreams and border passes flooding into this small fishing village by the South China Sea. Legends of overnight wealth were blowing in the wind, and on the bus, you could often hear conversations like this: a ragged guy said, "I have a shipment coming to the Shekou Port tomorrow, how much do you want?" Another equally ragged guy scoffed, "Doing trade? That's wasting money! I just leased dozens of acres of land in Baoan, real estate is where the big money is, brother!"

Like all rootless migrant workers, Xiao Ran watched as money flowed past him, yet he could only live on the meager salary, pinching pennies to make ends meet. Yashi Qinglan was notoriously cunning, giving him only 1,300 yuan a month, which in the Shenzhen of that time was just enough to get by. Xiao Ran sent 200 yuan home each month, 100 to his girlfriend who was in college, paid 350 for rent, 400 for food, 100 for public transportation, and another hundred or so for necessities like toothpaste and soap. By the end of the month, he would start to panic, fearing that the boss might flee under the cover of night, leaving him to starve.

Shenzhen at that time resembled a massive construction site, with bricks and tiles everywhere, dust flying, and the weather hot and muggy, like fermenting weeds. Xiao Ran lived in Lan Yuan in Shekou, a noisy, chaotic, crowded, and hot home, where corridors were adorned with colorful underwear and bras, and the air was filled with the sounds of dialects from across the country. At night, smoke and dust filled the air, and the place was bustling with noise, as if the entire building were about to take flight. On Xiao Ran's left lived four young men from Hunan, who one night, for reasons unknown, started a quarrel, first exchanging pleasantries about each other's maternal ancestors, then engaging in a physical altercation. After the fight, one of the participants burst through the door, wearing only his underwear as he fled, while another stood with a bloody nose, staring at the white, naked figure, cursing in Hunanese. On the other side, two young women with dubious identities lived, who every night painted their faces and dressed provocatively, swaying their hips as they passed by Xiao Ran's door, then disappearing into the bustling night of Shenzhen.

Xiao Ran later came to miss the life in Lan Yuan, with its chaotic and tumultuous existence, where anything could happen and any character might appear, like an impromptu movie with no script or director. You were a spectator, but you could become the protagonist at any moment.

In 1992, Xiao Ran was still a virgin. His girlfriend was named Han Ling, two years his junior. The love of university students in the early 1990s was much purer than later on, and condoms were hardly necessary. Xiao Ran's transgressions with Han Ling were limited to holding hands, hugs, and kisses. The night before graduation, he mustered his courage and yanked her white t-shirt out from her jeans, his hand entering aggressively, resisting her struggles and rejections, stubbornly climbing upwards. Two minutes later, that restless hand attempted to explore further down, but Han Ling, who had been humming with her eyes closed, suddenly came to her senses, her eyebrows furrowed, her eyes wide, her cherry lips agape, biting him hard on the arm. Two months later, Xiao Ran complained to Han Ling: "I have only three scars on my body, one of which is your doing." The other two were his belly button and a cut on his hand from a childhood fight, for which he had received three stitches. After hearing this, Han Ling kissed him loudly over the phone, then laughed and said, "You deserved it! Rapist."

Every time Xiao Ran called Han Ling, he would shamelessly boast, "I got a raise again!" or "Yesterday, I had seafood with our boss, and he said he's going to promote me." In fact, he had been at Yashi Qinglan for a year, and his salary hadn't increased by a single cent. The purchasing department manager was the boss's nephew, and even if Xiao Ran had two heads, he would never be able to climb to that position. What could he do? This was Shenzhen. If you had money, you could boast about it; if you didn't have money but had a future, you could boast about that; if you had neither money nor a future, you could pretend to boast.

Last Saturday, he accompanied his cousin-nephew to Baoyang to visit several paper factories. As soon as he started work this week, he received a 14-page fax, with ten pages from the Guangdong Printing Factory alone. This dilapidated workshop boasted that it was unique on the ground and unparalleled in the sky, with a long history that could be traced back to the Xuantong era, and a financial strength that even Li Ka-shing would lament his fate. The owner of this workshop, named Wei, was a sly-looking Chaozhou man. When he saw Xiao Ran and Niu Yunfeng off, he deliberately lagged behind and, while Niu Yunfeng wasn't paying attention, gently tugged on Xiao Ran's hem and quickly made a "6" gesture. Xiao Ran smiled, looked at Niu Yun's fat rear, and walked forward with a poker face. Although he hadn't been in the purchasing department for long, he understood what Wei meant: there was a 6% commission if he bought from him.

Purchasing was always a fat job. There was a joke that ranked various professions, and one line was about purchasing agents: "The third-class people, doing purchasing, eat and drink for free and take kickbacks, second only to civil servants and stars who 'make money by shaking their butts.'" A while ago, the company dismissed a purchasing agent named Zhang Zhigang. As soon as he stepped out the door, Niu Yunfeng convened a meeting to denounce his crimes, vehemently calling on everyone to be dedicated and give more than take, and absolutely not to steal or cheat, "Those who take kickbacks will be dismissed!" He spoke with flying spittle, his face puckered as if someone had punched him. After work, Xiao Ran talked about this with the company's Liu accountant. He said that Zhang Zhigang looked quite honest, but who knew he was so bold. Liu accountant sighed, saying that the guy was clever; in these three years, he had at least pocketed 150,000 to 160,000 yuan, and hadn't left any evidence. Xiao Ran was stunned, thinking of his own dry 1300 yuan a month, feeling a pang of loss, as if he had lost a wallet.

From then on, he became more cautious. He would scrutinize every order, and if he felt the price was off, he would secretly note it down and call the factories to verify. After doing this for a month, he discovered that among the seven employees in the purchasing department, besides himself, not a single one had clean hands, including Niu Yunfeng. His cousin-nephew bought two laminating machines half a month ago, one for 19,800 yuan. According to Xiao Ran's estimate, he had at least pocketed 10,000 yuan from it—the factory's listed price was only 16,000 yuan, and according to purchasing practices, the price could have been negotiated down by at least 20%.