Chapter 1: The Stowaway

On the endless sea, moonlight trembled in ripples. Two black dots fought their way across the water, swimming toward an unknown shore filled with hope.

This stretch of water was called Houhai Bay by Hong Kongers, and years later mainland maps would label it Shenzhen Bay.

Houhai Bay linked Bao'an on the left and Hong Kong on the right. It was a great place to practice swimming, and thousands upon thousands of mainland stowaways had swum from here into Hong Kong.

Right now, those two black dots on the sea were obviously stowaways too. At the moment, people called them escapees to Hong Kong; in a few years Hong Kong media would call them human snakes.

"Splash, splash..."

The two stowaways swam closer and closer, now only a little over half a mile from Yuen Long's shoreline. From the shore, one could already faintly hear the sound of their strokes.

The one in front had two pig-bladder floats tied to him, inflated like balloons, and he was kicking through the water with fierce momentum.

The man behind him was lying on a wooden plank and seemed to be completely spent. Again and again he muttered lines from Chairman Mao's quotations to keep himself going: "Set your resolve, fear no sacrifice; overcome every difficulty, strive for victory..."

"Bang!" One of the pig-bladder floats tied to the man in front suddenly burst.

The stowaway behind him was half dead from exhaustion. Seeing that, he perked up and teased, "Ha! I told you to carry a plank across the sea and you had to cheap out... Huh? Aiguo, what's wrong?"

"My leg... my leg cramped!" The man in front slapped the water in panic, and with another bang, he burst the only remaining pig-bladder float too.

...

Kang Jianfei vaguely felt someone patting his face, then his stomach was pressed hard a few times. His throat tightened, and with a "wah" he coughed up a few mouthfuls of water.

"Stop fucking bothering me!" Kang Jianfei mumbled in a daze, flailing his hands around.

"He's awake, Aiguo's awake!"

The man kept slapping Kang Jianfei's face, lowering his voice as he shouted, "Aiguo, we're in Hong Kong. This is Hong Kong, where you can make more than a thousand dollars a month! Open your eyes and take a look!"

Kang Jianfei had had enough of him. He angrily opened his eyes and was about to curse him out, but the scene before him swallowed the words back down.

A guy in a tattered red undershirt was grinning stupidly down at him, and here...

This didn't look like the hotel where he had passed out drunk.

"Am I Kang Aiguo?" Kang Jianfei suddenly felt a flood of chaotic memories surge into his head.

Kang Jianfei quickly remembered who the man in front of him was: Hu Yuejin, from the same village. The two of them had swum over from Bao'an together, planning to sneak into Hong Kong, a place said to be paved with gold, to look for relatives.

Hu Yuejin was very tall, close to 1.8 meters, but unfortunately he was thin as a bamboo pole.

By the time he dragged the unconscious Kang Jianfei ashore, he was already out of strength. Seeing Kang Jianfei wake up, he simply collapsed on the ground, weakly saying, "I'm exhausted. I can't even walk anymore."

Kang Jianfei pushed himself up, holding his dizzy head, and found that his cramped calf was still sore. Only after walking a few steps did he gradually get used to it.

Kang Jianfei closed his eyes, rubbed his face, and opened them again. The same barren beach was still in front of him - it wasn't a dream. He really had fucking crossed over!

After a dazed spell, Kang Jianfei finally more or less accepted the fact that he had crossed over. Fine, he'd crossed over, so whether he accepted it or not was irrelevant. Was he supposed to break down and cry? Or act gloomy and wait for someone to comfort him?

What a joke. When had Kang Jianfei ever lowered his head and admitted defeat?

Crossed over or not, it didn't matter. He had no real attachments over there anyway.

Both men's clothes were soaked through. They stripped off their pants and shirts, wrung out the water, and spread them over the rocks by the shore to dry.

After resting for a full hour or more, Kang Jianfei and Hu Yuejin finally set off barefoot in the dark, looking like two refugees.

"Which way?" Hu Yuejin had never been to Hong Kong. Looking at the wasteland all around them, he asked.

"Forward, obviously!" Kang Jianfei looked up at the North Star, roughly estimated the direction of Hong Kong's urban districts, and led the way in front.

Hu Yuejin caught up and said, "Aiguo..."

"Stop. Don't call me Aiguo anymore." Kang Jianfei had accepted the crossing over, but he had not accepted the name Kang Aiguo. He thought that name was too tacky, too stupid, and it sounded awful.

Hu Yuejin said in surprise, "If I don't call you Aiguo, then what do I call you?"

Kang Jianfei said to him solemnly, "From now on, my name is Kang Jianfei!"

Hu Yuejin looked at Kang Jianfei and asked curiously, "When did you change your name?"

"Just now," Kang Jianfei came up with a reason and explained, "And I'm not the only one who needs a new name. You need one too. I heard Hong Kong people are very xenophobic. Look at our names - Aiguo and Yuejin. Anyone can tell we're from the mainland. We'll be discriminated against by the locals when we look for work!"

"Right, yeah. My cousin wrote the same thing in his letters - after he got to Hong Kong, he changed his name too!" Hu Yuejin nodded. His older cousin had smuggled into Hong Kong a few years earlier and was said to have made a fortune there.

Hu Yuejin touched his sharp-cheekboned, skinny face and asked with utter self-admiration, "What do you think of Hu Juncai? I think the name Juncai suits me perfectly."

Kang Jianfei coughed once and nodded. "That's a classy name."

...

At this time, many parts of Yuen Long had not yet been developed. Farmland and vegetable plots were everywhere, completely unlike Yuen Long thirty years later.

Kang Jianfei and Hu Juncai walked for half the night, and both of them were barefoot. Even with calluses on their soles, by daybreak their feet were covered in blisters.

As they walked, Hu Juncai suddenly remembered something and quickly took a plastic bag from his trouser pocket. The bag even had the words "Wellcome Supermarket" printed on it.

Back then in Guangdong, fish and meat were tied up with dried water grass. If anyone had a plastic bag, it was an extraordinary treasure.

Carrying a plastic bag out with you was even more eye-catching than carrying an LV bag would be decades later, and it would draw envious stares from everyone along the way.

If the plastic bag got a hole in it, the owner still wouldn't bear to throw it away. He'd even patch it up with the best cloth.

The plastic bag in Hu Juncai's hand had been sent over by his cousin along with some things. Inside were a few letters and a small cloth pouch, and in the pouch were Hong Kong dollars.

"Oh no, it's gotten wet!"

Hu Juncai took several envelopes out of the plastic bag, looked at the stains soaked into them, and frowned. "Aiguo... no, Afei, your uncle's address was in some Shek-what-was-it again? I can't read it anymore."

Kang Jianfei snatched the envelope away and found that many of the characters had been blurred by waterlogged ink. He could only make out the words in his head: "Shek Kip Mei Upper Estate... Damn, walking from Yuen Long to Kowloon would take a full day. No, we need to take a ride!"

Hu Juncai took out another envelope and said, "My cousin said he's fishing over on Lantau Island and married the daughter of a fishing boss. I wonder how far Lantau is."

Kang Jianfei patted his shoulder with great sympathy and said, "Then take your time walking and save your strength. Looks like you'll be swimming across the sea again."

Hu Juncai said bitterly, "W-we have to swim the sea again?"

After walking a while longer, they finally found a very bad little road. More than ten minutes later, a truck drove up the road, and Kang Jianfei immediately rushed into the middle of the road, waving nonstop.

"Screech..." The truck slammed on its brakes and stopped. The driver stuck his head out, looked at the two men who looked like beggars, and asked, "Mainlanders who swam over from the other side?"

Hu Juncai stepped forward with a flattering smile. "Comrade, do us a favor and give us a ride into the city."

The driver hesitated for a moment, pointed to the back, and said, "Get in. I'll give you a lift. I'm going to Kowloon, and when we get there you can get out yourselves."

"Thanks, thanks!" Hu Juncai kept bowing.

The two of them climbed into the truck's cargo compartment. It was full of seafood, and the fishy stench mixed with rot was enough to make anyone want to throw up after just a short while.

Kang Jianfei didn't throw up at all. Instead, he closed his eyes and dozed off leisurely. He had been walking all night last night, and he was completely worn out. He needed to grab some rest while he could.

Before crossing over, Kang Jianfei had been something of a strange case. He was sold to the mountains by traffickers as an infant and raised by a farming family until he was ten.

His adoptive parents had originally bought him because they couldn't have children, but when Kang Jianfei was five, they unexpectedly had a biological son of their own. Their attitude toward him gradually changed from doting affection to neglect and disgust.

Later, his adoptive parents practically treated Kang Jianfei like a little slave, berating and beating him whenever they were displeased with him.

It wasn't until he was ten that the abused Kang Jianfei did something outrageously bold. He poured pesticide into the food at home, poisoned all six members of the family nearly to death, and then fled the mountain village overnight.

Kang Jianfei took all the cash in the house. Combined with begging along the way, he escaped all the way from the north to the south.

During one theft, a gang leader took a liking to him, so he followed that boss around stealing and scamming people. He did it for a full three years and became an excellent pickpocket.

Later, when their den was wiped out by the police in one sweep, Kang Jianfei was not yet fourteen and had no relatives or elders to look after him, so he was sent to a children's welfare home for adoption.

After that, Kang Jianfei studied for a few years. Because he was much older than the classmates in his grade, he was often mocked.

After the Nth time he beat up the classmates who laughed at him, the school finally refused to keep him any longer, and Kang Jianfei gloriously dropped out.

Afterward, Kang Jianfei worked on construction sites. When he couldn't get by, he also went back to his old trade and pickpocketed money again.

Later, he went with a coworker to Hengdian to work as an extra, muddled around there for a few years, then went north to Beijing to drift. A few years later, somehow or other, he got into the photography department at the Beijing Film Academy.

By then, Kang Jianfei was already 28.

He only studied in the photography department at Beijing Film Academy for two years before being persuaded out of school for fighting, and he was handed a certificate of incomplete study from the academy.

After that, he shot little ads, wedding videos - anything that could make money, he shot it.

Three years later, Kang Jianfei joined a large state-run film and television company. Relying on his superb camera skills and a few dirty tricks, he shoved aside countless coworkers and seniors and became the personal cameraman of a big-name director in less than five years.

To climb the ladder, Kang Jianfei had used some shady, low-down methods. The people he had screwed over gave him two indecent nicknames - Kang Cheap-Fly and Bastard Fly.

...

The truck bounced along until it reached Kowloon, and the two men, shaken nearly senseless, scrambled down in a hurry.

Hu Juncai waved at the driver and said, "Thanks a lot, comrade!"

The driver waved it off and drove away. Soon the truck disappeared from sight.

Standing on a Kowloon street, Hu Juncai stared in shock at the high-rises around him and said excitedly, "Aiguo, this is Hong Kong. We're finally here!"

"Please, my name is Kang Jianfei!" Kang Jianfei reminded him again.

If they had not already smuggled over, Kang Jianfei would have actually preferred to struggle on the other side of the bay.

The two of them had swum over from Bao'an County, which had only been renamed Shenzhen City a few months earlier, and that place was practically paved with gold.

What was more, they still had a house and their own plot of land in Shenzhen. How much would that land be worth in a few years' time?

Unfortunately, once the two of them had smuggled into Hong Kong, the land in Shenzhen was no longer theirs.

Two barefoot men in tattered pants and undershirts walking shoulder to shoulder along the bustling streets of Hong Kong were like fireflies in the dark - dazzlingly bright. As soon as they got off the truck, passersby began pointing at them.

Very quickly, a policeman came over and pointed his baton at Kang Jianfei and Hu Juncai. "Smuggled in from the mainland?"

"Ah, I... we..." Hu Juncai, who was usually so talkative, got a little rattled when he saw the policeman and was so scared he couldn't speak properly.

Kang Jianfei smiled at the policeman and said, "We're here to visit relatives."

The policeman didn't ask any more questions. He simply pointed them in the right direction. "Hurry up and go to the registration office to get your identity cards. And don't walk around the street looking so disheveled in the future. It hurts Hong Kong's city image."

Seeing that the policeman wasn't going to pursue it, Hu Juncai immediately straightened his back and saluted smartly. "Yes, comrade!"

"Call me officer!" After saying that, the policeman turned and left.

"Yes, Officer Comrade." Hu Juncai stomped his foot, stood at attention, and shouted while saluting.

Kang Jianfei looked at this harmonious scene of police-civilian exchange and couldn't help but sigh that Hong Kong was really "inclusive" at this point!

From the 1960s all the way up to 1981, mainland stowaways who made it into Hong Kong's urban districts could immediately apply for a legal Hong Kong identity card.

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle...

Hu Juncai's stomach suddenly growled.

"Let's get something to eat first," Kang Jianfei said. They had been busy all night and still hadn't eaten anything. Swimming in particular was brutally exhausting, and by now their stomachs were practically flat with hunger.

Hu Juncai pulled out the small cloth pouch from his trouser pocket. The dozens of Hong Kong dollars inside were still drenched and hadn't dried yet; his cousin had sent them to him before.

Hu Juncai shook the water off the Hong Kong bills gloomily and asked, "Can wet money still be used?"

"I'll help you use it." Kang Jianfei took the soaked Hong Kong dollars and walked toward a bakery in the distance. On the way, he brushed past a passerby, and his fingers slipped out casually.

By the time he reached the bakery, Kang Jianfei already had a wallet in his hand. He pulled out a ten-dollar Hong Kong bill and said, "Boss, give me a few buns."

...

"So this is Coca-Cola? Damn, it's good! If I could eat bread and drink Coke every day, I wouldn't even do it for a god."

While chewing on bread and drinking Coke, Hu Juncai wore an expression of pure bliss. He was so happy he looked ready to die from it.

"Drink less. Too much of that stuff will rot your teeth," Kang Jianfei reminded him.

Chewing on his bread, Hu Juncai crouched by the roadside like a beggar, his eyes scanning every Hong Konger who passed by like radar.

Suddenly his eyes widened, and he stared lecherously at a woman bending over to fix her high heels across the street. He couldn't look away no matter what.

In Kang Jianfei's eyes, the woman's outfit looked utterly ridiculous: tight jeans with high heels, plus a shirt layered under a vest. Thirty years later she would definitely be mocked as a country bumpkin.

But in Hu Juncai's eyes, who had never tasted a woman, this was absolutely a sexily fashionable outfit at the max level.

Especially the round ass she stuck out when she bent over, outlined by the tight jeans into a full, taut curve. For conservative mainland men, the visual impact was enormous.

A moment ago Hu Juncai had been satisfied with bread and Coke, but once he was full and warm, lust came creeping in. His nose started bleeding and he didn't even notice, his eyes glued to the woman's ass as he swallowed and criticized, "Hong Kong women are shameless. If my future wife ever dared to leave the house dressed like that, I'd beat her to death."

At last the woman finished fixing her high heels and started walking again. Only then did Hu Juncai reluctantly tear his gaze away. Turning his head, he saw Kang Jianfei looking at him with a half-smile, and he couldn't help blushing. He coughed once and said, "Let's ask for directions first. Finding your uncle matters most."

Hu Juncai's cousin was over on Lantau Island, and since the two of them had hitched a ride to Kowloon, Hu Juncai decided to stay at Kang Jianfei's uncle's place for a few days first.

Shek Kip Mei wasn't far from here. The two of them asked their way along the route and found the place in just over half an hour. What appeared before them were several H-shaped apartment blocks.

Looking at those apartment buildings, Hu Juncai said enviously to Kang Jianfei, "Wow, your uncle lives in a place like this? Looks like he's made money too - at least a millionaire!"

Kang Jianfei curled his lip. Seeing him this thrilled over nothing, he couldn't bear to explain that what stood before them were public housing blocks built by the British Hong Kong government specifically to solve the housing problem for the poor.

Clutching the envelope, they climbed several flights of stairs. After knocking, a middle-aged woman opened the door and looked at Kang Jianfei and Hu Juncai with suspicion and caution, asking, "Who are you looking for?"

Hu Juncai squeezed to the front and asked, "Miss, is this the home of Wu Chenggang?"

"Yes, I'm Wu Chenggang's wife. He's not home right now. If you have something, come back another day."

The middle-aged woman was obviously very guarded around the two of them, mainly because the way they were dressed made it too easy to misunderstand them.

Kang Jianfei pulled Hu Juncai, who was hopeless at this sort of thing, back and stepped outside. He put on an extremely sincere, honest-looking smile and flattered her with honeyed words: "So you're Auntie. Uncle always praises you in his letters, saying you're beautiful and capable. I kept thinking he was bragging. Now that I've seen you in person, I can tell Uncle was telling the truth. You're even younger than I imagined. You can't possibly be over thirty yet, right? Uncle is one lucky man..."

In his previous life, Kang Jianfei had spent two-thirds of his time drifting from place to place, so of course he had all kinds of survival tricks. He was also extremely skilled at flattery.

He went on for two or three minutes, and by the end of it the middle-aged woman had practically been praised into a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

The middle-aged woman was so dazzled by Kang Jianfei's praise that she lost her bearings. A huge smile spread across her face until it seemed ready to fall off. Warmly, she said, "You're Aiguo, right? Look at my memory. You said in your letter last year that you were coming to Hong Kong, and I completely forgot!"

Kang Jianfei smiled and said, "Hi, Auntie. I'm Aiguo, but I've changed my name to Kang Jianfei now."