Fang Shicheng found himself rather bored.
Tomorrow marked the Mid-Autumn Festival, yet he hadn’t reported any plans. He intended to simply show his face at the lab and then slip away. Before leaving, he couldn’t even be bothered to enter the lab itself, choosing instead to squat in a storage room beside the stairwell. This room was a repository of the lab’s old instruments—some still functioning, but most broken and left unrepaired, piled up like a graveyard for scientific equipment.
Fang Shicheng often leaned against an old-fashioned thermostatic tubular furnace. Its curved casing offered a comfortable support, allowing him to straighten his arched back briefly. Standing over two meters tall and occupying a significant footprint, this machine had been relegated to a corner by the lab director. Fang Shicheng, however, appreciated it; its entirely mechanical, somewhat cumbersome operation meant fewer ‘newbies’ preferred to use it.
Crucially, this room, and this particular corner, provided enough solitude for him to slack off.
This tubular furnace was a true relic, imported from the Soviet Union before its dissolution—a genuine Cold War artifact. It was undoubtedly over thirty years old, yet still operational.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, be it superstition or something more tangible, Fang Shicheng always felt that the success rate for syntheses performed with this machine was higher than with the lab’s newest Austrian model. Thus, despite its complex operation deterring ‘newcomers,’ he favored it. Even though the machine was long past its retirement date, having been left to gather dust for countless years.
He had granted himself a three-day holiday. Tomorrow, he would first return to his hometown, then fly to Shenzhen City in southern Guangdong Province to meet Wang Tianzhuo.
Wang Tianzhuo had even covered the cost of his plane ticket.
Although Fang Shicheng still had numerous syntheses and analyses pending, he had found a single junior colleague to help oversee the experiment’s progress. After all, that junior didn’t have much else to do; after finishing mass spectrometry, he mostly waited, so he might as well keep an eye on things.
Hiding here, Fang Shicheng wasn’t working; he simply lacked the inclination for experiments. He felt restless, and before long, he couldn’t resist pulling out his phone to check it.
When Grand Master Hunyuan first recommended him for the ‘Holy Grail’ business, his heart had remained utterly unmoved.
He had assumed it would just be another eight hundred or thousand yuan side gig. Most of Grand Master Hunyuan’s recommended tasks fell within that price range, and he didn’t expect a disillusioned middle-aged loser to hand him a golden opportunity.
After all, it sounded like an utterly unreliable and implausible business venture.
But Fang Shicheng wasn’t one to be picky; having a few profitable side jobs already put him ahead of most of his materials science peers. Yet, after just over a week of work, he had unexpectedly earned nearly ten thousand yuan. His previous savings had barely topped thirty thousand, and that was only through extreme frugality.
Nearly ten thousand—enough to make a thick stack of hundred-yuan bills. And this trip to Shenzhen City was entirely paid for by Wang Tianzhuo.
The first time he received a transfer from Wang Tianzhuo, he initially thought it was a joke. Only after repeated confirmation did he realize it was real. Fang Shicheng immediately called Wang Tianzhuo. He was convinced Wang Tianzhuo had made a mistake, perhaps accidentally shifting the decimal point one place too far.
But damn it, it was actually real!
In just over a week, he had truly earned nearly ten thousand yuan. That would translate to over thirty thousand a month, wouldn’t it?
Money truly gave courage. Without it, one could barely move an inch. What good was a high degree, anyway? Tens of thousands of PhDs graduated in Huaguo every year. Did that mean there were tens of thousands more ‘superior people’? Were they not still beasts of burden?
He still recalled a story his old analytical chemistry professor told them during his undergraduate years. It was the 1980s, an era many imagined as a golden age. The old man, then quite young, had just joined a research institute. His salary wasn’t high, but life was comfortable enough. One day, while buying tea eggs at the institute’s entrance, he chatted with the vendor, who revealed how much money they made selling tea eggs in a month.
The professor estimated it was roughly five months of his own salary.
Everything he had once believed to be rock-solid began to crumble.
‘Those who make missiles are worse off than those who sell tea eggs’—that phrase was a true reflection of the time. The old professor only taught them for one semester, but he recounted that story more than once, like a broken record. Each time, Fang Shicheng listened distractedly, each time feeling a bitter taste in his mouth.
Estimating it was time, Fang Shicheng set off for the airport. He didn’t take a taxi, instead transferring from a bus to a subway-bus station, buying a ticket, and slowly making his way to Luzhou Airport.
Outside the window, Luzhou looked hazy and grey. Though it was close to the Mid-Autumn Festival, the sky remained perpetually overcast, as if rain could fall at any moment, and no moon was visible at night.
A doctoral senior he knew, working at a research institute, earned just over seven thousand a month. Was that a high salary?
In 2013, Huaguo’s minimum wage standard in Luzhou was nine hundred and twenty yuan. Compared to that, it was high. Yet, that salary still might not surpass what someone selling tea eggs outside a school could make.
Humans are never satisfied. Just as Huaguo’s internet was enthusiastic about praising Nordic high welfare, Huaguo people who actually went there often felt depressed, believing their taxes went to the government to support idlers and refugees, feeling that after all their schooling, their salary after tax wasn’t much higher than a street sweeper’s, feeling that the food there was both poor and expensive…
Different places always harbored different sorrows. Humans were beasts constrained by their circumstances.
Thirty years had passed, and the professor’s once-solid world had long since collapsed, but it had yet to be rebuilt. At least now, Fang Shicheng felt that researching polymer chemistry was truly less practical than starting a small business. His research was years, perhaps even forever, away from production, existing merely as data on paper—academic garbage that in a few years, others wouldn’t even bother to cite in a review paper.
Last night at eight, he took a bus home, carrying gifts he had prepared for his family. They totaled almost twenty thousand yuan—a level of spending he would have previously considered unimaginable.
He bought his parents each a leather coat. Unbranded, but of excellent material. The coats were made of lambskin; mink was still beyond his reach. He also bought his father two good packs of Huangshan Tiandu cigarettes, a local specialty in Luzhou. The most expensive gift, however, was for his sister: a Mido automatic mechanical watch with a mother-of-pearl dial. The Chinese name for the brand wasn’t particularly appealing, sounding like ‘syphilis,’ but its appearance was undeniably beautiful.
He had even secretly looked it up; it was considered an international luxury brand. He had no prior knowledge of mechanical watch brands, unable to distinguish between first, second, or third-tier watches. But even a third-tier Reman model would have been unattainable for his past self.
He had once worn a watch himself—a nameless quartz watch that stopped when its battery died. He’d simply assumed it was broken, tossed it into a drawer, and now had no idea where it was.
Even though Fang Shicheng wore watches, he was completely ignorant about them. He simply heard the salesperson’s routine spiel about the watch automatically winding with arm movement and the sapphire crystal being scratch-proof. He didn’t understand any of it, but he believed it, and he bought it.
Even now, he felt a little dazed. He vividly remembered their expressions last night at eleven when he returned home and gave his parents the clothes and cigarettes, and his sister the watch. He couldn’t quite describe his parents’ expressions; old age had stiffened their faces, but Fang Shicheng was certain they felt relief and emotion. They didn’t ask where he got so much money, seeming to naturally assume their son, pursuing the highest degree at a top university, would inevitably earn a fortune.
His sister immediately put on the watch. Unsure which wrist to wear it on, she put it on her right hand, only to switch it to her left after he teased her. Clumsily, she fumbled with the clasp for a good while before finally securing the strap. A child’s excitement and joy were impossible to hide, even though his sister was already in high school.
This wasn’t his first time bringing gifts home. In the past, he often brought Luzhou local specialties—black tea bricks and cured duck—returning dusty and rustic. But this was his first time bringing such expensive gifts. For the first time, he felt something different.
He didn’t believe these foreign-branded consumer goods held any inherent nobility. Even though he had spent eight months of an average Luzhou resident’s salary in one evening, this experience only deepened his conviction that none of it was noble.
They were merely expensive; expensive enough that ordinary people couldn’t afford them daily but might grudgingly manage to buy them with a bit of sacrifice. What was their cost? Fang Shicheng didn’t think the production cost of these twenty-thousand-yuan items was much higher than that of a cured duck.
But precisely because of this, Fang Shicheng felt even more exhilarated.
This exhilaration stemmed from the most primitive desire for consumption, like the euphoria of a monkey living by the sea suddenly discovering that worthless shells could be exchanged for food. This era was changing too quickly. Because of this, opportunities to get rich were as abundant as shells on the beach. Scattered odd jobs wouldn’t make him wealthy, nor would a nine-to-five research institute job.
The bus arrived at Luzhou Airport, and Fang Shicheng prepared to board.
His hands trembled slightly. He heard the boarding announcement and, guided by staff, proceeded directly to the plane through the VIP channel on the second floor of the terminal. Economy class passengers would only be seated after business class passengers were settled.
Wang Tianzhuo had bought him a first-class ticket. This was his first time flying business class.
The regional narrow-body jet was small, without a true first class. Business class had only three rows, with four seats abreast, while economy class had six seats abreast and was narrower.
Business and economy classes were separated only by a thin layer of flame-retardant composite material, and it was even transparent, given the narrow-body jet had only one aisle.
Fang Shicheng wanted to laugh. He found it a bizarre spectacle that someone would pay double for a slightly wider seat and a vague, ephemeral ‘distinguished’ experience for a mere two-hour flight.
His seat was by the window in the second row of business class.
As he sat down, looking out the porthole at the concrete ground, he felt his heart nearly pound out of his chest.
He waited for the plane to take off, a wait that no longer felt long. Economy class passengers gradually boarded, a few glancing at those in business class, but most simply ignoring them.
The captain spoke in both Chinese and English. The English was clumsy, and there wasn’t a single foreigner on the plane; he spoke English purely because regulations required it.
A tall flight attendant in flesh-colored stockings demonstrated emergency equipment usage to the business class passengers, reminding everyone to switch their phones to flight mode. This drill was performed before every takeoff, and she appeared to be merely going through the motions.
The opening remarks were utterly tedious, making Fang Shicheng feel drowsy.
As the plane took off, Fang Shicheng felt a dull pressure in his ears, a result of the changing air pressure, and he slightly parted his lips. Through the porthole, he watched Luzhou; the city’s buildings gradually shrank below.
Someone in the back of the plane vomited, and he caught the sour smell.
The inner material of the porthole was also a type of plastic, with some faint scratches on it. This reminded him of the pitted acrylic crystal on his old, long-broken nameless quartz watch.
It gave him a sense of unreality—flying on a dilapidated narrow-body regional jet that reeked of disinfectant and vomit, this ‘mongrel’ beneath him, utterly devoid of dignity, carrying him through the air.
The plane pierced through the clouds, the sun blinding him.
The cloud layer brought to mind the sea near his hometown; when there was no wind, the ocean and the sea of clouds differed only in color.
He could almost smell the briny scent of the sea breeze amidst the odors of vomit and disinfectant.
Suddenly feeling a profound lack of interest, Fang Shicheng pulled down the sunshade.