Looking out, the crowd was also shrouded in gloom—blues, grays, blacks, and whites, with few bright colors to be seen.

Brian Clark rode his bike home, feeling as if he had stepped into a series of old photographs. Everything he saw seemed covered with a frosted haze, unclear and unreal.

He turned down a few streets and slipped into an alley lined with communal courtyards, each shared by two or three, sometimes three or four families.

He stopped in front of one house, pushed his bike into a narrow passageway like a doorway, walked further in, and looked up to see a shared kitchen, with two rooms on each side. The Zhang family lived on the left, the Xu family on the right—both worked in the performing arts troupe.

“Mom, I’m home!”

Brian Clark lifted the curtain and entered the room, only to find no one there. As he turned around, a sound came from the kitchen. “You’re back. What kept you busy today?”

“What else could I be busy with? Just running errands and odd jobs.”

He went into the kitchen, where a gentle-faced, slender middle-aged woman was washing rice to cook.

The woman was Emily Bolton, a dancer with the city song and dance troupe. Now that she was older, she had stepped back from performing and rarely went on stage, mainly focusing on teaching.

“You’re still young and just got your official position. Things will get better with time. Oh right, you got paid today, didn’t you?”

“Uh, yeah, I did…”

Brian Clark curled his lips and pulled out an envelope to hand over.

Emily Bolton took out a small stack of bills and counted them—thirty-four yuan in total. She kept twenty yuan and handed the rest back to her son, saying, “Spend it sparingly. Who knows what changes might come. You haven’t even performed on stage yet. If you get to go out, it’s only because of your father’s reputation. Keep that in mind—what matters is building your own skills.”

“Mm-hmm, got it!”

He grunted twice, not wanting to argue. Seeing Emily Bolton finish washing the rice and pour it into the big stove, then start adding firewood and lighting the fire, he couldn’t help but say, “Mom, let’s just buy a rice cooker, and get a gas cylinder too.”

“Gas cylinder? That thing isn’t safe. Who knows when it might explode.”

“Who told you that? If it wasn’t safe, would the government allow it? You just turn it on and there’s fire—no need to go through all this trouble.”

“Still no. Do you know how much a cylinder of gas costs? It’s not worth it.”

“……”

Fine then. Brian Clark fell silent.

In the early 1980s, gas cylinders were still a novelty. Many people thought they were like bombs, and they were quite expensive. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 80s that city residents began using gas cylinders in large numbers, even giving rise to a new service industry.

He wandered around the kitchen, munching on a cucumber, and casually asked, “Where’s Dad? Why isn’t he back yet?”

“He’s got something to do with your uncle. They’ll be eating here tonight.”

“Then I’d better get some liquor.”

“You kid, you know your uncle doesn’t drink.”

Emily Bolton tapped him, then thought for a moment and said, “But we’re out of cigarettes at home. You can go buy a pack.”

As she spoke, she rummaged through her pocket and pulled out a cigarette coupon—a simple piece of white paper with black print, stamped by the Ancheng Bureau of Commerce.

In those days, from rice to salt, towels to batteries, iron pots to umbrellas, radios to suitcases—almost everything required a coupon to buy.

Especially big-ticket items like bicycles. First, you needed a bicycle coupon, and then you had to prepare industrial vouchers. Industrial vouchers were distributed according to your salary, with one voucher for every twenty yuan, and they could be used for a wide range of goods.

These coupons had a certain monetary value, but weren’t exactly money—they were more like purchase certificates, and you still had to pay cash on top.

Brian Clark took the coupon and headed straight to the nearest state-owned store to buy a pack of cigarettes.

On his way back, he happened to run into two people in the alley. One was fair-skinned and tall—his biological father, David Clark.

The other was short, with meticulously combed hair and a mischievous smile. As soon as he opened his mouth, a uniquely raspy “duck voice” floated out:

“Kid, where are you coming from?”

Chapter Two: Origins

Ancheng is best known for two things: Anshan Steel and storytelling.

In the 1950s, the state designated the Northeast as a heavy industry base, with Anshan Steel as the crown jewel, employing hundreds of thousands of industrial workers and supporting industrial and residential districts.

The factories operated in three shifts, which meant there was always an audience at any hour, most of whom had spending power.

The first to sense a business opportunity were the itinerant performers specializing in Xihe Dagu and Northeast Dagu. They usually rotated performance cities on the fifth day of the first lunar month, the fifth day of the fifth month, and the fifteenth day of the eighth month. But because the Ancheng market was so hot, many artists from Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei chose to settle there, even registering their households.

These people formed an unofficial folk art association, the predecessor of the city’s performing arts troupe, and produced a large number of renowned artists—including the most famous, Shan Tianfang.

At that time, Shan Tianfang was already quite well-known, and together with Liu Lanfang and Zhang Hefang, they were called the “Three Fangs.” With high income, big reputation, and a taste for luxury, he would buy imported watches costing hundreds of yuan without a second thought, inevitably attracting envy.

This brother’s real name won’t be mentioned here; in the story, he’s called John Smith, and he’s still alive. In contrast, there was David Clark, who wasn’t very close to him before, but took good care of him in the countryside, and the two became closer.

By 1979, the performing arts troupe was reestablished, and the city radio station recorded “The Story of Yue Fei,” “The Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties,” and “The Alliance of Hu and Yang” for the Three Fangs, propelling the art of storytelling to its peak.