The tail end of 1989 was a strange, liminal time in Shanghai. The air was colder than usual, a biting frost that turned the mud of Pudong into jagged, frozen ruts. While the rest of the world looked at the headlines of geopolitical shifts, the streets of Shanghai felt like a coiled spring. People moved faster, talked in lower whispers, and looked at the rising prices of grain and oil with a mixture of fear and hunger.
For Lin Xia, this was the quiet before the explosion. Her factory was no longer a ruin; it was a fortress of industry. The "Red Star" sign had been replaced by a sleek, hammered-steel logo that simply read L-SYMMETRY.
But despite the success of the French shipment, Lin Xia felt the walls closing in. The capital she had earned—nearly 100,000 USD after the final wire transfer from Maison de Lyon—was sitting in a state bank. In 1989, that much money was a target. If she kept it as cash, the coming inflation would eat it. If she kept it in the bank, the "Internal Security" eyes Han Huojin warned her about would eventually find a reason to freeze it.
She needed to turn the money into something untouchable. She needed to turn it into the future.
Lin Xia's day began at 5:00 AM. She didn't live in the village anymore, but she refused to move into a luxury apartment in Puxi. Instead, she had built a small, austere living quarters above the factory floor.
She stood at her window, looking out over the Huangpu River. The fog was so thick she couldn't see the Bund. She could only hear the mournful lowing of the foghorns from the massive cargo ships.
She performed a ritual she had started since her rebirth: she wrote down three names in a small black notebook.
1. Zhang Wei (Status: Ruined, but still breathing)
2. The Zhao Family (Status: Allies of convenience, predatory)
3. The Market (Status: Unborn)
She crossed out Zhang Wei's name. He was a bug she had stepped on, but she knew bugs could still carry venom. The Zhaos, however, were a different matter.
"Xia? The tea is ready."
Her mother, Su Chen, entered the room. She looked different now, her hands were no longer stained with soil, and she wore a silk padded jacket. But her eyes were still filled with the same maternal anxiety.
"You're staring at the river again," Su Chen said, placing a cup of ginger tea on the desk. "Your father says you haven't slept in two days. The French are happy, the weavers are rich. Why aren't you happy?"
Lin Xia took the tea, the warmth seeping into her cold fingers. "Because the French aren't the end, Mom. They're just the fuel. The world is about to change in a way that will make the village feel like a dream. If I don't move now, we'll be left behind in the mud."
"You already have more than we ever dreamed of," her mother whispered.
"It's not about 'more,'" Lin Xia said, her voice sounding older than her eighteen years. "It's about 'never again.' Never again will a man like Zhang Wei hold our lives in a folder. Never again will we be at the mercy of a village head's whim."
Later that morning, Lin Xia traveled to the Shanghai No. 4 Yarn Mill. This was the "debt" she had agreed to fix for the Zhao family.
The mill was a relic of the 1950s—vast, grey, and suffocatingly loud. Thousands of spindles whirred in a chaotic, inefficient mess. Zhao Kun, the son she had "saved" at the docks, was waiting for her in the manager's office. He looked like a man who was drowning in paperwork.
"It's impossible," Kun said, throwing a ledger onto the desk. "The Ministry wants a twenty percent increase in output, but the raw cotton we're getting from the north is trash. It's full of seeds and dust. It snaps the threads every ten minutes."
Lin Xia didn't sit down. She walked to the window overlooking the factory floor. She saw the workers—tired, cynical, and working at half-speed.
"The problem isn't the cotton, Kun," Lin Xia said. "The problem is the structure. You're trying to run a state factory in a world that's moving toward private competition. You're over-staffed by four hundred people, and your middle-management is stealing the high-grade dye to sell on the black market."
Kun lowered his voice. "Shh! You can't say that here. The walls have ears."
"Then let them hear," Lin Xia said. She turned to him, her eyes sharp. "I'm going to buy this mill from your family."
Kun laughed, a nervous, high-pitched sound. "Buy it? My mother would never sell. This is the Zhao's crown jewel in the textile sector."
"A jewel made of coal," Lin Xia countered. "In six months, the government is going to stop the subsidies for 'underperforming' mills. Your mother knows this. That's why she's letting you fail here. She wants to see if you can survive the crash. But you can't. Not without me."
She leaned over the desk. "Tell your mother this: I will take the No. 4 Mill off her hands. I will take the debt, the workers, and the liability. In exchange, I want the land title to the three warehouses adjacent to my Pudong factory."
Kun stared at her. "You're insane. Those warehouses are prime riverfront."
"They are swamps," Lin Xia corrected. "But to me, they are the future. Think about it, Kun. You get to walk away from this disaster with your reputation intact, and I get the space I need to expand."
As the sun began to set, casting long, bruised shadows over the city, Lin Xia met Han Huojin. They didn't meet at the hotel or the guesthouse. They met in a small, nondescript noodle shop in the back alleys of Puxi.
Han looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his usual poise was replaced by a restless tension.
"The wind is turning cold, Xia," he said, staring into his bowl of noodles. "The hardliners in the Ministry are gaining ground. They're looking at 'private entrepreneurs' with a lot of suspicion. They're calling people like you 'vanguards of spiritual pollution.'"
Lin Xia didn't flinch. She had lived through the political cycles of China before. She knew that every opening was followed by a tightening, and every tightening was followed by an even bigger explosion of growth.
"Let them call me what they want," she said. "As long as I have the foreign currency, they won't touch me. But Han... I need to know about the 'Yellow House.'"
Han Huojin dropped his chopsticks. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet shop.
The "Yellow House" was the nickname for the Pujiang Hotel. It was where a group of "over-the-counter" traders were beginning to gather to trade the first-ever company shares. It wasn't a formal stock exchange yet—that wouldn't happen until December 1990—but it was the "grey market" where the first fortunes were being whispered into existence.
"How do you know about that?" Han hissed. "That's a closed circle. It's only for the 'Big Players'—the sons of ministers and the old Shanghai banking families."
"I know because I know where the money is going," Lin Xia said. "The state is going to start corporatizing the big industries. They need capital. They're going to issue 'vouchers' to workers, and those workers are going to want to sell them for cash so they can buy TVs and washing machines."
Lin Xia reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of 100-Yuan notes—her "personal" savings.
"I want to buy those vouchers, Han. Every single one I can find. I want the 'Vacuum Electron' shares. I want 'Shenhua.' I want them before the formal exchange opens."
Han Huojin looked at her with a mixture of awe and terror. "You're talking about gambling your entire company on pieces of paper that might be worthless tomorrow if the government changes its mind."
"They won't change their mind," Lin Xia said, her voice filled with a terrifying certainty. "They can't. The door is already open. If they try to close it now, the house will burn down. I'm not gambling, Han. I'm investing in the inevitable."
That evening, Lin Xia didn't go back to the factory. She walked the streets of Puxi, watching the city breathe. She saw the "Waiters"—men who stood on corners waiting for a chance to work. She saw the "Speculators"—young men in faux-leather jackets hawking smuggled watches.
She felt the energy of the city—a frantic, desperate, beautiful hunger.
She stopped in front of the Pujiang Hotel. It was a grand, Victorian-style building that had seen better days. To most people, it was just a hotel for foreigners. But Lin Xia saw it as the womb of the new China.
Inside that building, the rules of 1989 were being dismantled. Inside, "Value" was being redefined from kilograms of grain to points on a ledger.
She stood there for a long time, the cold wind biting through her coat. She thought about her past life—the years of being Zhang Wei's shadow, the years of believing that hard work and "staying quiet" would lead to safety.
Safety is a lie, she thought. The only thing that's real is leverage.
The next day, Lin Xia summoned Zhao Kun to her office again. But this time, she wasn't alone. She had hired a young, nervous-looking man named Su Bo. He was a math prodigy from Fudan University who had been fired from a state bank for "suggesting" that the currency was overvalued.
"Su Bo," Lin Xia said, pointing to a map of the city. "I want you to go to every state-owned factory in the district. I want you to talk to the workers who have been issued 'Enterprise Vouchers' instead of their year-end bonuses."
Su Bo blinked. "But Miss Lin... those vouchers are only worth 50 Yuan on paper. The workers think they're junk."
"Exactly," Lin Xia said. "Offer them 60 Yuan in cash. Right now. Tell them you're a 'collector.' By the end of the week, I want ten thousand vouchers."
"Ten thousand?" Kun gasped, leaning against the wall. "That's six hundred thousand Yuan! Where are you getting that kind of cash?"
"I liquidated my silk inventory in Hong Kong," Lin Xia said smoothly. "And I took a loan against the factory equipment."
She didn't tell them that she had also used Han Huojin's name to secure a "bridge loan" from a provincial development fund. She was leveraged to the hilt. If the "Yellow House" didn't deliver, she wouldn't just be poor; she would be in a labor camp.
The week passed in a blur of slow-motion anxiety. Every day, Su Bo would return with sacks of paper vouchers. Lin Xia would count them personally, her fingers turning grey from the cheap ink.
She was waiting for a signal.
The signal came on a rainy Thursday in November. Han Huojin called her office.
"The 'Yellow House' is hosting a private session tomorrow at 2:00 PM," he said, his voice tight. "The first batch of 'Vacuum Electron' shares is being offered for public secondary trading. The 'Big Players' are going to be there. Including the Zhaos."
"And Zhang Wei?" Lin Xia asked.
"He's there too," Han said. "He's found a new patron. A man named Lao Feng—a black-market kingpin from the docks. They're looking to wash their money through the shares."
Lin Xia felt a cold thrill. The stage was set.
She looked at the stacks of vouchers on her desk. To anyone else, they were just scraps of paper. To her, they were the keys to the kingdom.
She walked over to her mother's old sewing machine, which she kept in her office as a reminder. She reached into a hidden compartment in the wooden base and pulled out a small, red silk pouch. Inside was a piece of jewelry—a jade phoenix that had belonged to her grandmother.
"One more time, Grandma," she whispered. "One more gamble."
She dressed carefully for the next day. She didn't wear her business tunic. She wore a high-collared, traditional cheongsam made of her "Ghost-Stitch" silk, but in a deep, mourning black.
She wasn't going to the Yellow House to trade. She was going to execute a legacy.
As she stepped out into the rain, she saw her father standing by the factory gate. He didn't say anything. He just handed her an umbrella.
"The mud is deep today, Xia," he said. "Be careful where you step."
"The mud doesn't matter, Dad," she replied, her eyes reflecting the grey sky. "I've already learned how to fly."
The afternoon of the "Yellow House" session began not with a bang, but with the steady, oppressive ticking of a clock in a small, windowless apartment above a dumpling shop.
While Lin Xia prepared her "war dress" at the factory, the invisible gears of her operation were being turned by two men who could not have been more different: Su Bo, the disgraced math prodigy with ink-stained fingers, and Han Huojin, the rising political star who was risking a bullet for a girl he barely understood.