Chapter 1: The Blind Box Appears

Lin Wan was choked awake by a smell of the sea. Fish scales, rotten netting and mouldy wood, all stirred together, poured into her nose; her stomach heaved and a mouthful of sour water surged up. She opened her eyes. Above her, the roof beams were black and hung with grey cobwebs, and the wind whistled in through the cracks in the walls.

A heap of things that did not belong to her flooded into her mind — she was Lin Wan, sixteen years old, living in a fishing village called Cha Wan at the edge of Hong Kong Island. Her father, Lin Dahai, had gone out to sea, his boat had capsized, and he was gone; her mother had died of illness three years before, and she was the only one left in the family.

Lin Wan, who had spent the better part of a lifetime scrambling through the world of business, woke up to find herself a fisher girl who could not even find rice to put in the pot.

She propped herself up from the bamboo bed, set her bare feet on the packed-earth floor, and looked the room over from east to west. A bamboo bed that creaked and complained, a quilt with patches on patches, thin as paper. On the stove stood an iron pot whose bottom had rusted nearly through. In the rice jar there was only a palm's depth of coarse rice, the grains few enough to count.

In the corner stood a fishing net with three great holes torn in it, its twine gone mouldy. Lin Wan crouched before the rice jar and scraped out what little rice was left at the bottom; it did not make half a bowl. Fine, then — to be transmigrated into an opening like this, the heavens truly thought a lot of her.

Starving was no way out of it. She dragged an old wooden chest out from under the bamboo bed and turned it upside down. Pressed at the bottom of the chest was an oilcloth bundle; she unwrapped it layer by layer, and inside were three silver dollars, "Yuan Datou" coins, the reeding on their edges perfectly clear. There was also a copper button, worth next to nothing. Three silver dollars taken out could be exchanged for a few catty of rice — but only a few catty, and that was all.

She was pondering with a silver dollar in her fingers when her fingertips touched something hard and cold in a crack in the bed board. She dug it out and looked — a palm-sized iron box, rusted black all over, its original appearance impossible to make out.

She rubbed at the iron box with her sleeve, and the lid sprang open with a snap. Inside, layer upon layer of gears and copper plates began to turn slowly, and a line of green characters, like fireflies, floated up: "The time-space blind box machine — insert old paper money or hard currency, and draw best-selling goods from the next ten years. Basic chamber: silver dollars, copper coins, old paper notes. Premium chamber: not unlocked."

Lin Wan stared at it for a full five seconds, then rubbed her eyes. "Well now," she muttered under her breath, "so you even get issued equipment when you transmigrate." Looking more closely, she saw three slots inside the iron box: the first was lit, the second was grey, and the third was blurred into a smudge. The lit one was marked "Basic chamber — one draw left today."

She gritted her teeth, picked one coin from the three silver dollars, and put it into the Basic chamber. The gears clicked round a few times and, with a puff, spat out an oil-paper parcel, still faintly warm. She peeled the oil paper away, and inside was a cake of goose-yellow soap. The scent of jasmine rushed into her nose like a blast; in that stinking, broken-down room, it was as if a fragrance bomb had gone off.

Then a memory poured into her mind as if being poured into the crown of her head — this soap was "Double Jasmine," made by an old Shanghai factory in 1949, the thirty-eighth year of the Republic. Later the factory was restructured and the formula changed, and the old scent was cut off for good. There was still a scattering of stock on the Hong Kong Island market, but few people knew the goods for what they were, and most used it as ordinary soap.

The memory kept spilling out: over in Wan Chai there was a fashion editor surnamed Su who had written a column on foreign goods for a magazine for years. Next year she would run a special feature on "old domestic brands," devoted to those discontinued labels. When this batch of "Double Jasmine" was dug out then, the price of the old-version soap would climb by leaps and bounds.

The cake in Lin Wan's hand happened to be from exactly that batch. On the wrapper, between two jasmine flowers, was printed a line of numbers so small as to be almost invisible. She turned the soap over and over, looking at it three times, and her heartbeat slowly steadied.

Editor Su's column would not come out until next year, and she had no source for even tomorrow's breakfast. Lin Wan held the soap in her hand, her mind racing: taken to a grocery shop to swap for rice, it would be worth one dollar twenty at most; but if she found someone who knew the goods and was greedy to take it off her hands for cash, she could cash in next year's price today.

An information gap is money — a truth she had carried from her previous life into this one, and it worked wherever she went. The key was who would play the sucker. She was just turning it over when the wooden fence gate outside the courtyard was slapped three times — pa, pa, pa.

"Wan girl! Wan girl, are you home?" A sharp, bright voice flipped in over the top of the wall, its tail rising, like a line from an opera. A memory popped up in Lin Wan's mind with a buzz: Aunt Liu, her aunt, Lin Dahai's own elder sister. This woman was famous for ten li around for her shrewdness; an egg that passed through her hands would lose a layer of skin.

The original girl had not had much to do with her, but every encounter had ended with her being coaxed and browbeaten out of some advantage. Lin Wan swiftly stuffed the soap into her apron pocket, tucked the silver dollars back into the oilcloth bundle and pressed it under the bed board, and only then shuffled over to open the door.

Aunt Liu stepped through the door in one stride, a bamboo basket on her arm holding two salted fish, her face smiling like a dried chrysanthemum: "Oh, my dear niece, your aunt has come to see you. That business with your father... sigh, how could he be gone, just like that? However will you manage, all on your own?"

Her mouth was full of gloomy talk, but her eyes were not idle; like two brooms, they swept the room from east to west. Seeing the rice jar, her mouth twitched; seeing the broken fishing net, she tutted twice; and at last her gaze nailed itself to the bulge in Lin Wan's apron pocket.

"What have you got stuffed in your pocket?"

Before Lin Wan could answer, Aunt Liu's hand was already reaching over, quick and sure, and in one grab she pulled the soap out of the apron pocket. She held it under her nose and sniffed; her brows first knit, then suddenly smoothed out, and her eyes lit up as if lamps had been lit in them.

"Oh! This scent — true jasmine! Where did you get it? The family can't even keep the pot on the boil — where did you get spare money to buy a rarity like this?"

She turned the soap over and over, and the more she looked, the less willing she was to let go of it. "All right, all right, your aunt will keep it for you. I'll sell it later and buy you rice with the money, so you don't go spending it wildly."

"Don't be in such a hurry, Aunt." Lin Wan was in no panic at all. She leaned against the stove, her arms folded across her chest. "You can take the thing, but you have to give me three dollars sixty in Hong Kong dollars."

Aunt Liu's hand stopped beside the bamboo basket. She turned her head back, her expression like someone who had just heard that the sun rose in the west.

"Three dollars sixty? You little slip of a girl, can you even do your sums? One cake of soap, and you're selling it for three dollars sixty? Three dollars sixty could buy half a dan of rice! Has hunger muddled your head?"

She slapped the soap down on the stove top. "Your aunt is saying this because she feels sorry for you and is planning for your good — and here you are, doing business with your own aunt."

"This is no ordinary cake of soap." Lin Wan picked the soap up and pointed to the line of small printed numbers on the wrapper. "Double Jasmine, from the old Shanghai factory — the old version from 1949, the thirty-eighth year of the Republic. The formula was changed afterwards, and this scent can never be blended again. Over in Wan Chai there's an editor surnamed Su who specialises in collecting exactly this kind of discontinued old domestic brand, and writes articles for people to read about them.

"If you don't believe me, Aunt, take it home and try it, and see whether it fetches a price." As she spoke, she tucked the soap into her pocket and lifted a foot toward the door. "If you think it's too dear, I'll take it down to the pier and try my luck."

Aunt Liu's face went green, then white. This girl was usually as silent as a stoppered gourd; today she talked with a nose and eyes to it all, and had even produced an "Editor Su" — it did not sound made up. But three dollars sixty was really a lot; it would pain her for days. And what if it stuck in her hands? The girl talked it up to the skies, but there was no such thing as sure profit in business.

"Two dollars fifty," she said through gritted teeth, setting the bamboo basket down on the stove. "Your aunt will give you two dollars fifty — that's not little. You need money urgently and I need money too; let's each take a step back."

"Three dollars sixty, and I won't sell for one ten-cent coin less." Lin Wan did not turn her head, her steps perfectly steady. "Think it over yourself, Aunt. I'm working on an empty stomach and have no time to wrangle with you."

In truth she was even more anxious than Aunt Liu: every extra day the soap sat, she starved one more day — but not a trace of it showed on her face. Behind her came Aunt Liu's footsteps, hesitating for two steps, then breaking into a little run; a hand grabbed her arm. "Hey, hey, hey, come back! Fine, fine, fine — three dollars sixty it is. I'm only agreeing to this for your dead father's sake!"

Aunt Liu fished a grey cloth bundle out of her waistband and unwrapped it layer by layer; inside were a few crumpled Hong Kong notes. She counted out three one-dollar notes, then dug six ten-cent coins out of a hidden fold and slapped them down on the stove top one by one, muttering with every slap, "A loss, a loss."

When she had slapped them all down, she picked the soap up, held it up to the light to check it over and confirm there was nothing chipped or damaged, tucked it into her bosom, turned and headed for the door, dropping one line as she went out: "When your father's death benefit comes through later, don't you come asking your aunt for a loan! Your aunt has no money either!"

The wooden fence gate slammed shut with a clang, and the courtyard was quiet at last.

Lin Wan picked up the Hong Kong notes from the stove top one by one, smoothed out the creases, and counted them twice — three dollars sixty, not one ten-cent coin short. It was the first money she had earned since coming here. It was not much, but at least she had not made a loss. She took one dollar twenty to the little shop at the village entrance and bought some coarse rice, and got two sweet potatoes with broken skins thrown in besides.

Back home she set up the iron pot and cooked a thick pot of sweet-potato congee, and with Aunt Liu's two salted fish to go with it, ate the whole thing down in one go. With food in her belly, her mind livened up too — tomorrow she would have to go and look around the pier and see what livelihood there was; she could not rely solely on drawing one cake of soap a day.

After eating, she took out the remaining two silver dollars and weighed them in her hand, intending to put another one into the Basic chamber. She had just brought the silver dollar close to the slot when the iron box shook violently — ka, ka, ka, three crisp sounds — and the Basic chamber's slot snapped dark. A line of red characters floated slowly up from the bottom of the box: "Basic chamber: today's number of draws has been used up.

"The Premium chamber needs 'Hong Kong dollars' to unlock — insert Hong Kong dollars, and draw scarce resources." Lin Wan lowered her head and looked at the Hong Kong dollars in her hand. After buying the rice, two dollars forty remained; she dug in her apron pocket and scraped out two more ten-cent coins, which made two dollars sixty altogether.

She set the silver dollars down beside the iron box and tentatively brought one toward the Premium chamber's slot. The slot did not so much as twitch; it only flashed a line of small characters: "Hong Kong dollars only. Balance insufficient."

Lin Wan held that two dollars sixty in Hong Kong dollars in her palm and gave the iron box a laugh. "Fine. Tomorrow I'll go and look around the pier, and see if I can earn a little more. You've got quite an appetite, haven't you."