Daomu Biji: Wu Xie’s Private Notes

I had written this before everything happened.

I never thought that I would use this notebook one day. I used to be someone who was idle all day, and the only chance for me to write something was to sign the bill and pay the money.

It should be a good thing to be so busy that I have to write things down, but for some reason, I can’t feel happy about it.

The reason why I’m writing this is because I hope the things I experienced can be recorded clearly. The things that I’ve been through are so incredible and complicated that I just hope that everything can be restored, along with the cause of this whole incident.

This incident occurred on February 1, 2003 when an old man with a golden tooth came to my store to ask me about my grandpa.

At that time, I was cautious and didn't pay much attention to him, but it was strange the more I thought about it.

Our family had suppressed anything related to my grandfather's affairs for almost six or seven years, and no one had mentioned them since. So why did this Gold Tooth suddenly ask about him?

Looking at his style and tone of speech, I didn’t think he had any good intentions.

Later, Boss Qian from next door told me that he knew the old man with a golden tooth who came to my store. That guy was notorious, and his name was Jin Wantang. He was a patron of Beijing’s Crescent Hotel.

Crescent Hotel was the upgraded version of Panjiayuan, and vendors who were well-off would open shops around there. They didn’t need to worry that they had no place to set up, or deal with any confrontations with the cops.

I didn’t have enough qualifications to get in, but I had heard something about the hotel. It was said that any item they auctioned was worth lots of gold bricks.

So, if this rich old fellow came to Jiangnan and walked into this little shop of mine to try and make friends with me, what were his intentions?

At that time, I told myself that I had to investigate this matter when I had the chance, but I forgot about it in the blink of an eye. There were too many weird people and strange things in our business. I couldn’t catch a break while running an antique shop, so I didn’t really care about such a mess.

I was quite emotional that day. My livelihood back then was very bleak. The owners of the restaurant next to my shop had built an outside hall, and they also had a snack processing factory. Even their foreman drove a car to work. But I was a poor boss and had to save money every month so that I could pay my staff.

At that time, those who wanted to sell antiques weren’t as successful as those who opened restaurants. What kind of world was this?

I thought it was better to persuade my father to close the antique shop and open a restaurant instead, but I wasn’t really serious about it.

I didn't expect so many things to happen later. If I had known earlier, I would’ve set my shop on fire to avoid the future troubles.

But the fact is, we can’t know what will happen in the future. In the end, I inevitably got sucked into the mess and got deeper and deeper into it.

Even so, I never thought that I would have to use this method to sort out the whole thing later.

These articles were written during the whole process. Although the ending is still unclear, in retrospect, the bits and pieces in these memories are also quite interesting.

Now I’ve sorted out some things for later reference. I believe I’ll eventually get the answers, I just have to keep persisting until I do.