Epilogue (1/2)

Epilogue (10 Years with Shen Bin)

I’m Shen Bin.

I’ve known Ah-ge for ten years now.

I’m twenty-eight and Ah-ge is already thirty-four, hahaha.

We’re in Shanghai now, living a good life and making a s.h.i.+t ton of money. We never thought ten years ago that we’d get to where we are today. Shanghai’s been developing so quick, thank G.o.d I got out early. If I stayed in there for ten years, I’d be a moldy piece of junk who doesn’t know what the h.e.l.l is going on.

I didn’t know for a long time that Ah-ge wrote this thing and that it’s about us. It was the girl from the store, Ah-Fen, who told me about it!

She’s in Shanghai, too. She’s married now and her kid’s growing up too, but she’s still reading BL or whatever—the you-know-what kind. She even made a bunch of lady-friends who always come to the store acting all suspicious.

But I guess they come to look at me.

The super hot stud, duh!

We’ve been through a lot these years and Ah-ge’s still going on blind dates. Sigh.

But there’s been less and less because everyone knows he’s picky. Muma told me to talk him into lowering his expectations and told me to lower mine, too.

It’s a hard situation.

Okay, I’ll start from the top. I only have a junior high education so please bear with me here.

The year 2000, Ah-ge and I came to Shanghai together. At that time, the area around Century Park was just like the wilderness. The houses were nice but not very hospitable. We decided we couldn’t live there so we rented out the blank house and rented a place by Dongchang Road, near Yaohan. They were all old state-owned buildings, a lot like the villages back home. We were on the sixth floor. The bottom floors all had security grilles on the windows and made it look pretty much like a jail.

We rented a two room, semi-furnished, for two hundred a month. Adding on the rent from the house by Century Park, we earned about seventy bucks a month.

I learned a bit about computers when I was in the slammer, but really it wasn’t anything major. Computers change really fast. One year it was still 586 but then the next year it was Celeron and Pentium. I figured it was a good business. A computer that cost eight hundred bucks only lasts you a year or two before a newer generation comes out—it’s almost like fas.h.i.+on, right?

The computer section in Yaohan had just opened at the time and I first worked at a branch of a brand name store. After I got myself familiar with the place, I found a few people and started to a.s.semble parts and sell pirated cell phones along with it. It made good dough.

Ah-ge’s luck turned for the better after meeting me, hahaha, he just doesn’t wanna admit it.

His major isn’t very hot on the market but there was the Shanghai Skilled Worker Program or whatever at the time and university grads were valuable. He was pretty good with English so he found a biotech company headquartered in Hubei with a location in Shanghai through a cla.s.smate. But at the old age he was (lol) —which was true, there’s no use giving me those looks—he only made, like, two hundred fifty dollars a month as a beginner a.s.sociate. I mean, I was much better off just selling pirated phones.

But Ah-ge wasn’t interested in that. He wanted a job just to get a registry in Shanghai. I on the other hand got a blue-stamp because of the house. He worked hard for half a year before going back to his comfort zone and opening a video store here.

Shanghai is such a big place and rush hour is horrific. There’s not many people who got the time to rent videos. They usually just buy it. It’s different from how it is back home. The same goes for books and manga, too. I didn’t even know where those kids get so much cash. They’re such spenders. It wasn’t until later that I found out that the farmers in Pudong are just stinking rich. Ask anyone you see on the street and they’ll have a few houses from having their land bought out.

Ah-ge found a small store front downstairs to sell videos. The business wasn’t that great at first but somehow it boomed. He’s definitely talented in these things, haha.

It was after we lived there for a year or two when I went to collect rent that I saw a huge parade of cars heading to the new development just next door. Turns out it was a group of real estate shoppers from Wenzhou, buying out hundred-thousand-dollar houses like it was nothing.

I told Ah-ge after going home. He kept turning and tossing that night and didn’t behave in bed either. Later, he decided to sell the shops and the house back home and buy houses in Shanghai.

Haha, pretty good intuition, huh.

Ever since then, Ah-ge has been completely immersed in buying and selling property. He’d ride his stupid old bike around and about the neighbourhoods. Starting from Century Park, to Huamu,Sanlin, Yangpu and Minhang, he practically looked through every alleyway.

We made some calculations last night. We can retire ahead of time!

All in all, Ah-ge, the educated one in the family, makes a bit more than me. But he is Ah-ge after all!

Ah-Fen married a small business owner in ’02 and came to Shanghai, too, to help out at the store. Her husband and I work together with computers and the partners.h.i.+p is going well.

Ah-Fen is still kinda weird and wacky. Her daughter’s already three and she’s still watching inappropriate videos, all from j.a.pan, too. Thankfully, I’m a good person and I keep her secret for her.

She always hogs the computer when she watches the store and goes on this pink-themed forum, scrolling through it endlessly every waking minute of the day (and night!). Sometimes she’d even grin with her pearly whites all showing—creepy! I think she made a few internet friends, saying that she’s getting business for the store. Then, a few girls showed up at the store. There was a master’s student too. She looked pretty cute but I don’t think Ah-ge fell for her. If he dare…hmmph! I’ll make sure he says goodbye to his little friend!

Ah, screw it. If I did that I’d suffer too. I’ll torture him. No, that’s too much. Oh well, he’ll never change anyways!

We’re the kind that’s been through h.e.l.l and back!

Anyways, back to the story of those little girls, they hid it pretty well but I could tell right away. They came into the store and kept staring at me and Ah-ge.

The h.e.l.l you looking at?

Ah-ge’s really slow with these things and didn’t give a d.a.m.n and kept doing his research on real estate. I had to take care of my computer business too, so I had to go. Surprisingly, two of them followed me!