Chapter 116: The Jade Watermelon

On the American East Coast, Thanksgiving lost its most important element without a family reunion. Su Mu went back to bed and slept until dawn without dreaming.

When he awoke, Li Ping'an was still asleep in the other bed. Su Mu stood by the window and looked down. Everything below was blanketed in white. Snow was still falling, though the sky was already much brighter than it had been the day before. The streets were nearly empty, with only a few cars in sight.

The roof of the Empire State Building in the distance was covered in snow. Seeing the skyscraper and the swirling flakes of snow as soon as he rose put Su Mu in an exceptionally good mood.

Then he thought that if he sold his shares in Qu Gou Supermarket now, he could exchange them for a large house in Manhattan. His spirits lifted even further.

The feeling of being rich was wonderful—far better than Su Mu had ever imagined...

The radiator hissed. After brushing his teeth, he drank some water, then went into the small adjoining room with a desk and called home to let his family know he was safe.

Su Dingcai answered the phone and gave his son a thorough scolding for waking him. Su Mu felt he deserved it. It was only four in the morning in Los Angeles, and he did not even know whether his father had clearly heard the news that he had come to New York before the call abruptly ended in a series of beeps. His father had probably gone back to bed to catch up on his sleep.

...

Their first stop that morning was the Metropolitan Museum. As one of the most famous museums in the world, its collection was naturally extraordinarily rich.

Li Ping'an had no patience for leisurely observation. He rushed through the exhibits, glancing at everything as he went. Su Mu, by contrast, stopped and started, pausing whenever something caught his interest to study an object inside a glass case.

He had never learned anything about antiques and still knew very little about them. Back when he had listened to an old radio station, he had once heard an elderly collector named Ma Weidu discussing antiques. The main thing he remembered was that Ma had built a private museum.

Who Ma Weidu was, Su Mu had never heard clearly. He only remembered the collector saying that in the 1980s, antiques were practically being sold for the price of cabbages. At junk-recycling stations, one could buy them for mere cents. The important point was that many of those same objects would later be worth hundreds of millions.

The names of antiques such as the Blue-and-White Yuan Dynasty Jar Depicting Guiguzi Descending the Mountain, the Jushi Tie, and the Chicken-Cup had all reached Su Mu through that old radio station. Judging from various clues, he did not believe the currency of the future would become worthless. In other words, collecting antiques in this era should have tremendous potential. Naturally, he was tempted and had considered getting involved, but he knew absolutely nothing about antiques and had no idea where to begin.

Besides, investing in antiques was a bottomless pit. His supermarket shares were valuable, but he had no intention of selling them, which meant that he still did not have much liquid cash. He could only dabble on a small scale.

Next, they took a taxi from the Upper East Side to Lower Manhattan. Even the Upper East Side looked somewhat rundown, but Lower Manhattan was rougher still. Wall Street was nearby, and from one end of the street to the other they saw countless major corporations.

Li Ping'an glanced back and sighed. “A few days ago, I was starting to think I was rich. After seeing these companies, I feel poor again. For all I know, some old lady on the street might be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“It isn’t that you feel poor. We really are poor.”

Su Mu let out a long breath. Behind every company name on that street stood an unimaginable amount of wealth. Never mind anything else—the three banks known as Bank of America, Citibank, and Morgan alone controlled combined assets worth trillions of dollars. It made a person feel unbearably insignificant.

A few months earlier, having a hundred thousand dollars had seemed like the very definition of wealth. Now he possessed far more than that, yet he still felt poor. Li Zhecheng was chiefly to blame. Every time Su Mu saw that man, he was reminded of fortunes worth hundreds of millions. By comparison, a millionaire looked no better than a beggar.

The Su family elders had chosen to send Su Mu to a private high school. It had been both a blessing and a curse.

There was no denying that the experience had broadened his horizons. But if Su Mu had not been lucky enough to hear those radio broadcasts, spending years among the children of the wealthy might instead have ruined him.

Once someone had stood atop a mountain and seen the splendor of the world, how could he willingly curl up again in some remote village where even birds refused to land? If his own ambitions failed, he would likely fall into endless torment.

Not far from Chinatown stood a slum inhabited by Chinese immigrants. It was a bitter irony. Su Mu made a point of visiting it. When he saw the familiar dilapidated houses before him and then turned to look back at the skyscrapers of Wall Street, the contrast was like heaven and earth.

While visiting the Metropolitan Museum, Su Mu had still been thinking about buying a few antiques for his own collection. America possessed countless Chinese antiques. If one turned the clock back several decades, shiploads of them had been transported to the United States. Many European antiques had also made their way there by various routes. There were simply too many of them, so they were not highly valued. Genuine and fake pieces could be found side by side, and even an ordinary family with an interest in antiques could afford to buy one or two.

Su Mu already lived in Chinatown, yet he had come all the way to New York to visit another Chinatown. He began to suspect that there was something wrong with his head. On a sudden impulse, he entered an antique shop called Three Treasures Pavilion with Li Ping'an.

The shop was filled with an astonishing variety of goods, both Eastern and Western. There were even golden masks in a strongly Egyptian style. Those were certainly fake—no one would be willing to let such treasures gather a thick layer of dust.

“Mu, are all these antiques?”

Li Ping'an had never been inside an antique shop before. Seeing objects that seemed to be sold as cheaply as vegetables, he could not make sense of it.

Everything was clearly labeled. Some signs even stated “craftwork,” while others described various worthless trinkets as belonging to the Qing or Ming dynasties. Their prices were scarcely higher than those of modern handicrafts.

Su Mu was deeply suspicious of whether any of them were genuine. “Why are you asking me? I’m no expert either. Since we came to New York, we should bring back some souvenirs. You came here without telling your family. If they find out, you might get beaten again.”

“That’s not a bad idea. No one hits someone who comes bearing a smile. How about I buy my mother a jade ornament?”

Li Ping'an casually picked up a jade plaque. A price tag was attached: six hundred and fifty dollars. It was too expensive for him to bear, so he put it back. It was an old piece of jade with five colors of natural patina. An expert would have known that it was worth something. Unfortunately, neither he nor Su Mu knew enough to tell.

The proprietor of the antique shop was a middle-aged man, probably over forty. The hair at both temples had already turned white. He glanced up and saw that the customers were young and Chinese, and assumed they had merely come in to browse. He had no intention of rising to greet them.

Most of the merchandise was inexpensive. The poorer pieces cost a few dozen cents or a few dollars; the better ones went for several hundred or a thousand. There were very few items worth more than ten thousand dollars, and Su Mu guessed that the truly valuable pieces had not been put on display.

Knowing that there might be treasures in the shop that would appreciate dramatically in value, yet having no idea whether they were genuine or even worth anything, left Su Mu intensely frustrated.

A watermelon appeared in his field of vision.

Su Mu looked at it, then walked over. The sign identified it only as jadeite, and its price was even lower than that of the jade plaque—just one hundred and thirty dollars. It genuinely looked like a watermelon and was quite charming.

He had heard Ma Weidu mock the soaring price of jadeite in the twenty-first century, which suggested that jadeite would eventually become valuable. But Su Mu had no idea exactly how valuable.

Compared with other antiques, jade and jadeite seemed more reassuring. An entire table was covered with jadeite, and flashlights had been provided so customers could examine the pieces themselves. Under the strong beam, a lush green color could be seen inside the watermelon.

Li Ping'an came over and mocked Su Mu helplessly. “You want to buy a watermelon? Something that heavy will be such a nuisance to carry home. Help me choose a gift instead. I have no idea what to get...”