◎ Erlian ◎

When Gu Qiao arrived in Erlian, she didn’t immediately start selling leather jackets. She still didn’t have a clear picture of what the current market for them was actually like here. She had taken the train to Erlian once before, and on the way back, someone had slashed her bag and she’d come home without a single yuan in profit. This time she was far more cautious than she had been on that first trip.

As for how much a leather jacket could fetch in Erlian — everything Gu Qiao knew had come secondhand from people in the trade. She had decided she couldn’t take those accounts entirely at face value. People who had brought leather jackets up to Erlian before might have deliberately quoted low figures to reduce competition, or to stop others from feeling envious. She couldn’t rule that out.

Gu Qiao handed responsibility for watching over the leather jackets to Lou Deyu and Peng Zhou. She herself wrapped five jackets in her arms and headed to the barter market.

The wind in this border city seemed harsher than wind anywhere else. Gu Qiao had bundled herself up until only her eyes were visible; even the skin at their corners felt the sting of the cold. On the streets, she saw almost no red Xiali or yellow Dafa cabs — the most common vehicle here was the GAZ-69 jeep.

Since February of that year, many people had caught wind from the newspapers of a further wave of liberalization, and within a month, more traders had come to Erlian to do business than in the entire previous half year.

The barter market by the roadside had been established only the year before, and it was essentially a trading ground between Chinese and Mongolian nationals. The Mongolians who came to the market brought items typical of their country — wool overcoats and blankets — along with goods they had sourced from Russia: binoculars, cameras, watches, fine dinnerware, coffee… They came here hoping to exchange these things for Chinese clothing, shoes, and bags.

The moment Gu Qiao entered the market, a Mongolian uncle spotted the leather jackets in her arms and rushed over to speak with her. Before Gu Qiao left for Erlian, she had crammed several phrases of Mongolian to help her communicate with traders there. Before she could get a single prepared phrase out, the Mongolian uncle was already addressing her in simple Chinese: “Leather jacket — have?” He gestured proudly at the wool overcoats on his stall. “One for one.”

Gu Qiao reached out and felt the wool coat. Pig leather jackets were durable and warm, but they were also a rougher product — nothing like the polished look and feel of a good wool coat.

She shook her head and, doing her best to use Chinese the uncle could follow, pointed to a leather jacket: “This — one.” Then she pointed to the uncle’s coats: “These — two.”

Now it was the uncle’s turn to shake his head. He kept repeating: “One for one.”

Gu Qiao pointed at his coat and enunciated each word: “How — much — is it?” If the uncle wanted to exchange one wool coat for one leather jacket, then whatever price he named for the wool coat — true or otherwise — would reveal what pig leather jackets were really fetching here.

The uncle produced a calculator and punched in a number.

Gu Qiao felt a jolt of surprise. So leather jackets could sell for even more here than she had imagined. She smiled and shook her head, then walked on with her jackets. The uncle caught up with her, waving a mechanical watch in her face: “This too. This and this.”

Under the uncle’s demonstration, Gu Qiao gave the Russian-made mechanical watch a thorough look. She thought back to Luo Peiyin’s wrist and decided this watch would probably suit him nicely.

Gu Qiao traded one leather jacket for one Mongolian wool coat and one watch. The uncle wanted to trade for her remaining jackets too, and enthusiastically talked up his blankets. Gu Qiao gestured and said in halting terms, “Wait until I’m about to leave, then we’ll see.” She handed over the jacket but didn’t take the coat and watch with her.

By now she had grown comfortable communicating with two hands. “Leave them here for now. I’ll come back for them in about an hour.” One jacket was a loss she could absorb. If a single jacket could reveal whether a person was trustworthy, the cost was entirely worth it.

After saying goodbye to the uncle, Gu Qiao continued through the market with her remaining jackets. Because of those jackets, she became just about the most popular person in the entire market. She walked from one end to the other and formed a clear sense of what price leather jackets could command in Erlian. Then she walked back from the other end to the first, and found the uncle still waiting for her. Gu Qiao collected her coat and mechanical watch, and traded more jackets for blankets. She had taken a liking to the Mongolian blankets and decided to buy more before she left — they would sell easily back home.

With the blankets in hand, Gu Qiao passed one of her business cards to the uncle, gesturing and saying: “I also sell leather jackets. If you want to buy—” she pointed toward the northeast corner of the market, where the border trade vendors were clustered — “come find me there.” She tapped a number into the calculator: the new price she had set for the jackets. This was the eleventh business card Gu Qiao had handed out in the market.

From the pocket of her military coat, she produced a cigarette lighter as a small gift for the uncle. She had heard from Peng Zhou that all manner of light consumer goods were in short supply across Eastern Europe right now — lighters, ballpoint pens, nail clippers were all considered rare finds. Gu Qiao didn’t quite understand how countries she’d heard described as having “buildings with elevators, electric lights, and telephones” had come to be in such a state — but she had asked Lou Deyu to stock up on these small items before they left. She had no idea whether a Mongolian uncle would consider a lighter particularly valuable.

The uncle’s gratitude for the small gift far exceeded anything Gu Qiao had anticipated.

Gu Qiao had gone to the barter market with nothing but leather jackets. By the time she made her way back, those jackets had been transformed into Mongolian wool coats, watches, blankets, binoculars, and more.

Back at the hotel, Gu Qiao gave the wool coat to Lou Deyu and distributed some of the small items among the group.

Peng Zhou had been worried about Gu Qiao while she was gone. Moving around the city center was generally safe enough, but she was in unfamiliar territory, and he had been quietly anxious. Now, seeing her return with so many things, his worry turned to exasperation. “You have a real gift for taking your time, don’t you? You’ve got the leisure to go bartering while I’m here so stressed my mouth has broken out in sores. Don’t forget what we actually came here to do!”

Lou Deyu took the coat his daughter had brought him and immediately called out to her, “Come and eat — we’ve been waiting for you.” Under Gu Qiao’s arrangements, Lou Deyu was in charge of meals for the whole journey. Driving, escorting, and unloading were all physical work; if they didn’t eat well, they’d never keep up the pace.

When Gu Qiao told Peng Zhou the new price she had set for the jackets, he nearly thought she’d lost her mind. “At that price, you think anyone’s going to buy? That’s twenty yuan more than everyone else!”

“Twenty more than who, exactly?”

“Old Zhang brought a load up to Erlian last year. He said the most he could get for one jacket was a hundred and thirty yuan.”

Gu Qiao smiled. “The profit in border trading is built entirely on information asymmetry. Why would anyone hand you the information they’ve risked their neck to obtain? And if someone tells you they made more than you imagined, that means they want more competition? Taking it at face value and assuming it’s accurate — you can’t even guarantee that. But if you go and sell at the price Old Zhang told you, he’ll probably end up resenting you for it. You drag the price down, and his next deal gets that much harder.”

Peng Zhou turned her words over in his mind. “But are you really sure you can sell at this price?”

“Just wait and see.”

Most of the buyers for the leather jackets were Mongolian traders, who planned to resell them in Russia for a margin. Before leaving for Erlian, Gu Qiao had asked a Mongolian interpreter to add a Mongolian-language version to the advertising board she had specially made. The board now stood beside the leather jackets, towering noticeably above Gu Qiao herself, and was impossible to miss.

Merchants who came looking for leather jackets saw the sign from a distance and made straight for Gu Qiao’s stall. They weren’t buying by the piece — they were buying by the bundle. For large-quantity buyers, Gu Qiao would finalize the deal while Lou Deyu prepared the complimentary packaging. Lou Deyu, dressed in the wool coat his daughter had brought him, kept his head down and worked steadily. Hiring an extra person meant paying extra — he wasn’t about to let someone else take those wages.

In less than two days, every leather jacket had been sold. When the last one was gone, Peng Zhou found himself with a genuine respect for Gu Qiao. “How did you know for certain you could sell them at that price?”

“If I didn’t even know that, what right would I have to take a cut from you?” There was a brightness in Gu Qiao’s eyes as she said it — even the red veins in them seemed to carry a kind of light. She was the one calling the shots here, so naturally she had to appear the most composed of anyone. But every single day she’d been here, she had been jolted awake by nightmares, instinctively reaching for the switchblade she kept beside her.

Before heading back to Beijing, Gu Qiao bought another batch of blankets. Lou Deyu had also made a tidy gain on his end. He had arrived in Beijing earlier with twelve hundred yuan for Gu Qiao; the rest had gone to paying off debts, and the family needed money too — that was all he’d been able to bring. Gu Qiao hadn’t pushed back; she treated it as his investment, though she still set aside two hundred yuan for him. With that two hundred, Lou Deyu bought cooling ointment, lighters, nail clippers, ballpoint pens, and erguotou liquor — he’d heard that Russians loved erguotou. He traded these in the barter market for things he thought would sell well back in the countryside, as well as gifts for his family. Among those gifts was a meat grinder. Lou Deyu had never imagined such a device could exist in the world; he intended to bring it home and show Gu Jingshu a thing or two.

—

The empty vehicles heading back to the city were no safer than when they’d been fully loaded. An empty truck returning from Erlian was obviously one that had just sold its goods — and could a truck that had just sold its goods really be carrying no money? Never mind that the trucks themselves represented money.

As the convoy left Erlian, the surroundings once again became a vast, featureless expanse.

Four vehicles in total. Gu Qiao was riding in the first one. The moment she got in, she snapped back into a state of alert. She had her switchblade on her person; the truck was equipped with steel pipes and an axe. Her eyes never rested for a moment, constantly scanning the road ahead.

The vehicles moved steadily forward. At a stretch of isolated road with no sign of life, a large boulder appeared directly in their path.

Without thinking, Gu Qiao called out: “Don’t stop!” She could hear the pounding of her own heart as she spoke. She had already heard of more than one case where robbers placed obstacles on roads, waiting for drivers to stop and get out — at which point a whole gang would swarm in. The cargo was the lesser concern; coming out of it alive was the best anyone could hope for.

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