66 Mushu Garden Street, Qinhuai District, Meihua Mountain Villa, Qin Garden.

An hour’s walk to Purple Mountain, ten minutes to Crescent Lake, surrounded by mountains, water, and city walls—this was prime real estate, with apartments selling for over thirty thousand yuan per square meter.

Bai Yang’s bicycle flew across Mushu Garden Street, darting from one streetlight to another before turning left through the residential gate. His wheels caught air over the speed bump before landing hard, vanishing into the night under the surprised gaze of the security guard.

“Slow down!” the guard shouted after him.

“Got it, Uncle Cai!”

He was racing against time. Evening self-study ended at 10:30, and it was nearly eleven by the time he cycled home. Life as a third-year high school student was always this rushed. His mother insisted he be in bed by midnight, so if he wanted to squeeze in anything before sleep, he had to hurry home.

Home was Building 11, Unit 2, twenty meters left after entering the complex.

Eighth floor, 804.

Bai Yang locked his bicycle downstairs, then thundered up the stairs with his backpack. The motion-sensor lights in the stairwell illuminated his path from bottom to top the moment he entered.

Sprinting to the eighth floor, Bai Yang unlocked the door and dropped his backpack in the entryway to change shoes. The living room lights were still on, but his parents were already asleep by this hour—Bai Yang peeked at their bedroom, finding the door firmly shut.

Mom usually left his late-night meal warming in the rice cooker on the dining table, plugged in.

If Bai Yang was hungry after evening study, there would always be food waiting.

The late meal was typically noodles or rice. Since Bai Yang didn’t come home for dinner, his mother would save a portion of the evening meal and keep it warm in the rice cooker.

He lifted the lid to find steaming fried noodles.

Bai Yang tested the bowl—not too hot—and carried it to his room.

“Xiao Yang?” his mother’s drowsy voice came through their bedroom door as he passed.

“Mm, I’m back.”

“Oh, you’re home. Get to bed soon.”

His mother drifted back to sleep, his father’s snoring as loud as ever.

Bai Yang carried his late meal to his room. It wasn’t large—just a pathway squeezed between the single bed and wall, a desk against the bay window, and a tall bookshelf to the right of the desk, packed with study materials.

After wolfing down his meal and wiping his mouth, Bai Yang took a deep breath and pulled out his phone from under the desk to check the time.

Eleven thirty PM.

Bai Yang sat up straight in his chair, drew the curtains, turned on the desk lamp, and solemnly placed a roll of toilet paper on the desk. Whatever was about to happen, having tissues ready was never wrong. In the dead of night, all alone, this young single man had some crafts to practice.

From this moment on, he would transform into his other identity—

A dirty old man.

Of course not.

He was a HAM.

What’s a HAM?

HAM means amateur radio enthusiast.

Bai Yang pulled back the plastic cover on his bookshelf, revealing the black radio beneath with a swoosh.

An ICOM 725 shortwave radio, resembling an eighties-era CD player.

A family heirloom from his father.

A museum-worthy antique.

He reached over to switch on the external power supply at the other end of the bookshelf, pressed the POWER button on the radio’s panel, and the unit hummed to life. The pale yellow LCD screen and small level meter lit up, tuned to 7.2750MHz. Bai Yang plugged in the headphones and hand mic, pressed the SSB key to enter single-sideband communication mode, hit the TUNER key to activate the antenna tuner, and after a few seconds of tuning, the green light came on. He then slowly turned the dial to adjust the frequency.

His movements were practiced—in this moment, he was like Yu Zecheng, the underground party member from “Infiltrator.”

However, he also resembled an old man listening to his radio before bed.

Tonight, Bai Yang would attempt his first long-distance contact in his HAM radio career.

Radio contact meant finding someone to talk to, but the biggest difference from phone calls was that you never knew who you might connect with or where the radio waves might be reflected by the ionosphere tens of kilometers above. Radio stations had no phone numbers, no carriers, no transoceanic fiber cables, no one-to-one dialing—in layman’s terms, this was literally “communication by shouting,” except the shouts were modulated into radio waves, bounced off the ionosphere to tens of thousands of miles away, and if anyone there could hear your shout, they would shout back.

Given his limited equipment, making long-distance contact via shortwave was quite challenging—in HAM parlance, this was called DXing, abbreviated as DX QSO. Even experienced operators often failed at DX attempts.

For tonight’s attempt, Bai Yang had climbed to the roof that afternoon to check the antennas—his father had installed two in his reckless youth: a six-meter whip and a dipole antenna, earning plenty of complaints from neighbors.

If all went well, after 8:30 PM on the 14.195MHz band, he might contact stations in Russia or Europe.

Then he could greet his foreign friends and tell them he was from CHINA.

Bai Yang turned the dial, watching the LCD numbers change.

14.195 megahertz.

After listening through his headphones for half a minute with no response, he pressed the TRANSMIT button on the hand mic, lighting the green panel indicator.

Transmit mode engaged.

Bai Yang took a deep breath. As an unlicensed illegal HAM operator who hadn’t yet passed his Class B exam, he made his first-ever radio call:

“CQ! CQ! CQ! This is BG4MXH, Bravo Golf Four Mike Xray Hotel, calling CQ and waiting for a call!”

His voice would be modulated into regular radio waves inside the station, then transmitted skyward by the antenna’s driven element. In the bright, bustling Qinhuai District of Nanjing, it was like tossing a tiny pebble, creating invisible ripples spreading in all directions at the speed of light, reflecting off the ionosphere fifty kilometers up toward the horizon, crossing great rivers and verdant primeval forests, reaching anyone monitoring that frequency.

“CQ” was universal radio shorthand meaning “SEEK YOU.”

Like saying “Anyone there? Anyone there? Anyone there?” on a phone call.

BG4MXH was his callsign.

Translated, his call meant “Hey! Hey! Hey! This is BG4MXH! BG4MXH is looking to chat! Waiting for your reply!”

In China, amateur radio was a strictly regulated hobby. Operating a radio station required complete documentation and licensed operators who had passed exams. Each legal station had a unique callsign, like an ID number. Bai Yang’s IC725’s callsign was BG4MXH—the B indicated China, G indicated amateur station class (he was Class 3), and 4 designated the region (Jiangsu stations all used 4).

Of course, there were illegal stations without callsigns—black stations.

Like undocumented persons.

The radio was his father’s legacy. His father had been a seasoned HAM operator for twenty years, formerly serving in the North Sea Fleet’s observation and communication station as a professional communications technician. After leaving service, he drove for DiDi in the city. Back then, his father had been a force to reckon with in Nanjing’s HAM radio circle, a genuine technical expert, before finally retiring from the scene.

As his father said, who still played with this stuff nowadays? Wasn’t WeChat better for chatting?

“CQ! CQ! CQ! This is BG4MXH, Bravo Golf Four Mike Xray Hotel, calling CQ and waiting for a call!”

Bai Yang called again, then waited nervously for a response.

He hoped that in a few seconds, another voice would come through—maybe a callsign starting with J or R, from Japan or Russia.

But the channel remained silent, filled only with endless white noise.

Bai Yang felt disappointed. Had something gone wrong?

But this was expected—shortwave communication problems were perfectly normal. Any factor could cause failure. Radio waves themselves were unstable, the ionosphere was unstable, and two uncertainties combined rarely produced certainty. Moreover, today’s electromagnetic environment is increasingly complex, with interference everywhere in cities. Even an electric bicycle was like anti-radiation warfare against a radio station.

Maybe nobody was on this frequency, so his calls went unanswered.

Bai Yang pulled out his phone. Others had said 14195 was like a marketplace.

He found that post again.

Checked the date.

Damn, 2012.

His father was right—fewer and fewer people played with radio these days, especially shortwave. The UV band still had active users, with local drivers discussing weekend barbecue spots, but nobody bothered with long-distance shortwave communication anymore.

So his father used the radio as a regular receiver.

In 2019, few could appreciate the romance of radio communication. Nobody wanted to erect fifteen-meter antennas to send their voice worldwide anymore. It was too complex, too cumbersome, too slow—not interesting or exciting enough even as a hobby.

More and more old HAMs left the scene, including his father.

Bai Yang increased power from 2W to 5W and tried calling once more.

No one was there.

The channel was empty.

In his father’s youth, some frequencies were as busy as marketplaces, with radio waves from all over China converging in the night sky before flying worldwide.

Now even the marketplace vendors had dispersed.

Bai Yang slowly turned the tuning dial, watching the LCD numbers change gradually from 14.195MHz to 14.120MHz, then to 14.125MHz. He was trying his luck—maybe someone was talking on other frequencies?

14.126MHz.

14.128MHz.

14.130MHz.

Bai Yang propped his head up, listening to each frequency for about ten seconds before turning the dial.

14.131MHz.

14.132MHz.

14.133MHz.

He was a lone traveler in the desert, unable to find another of his kind in any direction.

Bai Yang sighed. Tonight’s contact attempt had failed. He stared at the radio for a long while, absently turning the frequency dial back and forth like playing with a regular radio, the red TX indicator staying lit as the LCD numbers flew by.

Suddenly he froze, his finger stopping.

Wait!

Bai Yang carefully turned the dial back, furrowing his brow and listening intently. Through the static, someone was speaking indistinctly, either singing or chanting.

A person!

He instinctively checked the frequency.

14.255MHz.

After an entire evening’s effort, Bai Yang had finally found another person.

A girl, no less.

Bai Yang waited for her voice to stop, then called: “CQ! CQ! CQ! This is BG4MXH, Bravo Golf Four Mike Xray Hotel! Calling CQ and waiting for a call!”

The channel was silent for several seconds.

Then an astonished cry burst through his headphones:

“A living person?”