Mao Gangwei took a drag on his cigarette and said, "We did plenty of bad things when we were kids. But most of them were Wang Yi's ideas. That kid was a real little menace."
Anjiali burst into laughter.
But she was even more intrigued. "Tell me all about it."
The young man surnamed Mao nodded, lit a cigarette, and gazed toward the light in the eastern sky as he smoked.
He began recalling stories from his childhood.
"We were all poor when we were kids. There wasn't much to play with at home, unlike the kids nowadays, who have game consoles, computers, and phones. We'd play with mud, or make mud bubbles—basically, we'd shape mud into a little bowl and slam it onto the ground so it made a sound like a firecracker. We'd also climb trees to pick persimmons, or go down to the river to catch loaches..."
It turned out the young man's surname was Mao, and his full name was Mao Gangwei.
He had been Wang Yi and Wang Yaoxue's classmate in elementary school, all three of them from the same village.
He had previously worked in Guangdong Province and gone down into coal mines.
After years of moving from place to place, he had eventually come to Boston, United States.
This summer, when Wang Yi was drinking and bragging with Wang Yaoxue, he heard that Mao Gangwei had come to Boston. A few days ago, he had managed to get in touch with him.
The first thing Wang Yi said when he reached him was, "I've got a great idea."
That had also been his catchphrase whenever he led the boys in his class into mischief as a kid.
Mao Gangwei had immediately become interested.
And that was how the money-throwing stunt had come about.