Reconfiguration

The three-wheeled cart belching black smoke carried Huang Xiuyuan back to his house.

"Xiao Yuan, here's the key."

Huang Sixiao handed him a key, then lifted several suitcases off the cart.

Taking the key, he opened the familiar stainless-steel gate. Inside were an old television, an essential coffee table, and three rosewood chairs.

He carried his luggage up to his second-floor room. Though he hadn't been back in a long time, the room was still neat and clean, clearly swept on a regular basis.

Before he knew it, an hour had passed. It was nearly five in the evening.

Uncle Xiao's voice rang out from downstairs.

"Xiao Yuan, come down for dinner."

He changed into slippers and put on a jacket before heading down to the living room. A slightly plump, fair-skinned middle-aged woman stood beside the dining table, taking some braised food out of a basket.

"Happy New Year, Auntie," Huang Xiuyuan greeted her.

The middle-aged woman looked up, set down the plate with a smile, and took a red envelope from her pocket. "Xiao Yuan, here's your New Year's money."

"Haha, wishing you prosperity." Huang Xiuyuan didn't refuse. In Shanmei, the custom was that anyone who wasn't married could receive a red envelope.

Of course, red envelopes here were just a token gesture, especially in the rural parts of Shanmei, where they usually contained five or ten yuan.

After bringing over dinner, his aunt left the basket and went home, leaving only Huang Xiuyuan and his uncle, Huang Sixiao.

Dinner was a simple spread of three dishes and a soup.

They were all home-style Shanmei dishes: pan-fried Spanish mackerel fish balls, braised pig's trotters, shrimp stir-fried with cucumber, and bitter melon soup with Spanish mackerel skin.

"Go on, Xiao Yuan, help yourself. You can't get this in the USA."

"Uncle Xiao, you know I won't hold back."

The two picked up their chopsticks and dug in with gusto. The taste of home was something you could get tired of in everyday life, only to miss terribly once you went away.

By the time they finished eating, the sun had set, leaving only a faint glow in the sky.

He took a tissue and wiped his mouth. "Uncle Xiao, where did you put the things I ordered?"

Huang Sixiao had finished eating some time ago and was picking his teeth. "Inside the plant. Come with me."

The two went around a narrow dirt path to the back entrance of the recycling plant.

The plant was still brightly lit. Three workers were sorting some scrap, or processing sorted materials further—for example, baling cardboard and compressing aluminum and iron.

His family's business was called the Fuqiang Recycling Plant. The name came from Huang Xiuyuan's father.

The plant was laid out in a rectangular shape. At the front was an open lot where newly collected scrap was piled, along with materials ready to be shipped out;

In the middle stood a row of steel-framed sheet-metal buildings housing the initial processing equipment. The machines included a gantry shear, metal shredder, alligator shear, metal pulverizer, metal separator, baler, briquetting press, copper granulator, motor dismantling machine, radiator dismantling machine, and waste-paper baler.

These machines were the result of his father's accumulation over more than a decade. They had also made the Fuqiang Recycling Plant one of the biggest recycling plants in Shanmei.

But the recycling business was divided into different categories. Ordinary recycling only brought in hard-earned money; it was difficult to make a fortune.

Some specialized recycling businesses, on the other hand, required not only connections, but also a willingness to act without a conscience.

Take Guiyu, in the special economic zone of Hui City, also in eastern Guangdong. It was known as the "world's e-waste capital."

Across Guiyu Town, 5,500 household workshops processed electronic waste, employing more than 60,000 people. Their annual output was nearly one billion yuan, accounting for over 90 percent of the town's total industrial output. They paid tens of millions of yuan in taxes, and electronic waste had become Guiyu's pillar industry.

Yet development always came at a cost.

The recycling methods used by these small workshops could be summed up in one phrase: crude and brutal. They extracted precious metals from circuit boards, then dumped or piled up the leftover waste wherever they pleased.

This caused large amounts of hazardous substances to leak into the environment. Lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polyvinyl chloride plastics, brominated flame retardants, and other harmful substances had seeped into the local soil and groundwater.

According to research reports, 81.8 percent of rural children under six in Guiyu suffered from lead poisoning. The source was likely lead dust produced by crushing circuit boards, or pollution caused by melting lead solder to extract gold, copper, and other precious and semi-precious metals.

This was the primitive accumulation of capital. Since the day it came into the world, every pore, from head to toe, had dripped with blood and filth.

After a moment of reflection, Huang Xiuyuan shook his head with a self-deprecating smile and headed to the back section of the recycling plant.

A three-story row of buildings stood there, housing his father's office, the staff lounge, the duty room, the kitchen and dining area, and the restrooms.

There were also several rooms on the first floor, used to store copper wire, copper scrap, and some old appliances.

They climbed the stairs to a room on the third floor. Huang Sixiao found its key on a large ring and opened the stainless-steel door.

Once the lights were on, the room looked very bare.

The four walls were grayish white, the floor was cement, and there were two storage cabinets, a refrigerator, two wooden tables, and four plastic chairs.

"Like you asked, I put two packages in the fridge and the other nineteen in the cabinets." As he spoke, Huang Sixiao handed him the two keys to the room, along with four keys to the cabinets.

"Thanks, Uncle Xiao." Huang Xiuyuan was very pleased.

"Take a look, Xiao Yuan. If you need a hand, I'll be over by the sorting area."

"No problem, Uncle. You go ahead."

Though curious about what Huang Xiuyuan planned to do with all this, Huang Sixiao was tactful enough not to press him. He went straight downstairs.

Alone in the room, Huang Xiuyuan locked the door and opened the packages one by one. Inside were the chemical glassware and simple equipment he'd ordered, followed by the chemical reagents.

He washed the glassware, dried it, then sprayed it with Oxytech to disinfect it.

Using the proportions he'd worked out earlier, he spent over two hours preparing twenty doses of the brain suppressant.

After labeling them with the date, he put the doses in the refrigerator.

Looking at the makeshift lab and the brain suppressant he had to inject once every day or two, he fell into thought.

There were too many problems with this first-generation brain suppressant. Its effects wore off too quickly, meaning he couldn't go long without having it on hand. That made traveling far from home difficult.

After all, carrying this kind of drug would be hard to explain at security checkpoints.

If he didn't bring it with him, he couldn't exactly find a lab to prepare more brain suppressant every time he arrived somewhere new.

That would increase the risk of the brain suppressant's formula leaking.

He needed to set up a proper chemistry lab as soon as possible. Only a semi-permanent version of the brain suppressant would solve these problems.

Until he developed the new brain suppressant, he could only travel around Lingnan and avoid unnecessary trouble.

Only then did Huang Xiuyuan remember that he should call his father.

He took out his phone and made the call. They talked for more than ten minutes, mostly about his return to the country and his grandmother's condition.

As expected, two days earlier, his grandmother had been out of danger. After she was transferred from the ICU to a regular ward, his parents brought up transferring her to Huaxi Hospital, and his maternal uncle's family immediately kicked up a fuss.

In the end, his father stepped in and agreed to cover the costs of Huaxi Hospital. Only then did they agree to let the old woman go there.