At ten on Saturday morning, December 26, in the second-floor office of a warehouse in north Hangzhou.
A sheet of paper lay spread across the desk. Two lines of text.
The reported circumstances were found to be unsubstantiated upon investigation.
He had mailed the letter on November 24, under his real name, stamped and with a phone number. A month and two days later, these two lines had come back.
"Lei, that's all? Just two lines?"
"Just two lines."
The first finding didn't surprise him. More than 5,300 orders had come in, the money had been collected, and the goods had shipped. What was real was real.
What he'd been waiting for in the second finding was a name.
A no-name little shop had gotten its paperwork approved in a day and a half, seven days before Double Eleven. He'd been in this business for twenty years. He knew exactly what it was like when paperwork got stuck. His own had been held up three times, and all three times he'd needed to call someone. Even the quickest had taken three days.
A day and a half, without a hitch.
That was the part he couldn't figure out.
He set it aside for now.
He turned his computer around and opened the shop's page.
He hadn't looked at it in a month.
The listing was still the same, but the title had changed. Sales had gone from more than 5,300 to more than 8,300.
Three thousand more.
The main image had changed too. The first photo showed a boot on a white bedsheet, with a ruler laid beside it.
Nobody put a ruler in their main product photo.
He clicked open the sizes.
Thirty-nine. Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two.
Nothing below them.
Nothing above them either.
Four sizes.
He drew his finger back from the screen.
He knew what a canceled export order was. A factory took an order from a foreign buyer, made the whole lot, and then the buyer backed out, leaving the entire batch sitting in its warehouse. An entire batch meant a full size range, including thirty-six, thirty-seven, and thirty-eight.
Foreigners had big feet, but foreign women with small feet existed too.
There was no canceled order in the world whose sizes started at thirty-nine.
Nobody had dug this batch out of a warehouse.
Someone had walked into a factory with a size breakdown and told it exactly what to make.
The most pairs were size thirty-nine, followed by forty, with only a few forty-ones and forty-twos. Those quantities had been set for buyers, not dictated by leftover stock.
He opened a drawer and took out the shoe from last month.
He pulled out the insole. The string of letters and numbers beneath it was still there. Last year's product code.
That shoe was from last year.
He needed a pair from this batch.
He scrolled to the bottom of the page.
One line read: This batch is sold out. The restock date has yet to be decided.
"Use a buyer account and ask when they're restocking."
The operations manager went out.
Lei Xiangdong scrolled through the reviews.
The new ones had appeared over the past couple of days. One after another, buyers volunteered their sizes. Finally got a forty-two. Been looking for a forty-one for three years. My mother fits the forty.
People who wore thirty-nine and up could go all year without finding shoes. When they finally did, they had something to say.
This screen told him more than any section of the listing.
The operations manager came back.
"I asked. Customer service said they haven't set a restock date. I could leave a Wangwang ID, and they'd notify me when the shoes came in."
"That was all?"
"I tried asking four different ways." The operations manager took off his glasses and wiped them. "I asked where the factory was, how many pairs were in the next batch, and whether I could put down a deposit to reserve a spot. Same answer all four times."
Lei Xiangdong leaned back in his chair.
At the start of October, he'd visited the Wenzhou factories one by one. He'd booked every machine capable of making shearling-lined openings from October through March. At the five or six factories in that production area, his people had kept watch at the gates day and night. Every new pair of short women's boots with shearling-lined openings made that winter was sitting in his warehouse in north Hangzhou.
In November, he'd gone to Wenzhou himself. The managers of those five or six factories had sworn up and down, and he'd gone through his stationed staff's production logs one by one. He'd swept through more than thirty export factories in the western development zone and hadn't found a single pair.
In the end, he'd identified them by the product code beneath one insole.
Last year's goods, asleep in someone else's warehouse for a year.
He'd accepted it then. He could lock down the machines, but not the warehouses. Wenzhou had thousands of warehouses. He'd accepted that.
Now the size range sat on his screen.
He crossed "leftover stock" off the list.
He set the shoe on the desk.
"How many people do you have in Wenzhou?"
"Three watching the production area, two in the west of the city."
"Pull the three out of the production area."
The operations manager's hand stopped on the doorframe.
"Lei, we're not watching that area anymore?"
"What would we watch them for?" Lei Xiangdong said. "I know the sizes those five or six factories make better than their own managers do. Thirty-six to thirty-eight. They barely make a few pairs above thirty-nine in a year. They don't even have the lasts for them on their racks."
"Then this batch..."
"This batch is still being made this month."
The room went quiet for a moment.
"A factory in Wenzhou is running this month," Lei Xiangdong said. "One I didn't put on my map."
The operations manager stood there, turning that over.
"A factory that had shut down?"
"A factory that had shut down."
"Lei, you know better than I do what it costs to restart a line at a factory that's been closed for six months. Materials have to be paid for up front, workers need wages, and the machines need repairs. A factory that's been closed for six months has an empty bank account," the operations manager said. "Who's fronting the money?"
"So someone is fronting it."
Lei Xiangdong got up and walked to the window.
Down in the yard, his own inventory stood in stacks under blue tarps, stretching from one end of the perimeter wall to the other.
"I've been in this business twenty years, and I've always believed one thing. Lock down the machines, and you lock down the goods," he said. "In October, I locked down the machines that were running. I didn't count a single one that was sitting idle."
"Get Old Xu up here."
The purchasing manager came up with half a steamed bun still in his hand.
"Do we still have the list from October?"
"Yes. It's been in my cabinet the whole time."
"Bring it."
He brought the folder over. More than a dozen sheets listed factories one by one, with their addresses, phone numbers, number of production lines, and machines.
More than half had crosses marked on them.
His own people had drawn those crosses. Beside them were notes: closed for six months, no stock; doors locked; machines sold; workers all gone.
Lei Xiangdong flipped through the pages, one by one, all the way to the end, then pushed them back to the purchasing manager.
"Visit every factory with a cross again."
The purchasing manager froze.
"Lei, there are sixty or seventy of them."
"Sixty or seventy. Visit them one by one."
"What am I looking for?"
"See which doors are open and which machines are running." Lei Xiangdong pushed the shoe into the middle of the desk. "One look at the lasts on the racks will tell you what sizes they're making."
The purchasing manager picked up the folder.
"And if I find one running?"
"Tell me," Lei Xiangdong said. "I want to know whose order it is. After this, that factory won't work in this industry again."
That same morning, in south Wenzhou, both lines at Ye's Factory started running. Five thousand pairs, to be loaded on January 5.
In Hangzhou, in the empty room on the west side of the city.
Ma Le propped a bundle of waterproof bags against the wall.
"Bro, you're the one who put that ruler in the main photo, right?"
"Yeah."
"Looks weird to me. Who puts a ruler in a shoe listing?"
"Not to the buyers."
He'd never intended to hide the size range.
Buyers had to click open the size options themselves. If they didn't, they wouldn't dare place an order. The 240 people last month had been burned by that section: they'd paid, waited ten days, and ended up with refunds. This time, the first thing they needed to see when they opened it was forty-two.
The ruler was there for them.
The moment the previous batch went up, anyone who knew the trade could tell by touch that it was made for export. The moment this batch went up, its four sizes would be there in plain sight. Anyone who understood would know a factory had made it to order.
He accepted that risk.
He had even less control over the reviews. People who wore thirty-nine and up had something to say when they finally found a pair of shoes. They'd posted their sizes themselves, more clearly than anything he could have written on the page.
Either he kept this batch in the room and never listed it, or he let people see it.
What they could see were the sizes, not the factory.
The factory stood at the end of a cinder-strewn alley in south Wenzhou, with a red hiring notice pasted on its iron gate. For over three months, everyone there, from top to bottom, had called him Manager Ma. Not one of them knew his full name. The receipts were signed "Manager Ma," payments for materials came from Ma Le's bank card, and the sender field on the shipping labels was filled in with a rubber stamp.
The night before last, Factory Director Ye had told him on the phone that someone had come asking who'd booked those two lines. Ye himself hadn't been able to answer.
That was exactly how it should be.
There were 1,800 bags once he'd finished counting. Not enough for 5,000 pairs.
He took out his phone, ordered more bags from the Wenzhou materials supplier, hung up, and dialed another number.
It rang four or five times.
"Well, if it isn't Boss Ma."
"Boss Wu, has anything been happening in Wenzhou this month?"
"Anything?" A chuckle came from the other end. "You're asking me? Shouldn't you know?"
"I don't."
"There's a factory in the south of the city that's been shut for six months. It started up again this month. Two lines are running at full capacity, and there's even a hiring notice at the gate," Boss Wu said. "Everyone in the shoe business has been talking about it these past couple of days. They say someone from Hangzhou booked it."
"How far has the word spread?"
"As far as me."
There was a pause on the other end.
"Boss Ma."
"Go ahead."
"Remember what I told you last time?"
He remembered.
Sooner or later, that man would find out which factory the batch had come from. Once he did, that factory would never work in the industry again.
Back then, he'd been looking for the goods.
Now word of the factory was out.
Ten days remained until the shipment was loaded on January 5.
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