His latest project was to invest in American land. With 30,000 yuan, amounting to five years’ worth of my grandparents’ savings, Uncle New Sea made Uncle Strong get on line at three o’clock in the morning to buy fifteen identical wooden plaques. In fancy calligraphy and golden engravings, each read in English and then Chinese translation:

When we first saw these words, we thought of a handful of soil, a blade of grass, a golden autumn leaf, and a blue dew smelling of summer and chlorine. People said that you could exchange one of these wooden plaques for an American visa — after all, how could they refuse to let you into America if you owned a piece of California.

Yet before we had time to apply at the American embassy, the newspapers already exposed the whole thing as a big hoax, and the plaques became as worthless as firewood. “We are living in an era of liars and swindlers,” Grandma, who knew the good old days when nobody dared to embezzle even a ball of thread from her silk factory, cried with outrage. “How can people be so immoral?”

Uncle New Sea, however, remained optimistic and enterprising as ever. With the help of a Japanese sponsor, he managed to open China’s first karaoke bar in Hainan Island, but before the business got going, the local gangs took over, and he managed to salvage only two loudspeakers from the ruins. Next, inspired by the Peace Park lantern festival that had drawn such a crowd that a few children were stomped to death, he scraped together investments from multiple sources to put together a festival of Chinese ethnic dances, flying in actors from as far as Tibet, but Heaven had no eyes and rained for two weeks, so that the ticket revenues had barely covered the costs. Uncle New Sea kept having new ideas, but the problem was either the lack of capital or bad luck, and so he couldn’t help but see his old friends and enemies, with only half of his brain and a quarter of his nerves, get rich faster than he did, buying cars and villas, ivory and diamonds, marrying younger wives and sending their children abroad. The consolation came, however, when he found out that several of his old business partners had also landed in jail.

Over the years, Uncle New Sea got by with stocks and a few business ventures here and there, but the fortunes he talked about — and made the rest of us dream of — never materialized. In our ever rarer family reunions, he would still play chess with Uncle Strong, who had been retired prematurely from his state-owned factory and played a card game called “Struggle Against the Landlord” with his former co-workers day in and day out. In the meantime, he had so much time to hone his skills at chess, it was now his turn to win the games. Uncle New Sea, for his part, had also become a good loser. After every game, he would shuffle the pieces like mahjong tiles and light another cigarette: “We’ll see at the end of the day who’s the general and who’s the pawn.”