Chapter One: A New World

At two in the morning, Cheng Xiaoyu was already half drunk at the Soho Bar, while Da Fei, beside him, had passed out completely. Tomorrow, Da Fei, now thirty-three, was getting married. Back in the day, they had all played rock music together, but as the record industry declined, their comrades had shifted careers one by one. Only Da Fei and Cheng Xiaoyu still clung to work related to music.

Da Fei now ran a music store near the university town, offering various music training classes on the side. Cheng Xiaoyu, meanwhile, worked as a music director at the provincial TV station. He was to be the best man at Da Fei’s wedding, but after work he’d headed straight to a private restaurant on Dufu Street to join the bachelor party thrown by seven or eight old friends—he hadn’t even had time to go home and pick up his suit.

Cheng Xiaoyu pulled out his phone, lit up the screen for a glance, and seeing how late it was, stood up and patted Wu Jun on the shoulder. Wu Jun, their former drummer, was now a proper civil servant—standing at about 1.75 meters, nearly two hundred pounds, everyone now jokingly called him “Chief.” The music was deafening, so Cheng Xiaoyu leaned in and said, “I’ll head home to get my suit, I’ll call you guys later.” Wu Jun shouted back, “Alright, we’ll hang around for a bit more, then head to the Wenhua Hotel. Just meet us there.” Cheng Xiaoyu gave an OK sign, greeted the others, grabbed his coat, and with unsteady steps made his way out of the bar.

Once outside, away from the thunderous music, the deep chanting of “boosaaaa” by BBAN faded from his mind. Cheng Xiaoyu took a breath of the smog-laden air, put on his coat, and instinctively checked his phone again: November 7th, 2015, 2:31 a.m. The bar street was still crowded, luxury cars lined both sides. The sluggish economy hadn’t stopped the wealthy and their heirs from seeking pleasure. In this world, reality was beautiful—if you had money, you could have anything you wanted. And cruel—without money, you had to work yourself to the bone just to own a house and a car.

Cheng Xiaoyu’s secondhand Audi A4 was parked along Riverside Road, about a mile from the bar. Fastening his coat, he slowly followed the crowd toward the riverbank. The weather in the provincial city was mild for November; as long as it didn’t rain, it felt like early autumn. The chilly wind brushed against the sycamores lining the street, making golden leaves rustle and fall in waves. The city’s night sky was murky and profound, neon flickering between skyscrapers. This mirage-like, demonic metropolis could devour a person’s soul in an instant. Any fleeting sentimentality would vanish instantly, drowned by the giant screens playing the powerful dance tracks of the Korean girl group ARA, while raucous youths on the street exaggerated the mood of this bleak year.

Cheng Xiaoyu’s mind was adrift. Amid his many wayward friends, he was the only one still alone. Many of his college classmates already had children old enough to run errands. Yet he clung stubbornly to his so-called musical dreams, selfishly living in his narrow, confined world.

At the end of bar street, his silver secondhand Audi was right across the wide Riverside Road. The nearest pedestrian bridge was some distance away, but most people would simply jaywalk to save themselves the detour. Cheng Xiaoyu had no energy to complain about poor city planning, nor did he give it much thought—taking shortcuts was almost instinctive.

He looked both ways. After two in the morning, Riverside Road was sparsely trafficked, so he hurried across. It was a standard eight-lane, two-way road—just twenty-five meters, less than three seconds for Usain Bolt. Yet this was the very moment that would derail Cheng Xiaoyu’s life.

As he passed the double yellow lines, a low engine roar sounded not far away, booming across Riverside Road. Cheng Xiaoyu felt every eye converge on him, looked up in confusion, and saw the bull emblem of an orange sports car fill his vision. In his final moment of consciousness, he realized it was a P700. And next to it, a red Ferrari 599o. There was no time to marvel at the extravagance of this send-off; his last words to the world were a simple, instinctive expletive.

At 2:47 a.m. on November 7th, 2015, Cheng Xiaoyu’s P6 phone remained miraculously in his hand, frozen at that precise moment. According to the medical staff, he showed no sign of life at the scene, but his phone’s screen kept flickering as if echoing a heartbeat, until the power finally drained.

Afterward, the incident caused a sensation online and in the press. The internet focused on the supercars and street racing that led to the crash, while newspapers highlighted jaywalking and, more subtly, criticized poor urban planning—the site was notorious for frequent accidents.

A couple of days later, the traffic police concluded that the driver was not drunk, and the speed had not exceeded the sixty-kilometer-per-hour limit. Citizens were reminded to use crosswalks, overpasses, or underpasses, to wait for the green light, and to raise their traffic safety awareness.

Soon after, the shopping festival Double Eleven arrived, and the public’s attention shifted to how much money Jack Ma would make this year, and whether records would be broken. As for Cheng Xiaoyu, he existed only in the memories of a few, forgotten by the world, his small role as a TV station music director passing without notice. After his parents received a generous settlement, none of Cheng Xiaoyu’s relatives or friends supported their intent to press charges for reckless driving. The other party sent a message: he, Ye Liangchen, was a local with a hundred ways to escape justice. But such matters were now irrelevant to Cheng Xiaoyu.

When Cheng Xiaoyu regained consciousness, he had no idea how long he had drifted in the river of time. His mind was a blank chaos, two sets of memories running side by side, as if he had lived two lives. He tried desperately to open his eyes, but no matter how he struggled, he could not. Voices murmured indistinctly in his ears, but he understood nothing. When the voices faded, piano music began to play—he could just make out the notes of Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat major. As the gentle melody flowed, Cheng Xiaoyu drifted back into sleep.

In his dream, he lived in San Francisco’s Chinatown, still named Cheng Xiaoyu—his English name was Ran. He was the illegitimate son of the chairman of Shanghe Records, the largest music company in China. He had just returned from the United States to live in China and was about to turn seventeen.

In Ran’s world, China and the United States were the two superpowers. After World War I, China’s diplomatic efforts at the Versailles Conference had not failed but achieved unprecedented success. The continued development of Chinese national capitalism had further strengthened the country’s bourgeoisie and proletariat, laying the material and social foundation for a major transformation. The rise of democratic thought, the New Culture Movement, and the New May Fourth Movement had set China on the path to greatness. History had taken a turn: in World War II, China had decisively defeated Japan and played a crucial role in supporting Russia’s counterattack on Germany.

After the war, China and the United States embarked on a period of rapid development, creating a bipolar world order. In this parallel world, Hong Kong and Macau were returned to China after WWII, and Taiwan had never split off. Korea, Japan, and Russia were all China’s little brothers, and Chinese traditional culture flourished abroad—opera, folk songs, kung fu, martial arts fiction, Go, and kung fu films were all the rage worldwide.

Clearly, by some unknown means, Cheng Xiaoyu’s soul or memories had been preserved and transplanted into this parallel world’s Cheng Xiaoyu. Or, as Zhuangzi might have said, who can tell whether it was Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi? In any case, to this Cheng Xiaoyu, life as a music director now seemed like nothing more than a dream.

But this was a good thing—at least he had escaped the status of an ordinary struggler in the real world and become the rich heir he had always dreamed of being.

Or, perhaps, a pseudo-heir, for after all, he was only an illegitimate son.