Chapter Three: Eyes of Black and White

In the hotel room, as soon as He Fugui and his nephew saw Zhang Can, their faces lit up with wide smiles, and they hurried to greet him.

Zhang Can patted his bag. “I’ve brought all the money, three hundred and fifty thousand. Brother He, where’s the item?”

“Here, here!” He Fugui quickly handed over the blue-and-white porcelain vase.

Zhang Can took the vase and examined it carefully. He had been cautious—last time, when he scraped some powder for testing, he’d made an almost invisible mark with his knife at the base of the air hole. If you didn’t look closely, you’d never notice it. Now, checking again, the mark was there. The vase was genuine, not switched.

They exchanged money for goods hand-to-hand. He Fugui didn’t bother to count the cash; he stuffed all thirty-five bundles straight into a burlap sack. Then, as if remembering something, he fished out a red jade stone, about the size of a matchbox, from his pocket and handed it to Zhang Can. “Boss Zhang, you’re an upright man. I have nothing more to say. This piece of jade isn’t worth much—it’s just a piece of jade skin, but it was brought up from underground during a dig. Keep it as a memento.”

Zhang Can didn’t think much of it, slipped it into his pocket, and laughed. “Brother He, you’d better be careful, carrying so much cash!”

Leaving the hotel, Zhang Can headed straight for Old Shi Zhai, the antique shop in the market.

Old Su was drinking tea. When he saw Zhang Can, he smiled. “Zhang, you look like a man in springtime. Did you close the deal and bring something good?”

Zhang Can beamed and nodded, urging Old Su into the back room. “Old Su, come have a look. I brought the item. Let’s go with the price you said. I’m not greedy; we’ll all make a little.”

Inside, Old Su turned on the main lamp. Zhang Can carefully took the vase from his bag and handed it over, smiling as he watched.

Old Su put on his reading glasses and examined the vase under the light. But the longer he looked, the less pleased he seemed—his face grew darker by the second.

Zhang Can’s heart tightened. Was something wrong?

Old Su turned the vase over to look at the base, then finally shook his head with a sigh. “This vase is a fake.”

Boom.

Zhang Can’s vision went black; he nearly collapsed, steadying himself against the table. He glared at Old Su. “Impossible! Old Su, you said so yourself after seeing the pictures—it’s a Hongwu blue-and-white Yuhuchun vase. Didn’t we test the powder, too? The results said it was over six hundred years old. How could it be fake? You must be mistaken. You must be!”

Old Su sighed. “Zhang, without seeing the real thing, just going off photos, how could I be a hundred percent sure? And as for the powder—you see the base and the air hole here? The opening is small; it’s obvious the powder was ground from a real old-glaze fragment, glued around the base. The powder you scraped was just that layer. Of course, the test would say it’s genuine.”

As he spoke, Old Su took a sharp knife and scraped at the base. Sure enough, the outer layer came off, revealing white glaze underneath.

“This is a new vase—a modern product. Look at the glaze: bright, flashy, not like the blue-and-white of previous dynasties. The Hongwu imperial kiln mainly used domestic cobalt—low in iron, high in manganese, and not well refined—so the color is bluish with a grayish tint, sometimes with rust spots from the metal impurities. That’s why its shade is different from the bright blue of the Zhizheng period, or the intense color of the Yongle and Xuande Ming blue-and-whites. Those used imported Sumali cobalt, producing brilliant color with silver-black crystalline spots in the patterns…”

Zhang Can’s eyes swam with golden stars. He saw Old Su’s lips moving, but heard nothing. Three hundred and fifty thousand—his own money lost, and his father back home saddled with five thousand in high-interest loans, at five thousand a month in interest alone. That was enough to kill a man!

“It’s all over, all over…” he muttered, suddenly falling into utter despair. Why keep living? Years of hard-earned money gone in an instant, and his family dragged into endless debt. What now? How could he face them?

He didn’t know how he’d left Old Shi Zhai. He wandered the streets aimlessly and only realized he’d reached the riverbank when cold wind stung his face.

The river was murky, littered with floating garbage. He felt water droplets on his face and wiped them away, only to realize it was rain. A light drizzle had started, and the people by the river hurried away.

He’d always thought himself clever, but he’d fallen for a huge, unforgivable scam—one that had ruined him. The thought of ending it all crossed his mind. The blow was too much. Looking back, He Fugui had shown many flaws, just like other swindlers. His trick was simply a chain of interlocking deceptions. And Old Su—suddenly, a flash of insight struck Zhang Can.

Old Su was in on it!

He Fugui couldn’t possibly know whom he’d ask to appraise the vase—only Old Su could be certain he’d come. They’d set the trap together so that Zhang Can would walk right into it without suspicion!

At first, Zhang Can had been cautious. But Old Su, after looking at the photos, set the first trap—saying it looked genuine and worth over twenty million. Greed clouded Zhang Can’s judgment.

He’d learned almost everything from Old Su, especially porcelain authentication. He knew besides shape and appearance, the safest way was to scrape some powder for scientific dating. But he’d never guessed they’d glue old fragment powder to a fake vase’s base.

The second trap was Old Su’s insistence—after seeing more pictures—that if it was real, it would be worth over six million. Even with two-thirds less, Zhang Can was overjoyed. The second snare held him fast.

The third trap was having Xiao Chen test the powder’s age. That part was genuine—Xiao Chen, a lab tech, had no idea. The powder really was six hundred years old, just as Old Su claimed. That clinched it; Zhang Can was completely convinced.

In the hotel, he now recalled, He Fugui had given him a worthless piece of jade as well, saying it was truly dug from underground. Why hadn’t he realized then? If the jade was real, didn’t that mean the vase was fake?

Zhang Can took out the piece of jade skin and examined it. Was that He Fugui’s way of making amends out of guilt? Bah! The hardest thing in this world to find is regret.

His heart was dead. It was true what they said: “On the business battlefield, there is no father or son—deceit is the norm.”

It was all money’s fault. Old Su and He Fugui had set up the trap for money, and he’d fallen for it out of greed. If he hadn’t been so greedy, would he have been caught?

He’d ruined himself and his family. Now, he couldn’t even afford food or shelter.

His eyes grew wet—he didn’t know if it was tears or rain. His nose stung. In anger, he smashed the jade against the stone railing. It shattered with a crack, and shards cut into his hand, blood welling out.

But Zhang Can felt nothing. The pain in his heart far surpassed any physical pain. His vision blurred; he couldn’t see what was in front of him.

He wiped his eyes to try to see the ground beyond the railing, preparing to jump into the river and end it all.

But jade powder stuck to his hand scratched his eyelid as he wiped, mixing blood with the rain and smearing his eyes. A burning pain shot through them, and he simply couldn’t open them.

So he tilted his head back, letting the rain wash his eyes. After a time, the pain eased. He tried opening his eyes again—and he could see, but strangely, the world was now black and white.

He stared, bewildered, and looked around. Everything remained in shades of gray. He glanced at the stone railing, the shattered jade—all black and white.

How odd—had the world changed color in an instant?

Was there something wrong with his eyes?

Just then, he realized he could see inside the stone railing, as if watching an X-ray at the hospital—he could see the interior of the stone, and even sense its molecular structure: fine-grained granite.

He stood there, stunned. The shock of this new discovery momentarily pushed aside his thoughts of death. His gaze fell on a fragment of the shattered jade sitting atop the round stone ball of the railing, and his eyes seemed to penetrate inside it.

Though the images were in black and white, Zhang Can suddenly noticed that one large piece of the jade hadn’t shattered. Only a third had broken off; the rest remained intact. Yet inside that remaining chunk, about the size of a thumb, was a piece of jade, and his mind instinctively understood its molecular structure.

It was a small piece of pure “clear water” jadeite!

Over the past three years, Zhang Can had dealt mostly in ordinary-quality jadeite trinkets; he’d never handled top-grade jade or true antiques, but he knew a thing or two about jade. From what he could see with his newfound vision, he was certain: inside that jade skin was a piece of clear water jadeite.

In today’s jadeite market, raw materials were nearly exhausted; prices only climbed higher. Old pit jade from Myanmar fetched astronomical sums—a single glass-grade jadeite boulder could start at tens of millions, even surpassing a hundred million. Even lesser “ice-type” jadeite could fetch hundreds of thousands. The jade pieces in jewelry stores and antique shops, the salespeople always claimed were old pit jade from Myanmar.

Of course, only an expert could tell real from fake. Salespeople might exaggerate, but those items rarely sold for more than a few thousand. Truly top-quality jade—ordinary people could never even glimpse it. Those pieces in shop windows priced at several million were actually subpar, below “water-type” grade. Their real value was just a few tens of thousands.