Chapter 77 – Extra: Shen Ning × Lu Fengge
When Shen Ning and Lu Fengge got married, same-sex marriage still hadn’t been legalized. The wedding had to be low-key—just a joint announcement declaring that the Shen Group and the Lu Group would soon enter into a close and comprehensive strategic partnership.
The two families invited relatives, friends, and business partners to witness what was, in effect, Shen Ning and Lu Fengge’s “handshake of the century.”
The sharp-eyed could tell it was a marriage alliance; the more obtuse thought they were swearing brotherhood.
The banquet was held in Hong Kong. The elite of the city’s social and business circles gathered together, and Shen Ning chatted with them fluently in foreign languages. Standing beside Lu Fengge, the two of them outshone even the heavily sought-after kings and queens of entertainment at the time—they looked like they could debut on the spot.
Everyone assumed Shen Ning would stay in Hong Kong. After all, the city’s entertainment and arts scene was at its peak.
A fashionable young master who had studied abroad like Shen Ning, holding foundations, auction houses, and art galleries left to him by his elders—doing philanthropy, art, anything at all—would be perfect. He could help Lu Fengge break into countless social circles.
Unexpectedly, once the banquet ended, Shen Ning boarded a plane back to Nan Cheng, separating from Lu Fengge by distance.
He moved into a small villa owned by the Lu family. One driver, one housekeeper. Old Master Lu lived elsewhere and didn’t stay with the younger generation.
Shen Ning loved his own “Flower Deity spiritual bloodline.” As soon as he graduated, he returned to his homeland to nurture his spiritual energy.
He had read two volumes of classical Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and, entirely on his own, arrived at a rule for preserving the spiritual energy of spirits and sprites—if you want to absorb the essence of the sun and moon, you need close contact with the land.
So Shen Ning also liked the three-story Western-style villa Old Master Lu had given him. He lived on the first floor, walked barefoot on the ground every day, laid no carpets, and stayed firmly, intimately connected with Mother Earth.
Really—he wasn’t lying. Otherwise, why did his calligraphy always look better when he practiced barefoot than when he wore shoes?
Calligraphy demanded strength and vigor, an emphasis on brush force. Traditional characters were especially about strokes that danced like dragons and snakes. Shen Ning was used to writing French and English with a ballpoint pen, and felt that the characters he wrote were soft and boneless.
He sat in the study practicing with his wrist resting, elbow on the desk, sometimes even supporting his right hand with his left.
After a month, he switched to suspended wrist writing, lifting most of his elbow off the desk, using only a point at his forearm as support.
After two months, he stood up, suspending his elbow completely, his arm fully off the desk. The brush tip grew freer, his strokes more unrestrained.
But ugly.
Shen Ning kicked off his fuzzy slippers, stood with his legs slightly apart, sank his breath into his dantian, and began imitating the Yan style.
Auntie Liu passed by the study and saw this—oh dear, this was serious. In the dead of winter, barefoot again. The house didn’t even have underfloor heating—wouldn’t he freeze?
“Sir, you’re writing really beautifully today,” the auntie praised with her eyes shut. “Shall we finish early today?”
Shen Ning pressed his lips together. “Really?”
Auntie Liu said, “Mr. Lu practices calligraphy too. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve seen enough to tell good from bad. You’re writing very well, sir.”
Er ruo mu ran—‘imbibed by constant exposure’?
Shen Ning thought: Lu Fengge’s calligraphy must be terrible—so bad that Auntie Liu thought Shen Ning’s was better.
Every time he went barefoot, Auntie Liu praised his rapid improvement.
He must truly be favored by the spiritual energy of China to be able to practice the brushwork passed down by his ancestors so well.
Shen Ning managed his own assets while diligently practicing traditional calligraphy.
Hong Kong gossip claimed that Lu Fengge had recently been entangled with a certain female star.
Shen Ning eagerly flipped open a gossip magazine. He had specifically asked someone to mail it from Hong Kong. Lu Fengge’s cold, frosty half-profile was printed on the cover in cheap ink—half of him in a tie, half of a female star in hot pants and a halter top, crudely photoshopped together.
Shen Ning froze for a moment. This was the first time in months that he’d seen Lu Fengge since their wedding banquet.
The headline was explosive:
[Actress surnamed Y boldly pursues tycoon, openly plays the mistress, publicly challenges the wife]
Hong Kong indeed had many tycoons keeping mistresses, and many celebrities took pride in attaching themselves to the rich. This was one of the reasons Shen Ning disliked the place.
Lu Fengge, immersed in such an environment… immersed—that idiom was something Shen Ning had learned from Auntie Liu. In short, Lu Fengge would eventually become detestable.
As he was thinking this, his father called.
“An Ning, haven’t you made a single phone call to that Lu boy?”
Shen Ning hedged. “Busy.”
“I’ve called his assistant. Every time they say he’s entertaining clients,” Shen Ning lied through his teeth.
Old Master Shen sighed. “People outside are saying you have no presence at all. At least put on a show.”
Hong Kong was saying that Lu Fengge’s wife had no presence, while Old Master Shen, the father-in-law, was like a high-voltage line—so intimidating that Lu Fengge wouldn’t dare keep a mistress.
They made it sound as if Lu Fengge were a live-in son-in-law, as if one day, once he succeeded, he’d kick Shen Ning aside. That affected outsiders’ expectations of cooperation between the two families.
Shen Ning thought: why should I call him first? I live at home every day, he lives in hotels every day. No matter how you look at it, he should be the one calling home.
Old Master Shen offered advice: “If you don’t want to call, then write a letter. Writing letters is romantic—‘the wild geese fly long yet light does not cross; fish and dragons dive deep, making words of water.’”
Ah!
Those two casually quoted lines from his father hit Shen Ning right in the heart. Sending letters by wild geese was a very Chinese kind of romance, and Spring River, Flower, Moon, Night was a poem he loved.
Regardless of the recipient, letters could be written.
Shen Ning only wanted to perform this ancient ritual and didn’t care much about the content. He bent over and rummaged through the wastebasket full of calligraphy practice sheets, found a poem that could pass, folded it twice, and stuffed it into an old-style envelope.
He handed it to the postman, not to a Lu Group employee heading south on business.
Slowness—that was the essence of sending letters.
“Sir, this is the Nanyang ginseng slices Mr. Lu sent back. It’s winter, and you go barefoot—be sure to replenish your qi and blood. Cold starts from the feet.”
“Oh, I won’t eat it,” Shen Ning replied indifferently. Ginseng, of course, should be domestic to properly absorb its essence.
Auntie Liu said, “It seems they’re for soaking your feet.”
Shen Ning choked. “I don’t like soaking my feet.”
Lu Fengge often sent things home, so when Shen Ning’s father urged him, he didn’t criticize Lu Fengge.
As expected of a smooth, all-around businessman. Shen Ning could imagine Lu Fengge inspecting a department store, casually saying, “Wrap it up and send it home,” effortlessly completing the task of maintaining the relationship.
Then Auntie Liu would select appropriately from the goods and make them “thoughtful” according to Shen Ning’s needs.
For example, choosing ginseng from a pile of supplements and, considering his habit of going barefoot, elevating Lu Fengge’s image.
Heh.
Half a month later, a letter from Nan Cheng slowly arrived at Lu Fengge’s company.
Lu Fengge was bent over his desk working when the security guard delivered a letter. After long-distance transit, the edges of the envelope were no longer crisp.
Even the two characters of the signature—“Shen Ning”—had blurred.
He picked up a paper knife and slit the seal.
A sheet of yellow paper for brush writing slipped out and spread across the desk—it was a single line of poetry:
“Suddenly seeing the roadside willow’s green,
I regret urging my husband to seek rank and glory.”
On the yellowed paper, that longing took on a dazed loneliness. The brushwork was somewhat stiff, but it was clear the writer had practiced for months.
Shen Ning had studied in France. In Nan Cheng, he had no friends. His nominal husband was over 1,500 kilometers away.
Lu Fengge tightened his grip on his fountain pen, a crease forming between his brows. He glanced out the window—without realizing it, the entire year had already passed.
At the turn of the century, Hong Kong was in full New Year revelry. Aside from handing out red envelopes, Lu Fengge felt little emotion.
From Hong Kong, he could see green clouds of trees outside his window. Nan Cheng’s roadside trees were probably still bare.
Lu Fengge dialed a number. “Ah Long, the new product you mentioned last time—send me one.”
Then he made a second call, to the housekeeper at home. “Other than the letters, did Shen Ning leave any message?”
The housekeeper replied, “Mr. Shen asked you not to stay in hotels—he wants you to live in the Mid-Levels villa.”
Lu Fengge thought: the villa is far from the office, but acceptable.
Three days later, Shen Ning received a flip phone that hadn’t yet gone on the market.
That year, the popular phones were Nokia flip phones—able to rotate like digital cameras, thick-bodied and clunky, gray and heavy-looking.
A friend of Lu Fengge’s was developing a new flip phone, working to make it thinner, with a large screen when opened.
The design discarded oval lines in favor of near-right-angle shoulders. Pure white casing. A floral pattern on the flip—when there was an incoming call, the flower lines would light up.
Shen Ning holding this phone, flipping it open one-handed and holding it to his ear—wouldn’t that look good?
His fingers were long and slender, better suited to a longer, squarer phone. The temperament fit perfectly.
When Shen Ning got the phone, his first impression was that it looked great. His second impression was that this large-screen flip phone wouldn’t survive being dropped—it was best left on a desk as a phone, not carried in a pocket.
“Another new product trial?” Shen Ning discovered one advantage: the screen was huge. He took a photo of the villa entrance and set it as the wallpaper—the color rendering was excellent.
He rummaged through the wastebasket again, found another usable poem, packed it into an envelope, and mailed it to Lu Fengge.
Lu Fengge received Yan Shu’s Butterfly Loves Flower: “The bright moon knows not the bitterness of parting; slanting light pierces red windows till dawn.”
He circled a few words with his pen—the latter half, “alone I climb the high tower, gazing till the ends of the world,” had been written as “gazing till the road to the ends of the world is severed.”
In Lu Fengge’s mind appeared the image of a slender figure standing at a window.
He folded the letter, placed it in a drawer, then walked out and asked the butler, “Any calls from Nan Cheng?”
Shen Ning might not know his mobile number, but he certainly knew the landline.
The butler replied respectfully, “None.”
An old gardener nearby suddenly said, “Mr. Shen hasn’t contacted you even once.”
Lu Fengge’s sharp gaze snapped to him. His thin lips lifted slightly. “Don’t come tomorrow.”
His family affairs had been vividly embellished by gossip magazines, yet he and Shen Ning had not contacted each other even once—who spread that?
With a little investigation, Lu Fengge learned it was this vine-tending gardener, talking nonsense outside while relying on seniority.
No matter how good his gardening skills were, he couldn’t be kept.
Lu Fengge traveled far to send Shen Ning two pots of kumquats. They’d already been in his office for several days—he saw them every time he looked up. The kumquats were bursting with fruit. At their “wedding banquet,” Shen Ning seemed to have eaten two extra kumquats.
“Sending kumquats after the New Year’s already over,” Shen Ning said, plucking one. This was surely a discarded New Year tree from the Lu Group building’s front desk—perfect for turning into candied skewers.
Shen Ning reciprocated in kind, rummaging through waste paper again. They were actually quite in sync, exchanging waste products—though in the eyes of others, like the Hong Kong media and the two elders, it was a traditional and romantic exchange of love letters.
Shen Ning didn’t find a suitable poem. But thinking that Lu Fengge had been careless enough to send kumquats just to make up numbers, he casually grabbed a thick stack to muddle through.
As Lu Fengge, briefcase in hand, prepared to travel back to Nan Cheng, he received a very thick family letter.
Very thick.
He sat down and opened it, discovering a chaotic collection of poems—frontier poems, seasonal poems, poems about unrecognized talent… and misspelled characters.
Even the calligraphy had regressed.
These were… earlier practice sheets? Had they been packed by mistake?
Lu Fengge’s brow jumped. He pulled out the previous letters and compared them one by one. The later they were, the worse the calligraphy, the more mistakes—meaning, the earlier the practice.
This family letter hadn’t been written recently.
Lu Fengge’s face darkened. He set down his briefcase.
He had misunderstood.
The subsequent “family letters” only confirmed it further. Rather than receiving letters, Lu Fengge felt like he was collecting trash.
He called the housekeeper—Shen Ning did indeed gather his practice sheets; he liked to look at his own progress.
Lu Fengge received one piece of calligraphy of uncertain origin. He corrected a few characters with his pen and, expressionless, pressed it to the bottom of a drawer.
At summer’s end, a cooperative project between the Lu Group and the Shen Group successfully listed on the U.S. stock market. Lu Fengge’s work there came to a close.
The group held a grand celebration banquet. Earlier, Old Master Shen had called to ask whether Shen Ning would attend. Shen Ning said no.
Old Master Shen said that wasn’t very appropriate. Shen Ning replied that he’d write a congratulatory letter.
He found a poem that actually contained Lu Fengge’s name—and his own Shen family surname.
What a coincidence, really—just like their Shen–Lu alliance, perfectly matched, achieving huge success.
Shen Ning read it like an illiterate stubbornly forcing a reading comprehension exercise.
[“Phoenix towers and dragon halls reach the firmament;
jade trees and pearly branches wreathed in mist—
when did we ever know war?
Once reduced to subject slaves,
Shen’s slender waist and Pan’s temples are worn away.”]
Li Yu’s Po Zhen Zi—a poem of ruin and defeat!
Lu Fengge had long known his wife wasn’t some kindred-spirit pen pal, but an illiterate wife. Still, he was momentarily rendered speechless.
Dragon halls, firmament, jade trees—three wrong characters in a row wasn’t enough, and he even dared to copy the next line!
He wanted to see just where Shen Ning’s “slender waist and Pan’s temples worn away” were.
At the banquet, Lu Fengge politely declined friends’ invitations to stay and continue developing in Hong Kong, and passed customs overnight to return to Nan Cheng.
“Thank you, but I have family matters to handle.”
When he arrived home, Shen Ning was in the garden harvesting sunflower seeds.
Seeing Lu Fengge for the first time in a year, the surprise in his eyes was completely genuine. “Lu Fengge? Why are you back?”
Lu Fengge: “…” This is my house.
Shen Ning circled him, just like the sunflower seeds in his hand, orbiting Lu Fengge like he was the sun.
“You’re not doing business in Hong Kong anymore?”
Lu Fengge’s Adam’s apple bobbed slightly. Calmly, he said, “Our country is about to join the WTO. The real economy will take off. We’ll be the center of the world. I’m back to lay things out.”
Shen Ning slowly went, “Oh.”
Shameless businessman.
