Xiao Canglang was a miracle doctor in Beijing’s antique industry. He was about forty years old and had a courtyard house near Wanshou Mountain.
He had bought it long before the government started their strict control. He built a steel structure on the second floor with a sunroom, and it was said that the big jujube tree in the yard was eighty years old. Its branches penetrated the floor of the sunroom and stretched out through the top of the glass ceiling, which meant that the room wasn’t sealed and the light would leak in. It was cold as shit in the winter and hot as hell in the summer.
This guy started his career as a traditional Chinese medicine doctor by putting up advertisements on telephone poles. He would sell dogskin plasters (1) and specialized in treating skin diseases and male venereal diseases.
Although the place where he lived now was like a big mansion, he usually wore a green army coat and huddled in the yard to smoke while he played with his dogs. He was really no different from any other hutong uncle (2).
But the thing was, his dogs were giant German Shepherds. More than a dozen of them would be lying there in the yard, basking in the sun. They might have looked lazy, but no one ever dared talk loudly whenever they entered. There was a feeling that you might be torn to pieces at any minute, and the owner wouldn’t even have time to stop them.
Many people had probably assumed that this guy had dark yellow teeth and was covered in wrinkles, but they would be wrong. Although Xiao Canglang wasn’t tall, he still looked the same in his forties as he did in his early thirties. He had pale skin, green eyes, a long face, and a high nose that might have been extremely ugly on anyone else. On him, it just made him look a little attractive.
Although he couldn’t resist wearing various gold strings and pendants from the Warring States Period, he seemed to give off a different aura.
As a result, it was said that all kinds of little girls and female apprentices always hung around him. Since he lived such a simple life, it was hard to figure out the truth of their relationships.
After the millennium—about ’07 or ’08—Xiao Canglang somehow got hired as a chief physician of traditional Chinese medicine and immediately rose to fame.
According to Fatty, he was a complete charlatan. He later started a traditional Chinese medicine clinic in Xicheng, where you could only register on Tuesday afternoons. It was said that the waitlist was several years.
I knew all about this kind of method. Famous Beijing medicine masters, religious idols, and liars from all walks of life were able to survive like this because there were too many rich people who were blinded by the success of their own businesses and became overconfident in their own judgments. They always felt that other people encountered liars and they were the only ones who could detect whether someone was a real doctor or not. They believed that there had to be a few legit doctors among those geniuses in Chaoyang District, but the facts were often more dramatic. As far as I knew, practically everyone was a liar.
This kind of old swindler had deceived himself into believing that he had some status in the underworld, but those kinds of relationships were too complicated. Most of the celebrities, officials, and people in the main circles were in contact with each other, which led to the strange situation that even if he was known to be a liar, he still had to be humored.
I had never been afraid of such people and I also had zero tolerance for liars. If he refused to speak in the same context and insisted on pretending to be a master, then I would really beat him until he confessed.
I didn’t know why Black Glasses was interested in this swindler.
“This man started to play around with antiques after earning some money,” Black Glasses said. “He specializes in collecting one thing: traditional Chinese medicine meridian charts and various medical books. But most importantly, he collects folk remedies.”
“These things are worthless,” Fatty said. “What are you planning on doing with them?”
“It’s worthless to us, but for a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, building on the old foundation of an ancient prescription could have many effects.” Black Glasses continued, “This kind of work is also strange. He even received a weird list in his collection that could be considered a special prescription.”
<Extra 6.14> <Table of Contents><Extra 6.16>
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TN Notes:
(1) Used in traditional Chinese medicine for treating contusions, rheumatism, etc. Basically quack medicine or sham goods.
(2) I think it’s like some back-alley dude hanging around doing nothing. You know in the dramas how you just see some older guy(s) idly chilling in an alley or by a door acting like they’re hot shit? I think that’s what it means lol.
MereBear's Translation 