"I was born around 1970, in a small village 170 kilometers east of Mandalay, a city in central Myanmar that cannot be found on the map. I can't remember who my parents are..."
The sunset slowly sets,
An old-fashioned oil lamp was lit in the concierge's room. The flame was as bright as a bean, and there was also a faint smell of grass and wood smoke, which was slightly choking, reminding people of the inferior ink of the old days.
Uncle Alai may be curious to see what this ignorant kid is selling.
Or maybe it was just the news from Myanmar Mirror that brought back memories of the past prosperous times.
He was silent for a few minutes and then actually started to tell his story.
The gatekeeper's voice was hoarse, but his tone was very rhythmic.
When he narrated it, it was like an ancient medieval bard singing a long narrative poem.
Gu Weijing did not wait for the last stroke to draw this line drawing.
Ten minutes after the janitor began to narrate, he began to write slowly.
It's just that the writing is very slow, so slow that it can't be called sketching.
He first used line drawing to trace the outline of Uncle Alai, and then listened to the janitor's narration. Occasionally, a flash of inspiration came to his mind, and he slowly sketched out one or two lines to capture the momentary expression on the uncle's face. Brilliance.
With the rustling sound of the tip of the pen sliding across the sketch paper, Gu Weijing had a premonition that this might be the highest level painting in his series of line drawing sketches.
The first half of the janitor's story is almost an inspirational portrayal of life trying to change one's destiny.
He was born in the 1970s, the most chaotic era in Myanmar.
The United Nations ranked Myanmar as the least developed region in the world at the time.
Warlords, civil war,
In the primeval jungle of the Golden Triangle, there are even defeated remnants of the national army who have become kings.
At that time, the whole country was extremely poor.
The civil war rages on every year, and more and more drugs are collected.
Everyone knows that growing drugs means growing dollars.
In the farmland of the Golden Triangle, poppies bloom all over the mountains and plains, bringing with it breathtaking beauty.
The drug economy is like a tube of opium that makes addicts struggle to death. In the curling smoke, it takes the entire country and nation to sink into hell.
Drugs are exchanged for dollars, dollars are exchanged for arms, and arms are used to fight civil war and drugs are stolen. This logical closed loop has been popular in the Golden Triangle for seventy years.
Like many children in the Good Luck Orphanage, Uncle Alai himself was a drug orphan. His parents died in a fire war between warlords fighting for control of a 3,000-acre poppy field.
The drug lords in the Golden Triangle in the 1970s were much more powerful than their American predecessors.
When drug dealers in San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlantic City were at their most arrogant, they used Chicago typewriters to shoot at the police department's SWAT team all day long.
A young painter named Bill Finger was lucky enough to witness the scenes of gun battles between drug lords every day, and felt that this place was simply a fucking hell of sin.
Later, this was used as inspiration to create "Gotham", a classic dark crime city in American comics.
Compared with the Golden Triangle, Bill’s hell of sin obviously lacks enough imagination.
Shooting a Thompson submachine gun is nothing but child's play.
The major drug lords and warlords in Southeast Asia control thousands or even tens of thousands of armed forces. When they clash, the sky is dark and the sky is dark. Land mines, heavy machine guns, flamethrowers, large-scale artillery and even armored vehicles charge.
When you get excited, slaughtering a village is like having fun.
"I don't care who my parents are or how they died. They may be innocent villagers who were affected, or they may be involved with a certain party in the war."
Uncle Alai said casually: "He might even be a drug dealer, who knows?"
Uncle Alai is luckier than most drug orphans because he was adopted by his "father" when he was very young.
His "Abba" is a teacher in the countryside.
The teacher was an old man with an old-fashioned character. He had attended a free church school in the old days and was proficient in English and French.
The greatest achievement of a teacher who has worked hard all his life is to teach a few successful students.
And Uncle Alai is the most up-to-date among them.
He is the first young man within a radius of 100 kilometers to be admitted to Myanmar's best national military academy.
When Uncle Alai went to the military academy, his father's health was already very bad.
Alai kowtowed three times in front of his adoptive father's bed to say goodbye. The teacher just patted his shoulder and said softly: "Alai, be a good person and live a good life."
Studying, going to school, military academy, anti-narcotics, stationed abroad...
Uncle Alai's life before the age of forty can be said to have been full of hardships and joys, and he was very happy. Although there were many hardships that were not humane to outsiders, everything was for the best.
The peace agreement, the fall of Khun Sa, and the rise to the top.
"Brother Gu, you don't understand. When I was in my thirties, I drove an open-top military jeep past the Yangon City Hall Avenue. When the guards stood at attention and saluted me... how terrible it was. What a scenery." He said softly.
Gu Weijing looked at it intently. When the silent gatekeeper told this past event, his tone was still calm, but it still made people feel that his face was full of uncontrollable smiles and pride.
Gu Weijing captured the subtle arc at the corner of the uncle's mouth and wrote it down.
This kind of smile,
Unless you follow the model and trace it stroke by stroke, you won't be able to imagine such mysterious arcs and brilliance out of thin air even if you sit in the studio for any length of time.
The feeling of the corners of the mouth rising slightly cannot be described in words, and it carries a far more penetrating appeal than a hearty laugh.
This is the heroic spirit that can bloom in the brow of a man when he is at his strongest and has done something that makes him proud.
Dazzling and fascinating.
Even if he later hit rock bottom and worked as a volunteer in an orphanage day after day, it could not wipe away the high-spirited spirit he once remembered.
"Then that was the turning point in my life."
Uncle Alai suddenly fell into silence. He stroked the newspaper on the table, and the smile in his eyes dissipated little by little, leaving only endless loneliness.
"Three trucks."
Uncle Alai gently stretched out three fingers.
"Three trucks? What do you mean?" Gu Weijing expressed some confusion.
"I was still in charge of part of the anti-narcotics work at the time. My soldiers seized a convoy on the road to the seaport for shipment, including three trucks filled with high-purity heroin." Uncle Alai said softly. .
"Just three cars?"
"Only three? Brother Gu, do you know how much these methamphetamines are worth?" The gatekeeper looked at the young man in the ivory tower and asked with a smile.
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars?"
Gu Weijing shook his head.
He had only heard that the rich guy from Dulwich High School who was once expelled for playing psychedelic drugs was said to cost several hundred dollars a week just for taking drugs.
But Gu Weijing really had no idea how much three truckloads of heroin were worth.
"When drug prohibition was the most stringent in North America, high-purity heroin could be sold for over 200 US dollars per gram, which was four times more expensive than gold of the same weight." Uncle Alai shrugged.
"Based on my experience in anti-narcotics, these three trucks of heroin are worth at least 390 million US dollars. This is just the market price in the place of shipment. If it is shipped to the United States, it can easily cost at least 500 million US dollars. It may be sold in Japan or Singapore. One billion, if it is successfully transported to Dongxia, where drug control is the strictest..."
Uncle Alai made a joke: "Maybe he can be on the rich list?"
$390 million?
Even a person like Gu Weijing, who has a weak view of money, was shocked by this number.
Sure enough, war and drugs are the most profitable industries in the world.
The only one that is equally crazy is the high-end art industry.
"And the transport convoys are all military vehicles." Uncle Alai added gently.
Gu Weijing was silent.
He knew that given the chaos in Southeast Asia, anyone who dared to use a military-branded convoy to transport hundreds of millions of dollars of heroin in Yangon must be a big shot with great hands and eyes.
"Whose goods?"
Uncle Alai whispered the name of a great warlord general who once belonged to the Turkish Emperor in central Myanmar that everyone in Yangon had heard.
After the armistice agreement, most warlords in Myanmar have stopped fighting against government forces.
In exchange, many of these big warlords who still have direct troops have entered the upper echelons of the government.
Belong to the real rights holders in the country.
"No wonder."
Gu Weijing shook his head, tampering with these people's goods, just thinking about it, he knew how much pressure would come over him.
"I can't even remember how many big shots called me that day to tell me to be smarter. How many generals sent me telegrams to order me to let them go."
Uncle Alai smiled and knocked on the table lightly: "The warlord's adjutant found me in a car with two sacks of dollars in the trunk."
"It's not the suitcase in the TV series, it's really just a big sack of flour, two sacks of benefits, full of green dollars. The adjutant said that he originally prepared 2 million US dollars, but the bag couldn't fit it, so The temporary total only brings about 1.87 million U.S. dollars. Please show me your kindness."
"The big warlord even called me personally and asked me to be smarter and fool around with him. He promised me to become a general within five years."
"How did you do it?"
"How could I let him go? How could I let him go?"
Uncle Alai said softly, his eyebrows became sharper and sharper, the veins in the corners of his eyes twitched, and his teeth clenched as if chewing a piece of hard pig iron.
"I am an anti-narcotics soldier, but I promised my father... that I would be a good person!" He let out a fierce breath, and his facial features were as ferocious as that of a madman.
Gu Weijing slowly tightened his grip on the pen.
If Uncle Alai had agreed to the other party's conditions, he would definitely not be in this situation.
But if this matter was revealed, it shouldn't be silent.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of heroin is definitely a huge case that has attracted global attention. It is common for it to be followed and reported for several years.
"So I... ordered my men to transport all these goods to the primitive jungle on the outskirts of Yangon, pour gasoline on them and destroy them, and then ordered the team to close."
Heroin can decompose at a few hundred degrees, and the high temperature of gasoline burning is enough to destroy the drug.
The gatekeeper's tone became calmer: "It is said that for several weeks, the monkeys and birds that were contaminated by the smoke within a radius of ten kilometers were extremely agitated."
"that's all?"
Gu Weijing felt a little regretful.
Looking at Uncle Alai's fierce expression just now, he thought he would hear some exciting story about bravely fighting against a great warlord.
"What else?" The uncle glared at Gu Weijing.
"I didn't let him go because I promised my father that I would be a good person. I didn't expose him because I just wanted to live a good life. Unfortunately, I wanted to settle the matter... and they still didn't want to let me go."
The gatekeeper smiled lonely.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods turned into smoke, offending many people. Uncle Alai wanted to pretend that this incident had never happened, but the warlord was not willing to do so.
The rest of the story is pretty cliche.
It didn't take long for Uncle Alai to be suspended for investigation, and then imprisoned under an unwarranted label. He was originally going to be shot, but a few old superiors tried their best to save him, and he barely escaped with his life.
The janitor spent three years in jail and suffered a lot. He walked through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, but ended up with a limp in the state prison.
"Do you know what is the most darkly humorous thing about this matter?"
The corner of the gatekeeper's mouth twitched sadly.
"I came out of prison and found out that the warlord was killed by his opponent in a political struggle six months ago. I heard that the whole family fed the crocodiles together, but he didn't survive as long as I did. I I lost everything, and in the end I didn’t even have anyone to take revenge on.”
Uncle Alai's eyes were empty and he shook his head: "Drug lords sell drugs, and officials also sell drugs. Drug lords harm people, and officials also harm people. One moment he was a heartless butcher, but under the mediation of the United Nations, a ceasefire agreement was signed, and he shook hands and changed his skin. , is your boss. Brother Gu, this is the way of heaven in this land."
"Good people don't live long, bad people have golden belts." Uncle Alai sounded like a philosopher at this moment.
"I finally understand. How can those who are rich and in power find any good things? Brother Gu, you can study art in an international school. You are a rich young man who came from a pile of gold and jade. I believe that your compassion and kindness are Really, I like you too."
"But do you dare to say that it's so clean for the adults in your family to get rich? The money of the rich here is too dirty. I don't want to take it, so don't talk about hiring me."
Uncle Alai smiled and waved.
Gu Weijing looked at the gatekeeper's empty eyes with no joy or sorrow, and was speechless for a moment.
The great philosopher once said that in the process of primitive accumulation of capital, every pore is filled with dirty blood. In fact, Uncle Alai may not have experienced the ups and downs of life, and has no deep understanding and understanding of ideology.
Gu Weijing felt that his state was more similar to the world-weary worldview written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, with sadness and depression after suffering.
The world is like a Rashomon,
People eat people, people trample on people.
Dark and chaotic, lifeless. If you want to live, good people will become bad people. There is no boundary between the world and hell.
Gu Weijing caught Uncle Alai's eyes at this moment and remembered Mr. Cao's finishing touch.
He looked at the blank space between the eyes on the sketch paper, and he suddenly felt enlightened.
(End of chapter)
