The morning glow emerged. Standing at the intersection, he saw the rooftops of distant high-rises, bathed in golden sunlight. Up early, Lin Song pulled a thick fleece vest over his shirt and went out to wander the streets. In the vegetable market, people were hurriedly buying groceries. Some rode electric bikes to take their children to school, others queued in cars for the commute to work or delivered goods to businesses. Breakfast stalls were firing up their stoves. Lin Song strolled along with his hands in his pockets, appearing out of place. The laptop’s power light was stuck on. Lin Song forced a shutdown, and then it broke. It would no longer boot up. This machine had rehearsed its end countless times: a new battery, a new hard drive, a new keyboard, and, in the last two months, a new power cord. Years ago, Lin Song had started backing up the laptop’s data intermittently, but it had never suffered a significant failure, running stably day after day. Eventually, he forgot to back up the data again. This time, the destruction came like a landslide. Lin Song booked an appointment with a computer repair shop on Taobao and went there, carrying his laptop. He still felt it was just a minor circuit issue, that a simple reconnection would bring his laptop back to life. Two customers were at the counter, picking up their computers and checking if the repaired machines could withstand the test of continued work. Three technicians were busy at their respective workstations, heads down. The technician nearest the counter took Lin Song’s laptop, asked briefly about the symptoms, and began to disassemble it. “Just so you know, the repair fee will be around 200 yuan.” After finishing the diagnostic, he reassembled the dismantled machine and returned it to Lin Song, saying: “It can’t be fixed. The CPU is dead. It’s not worth repairing.” It was a troublesome situation, but Lin Song accepted this reality calmly. He looked at the mountain of computer components piled up in the shop and asked the lady boss, though he already knew the answer: “Do you sell second-hand computers here?” “Yes. What kind are you looking for?” “Something on the same level as my current machine. Do you have anything?” “Yours is a classic model. This black one is similar, from ‘21.” “How much?” “1800. If you use your original hard drive, 1650.” “Can my old hard drive still be used?” “We can take it out. Just put it in an external enclosure and you can use it.” “What operating system is on it?” “Windows 10.” “Okay, I’ll take this one.” “Scan the QR code on the counter.” Lin Song left the machine that had been with him for nearly ten years. The lady boss reluctantly valued it at 100 yuan for recycling. Lin Song headed home with his new laptop. Even as the stock market soars, all everyone talks about after dinner is the economic downturn. What’s the logic in that? In the first half of 2025, Alphabet’s revenue increased by 13% year-over-year, and its earnings per share grew by 35.5%. Nestlé announced it would cut 16,000 jobs over the next two years; its 2025 first-half report showed a 1.8% year-over-year decline in global sales and a 10.3% plunge in net profit. The general meaning is that social wealth is already overflowing. The main owners of this wealth control the most competitive industries. To protect the competitive strength of their industries, the powers that control wealth will not give more opportunities to the weak, bottom-level economic participants. Thus, capital, through its powerful ability to regulate the allocation of market resources, restricts the paths for small and medium-sized industries to gain greater competitiveness. And so, one can see a booming stock market advancing side-by-side with a withered individual economy. If you’re a small business, you might as well be content with your lot. As long as you can open your shop every day, you can earn some surplus, however small. It’s the same principle as stock trading: trading time for space. The size of your operation dictates the language you speak. The real economy and the financial market speak different economic languages. Zoran Mamdani—the son of a film director and a Columbia University professor—achieved an upset victory on Tuesday, being elected the 111th Mayor of New York. In the world’s most important financial city, over a million people chose to support him, something unseen in half a century. His rival suffered two disastrous defeats in just five months; all previous hopes now feel like a distant dream. Many expressed they were tired of the stalemate maintained by traditional powers for decades. The young people say, “Illusion is now a thing of the past.” The monk Tang Sanzang endured countless hardships to retrieve the scriptures, envying the Western Paradise. But one day, upon ascending the high platform where demons danced wildly, he realized it was merely a clumsy imitation of the original. He finished his last delivery. At the T-junction of Dingzi Bridge, he waited for the last traffic light. Once he got onto the South Second Ring Road, he could go straight home. He had been out since early morning. It was another exhausting day. By the time he got home, it was already past time to make dinner. Lin Song decided to just take a nap on the sofa. He slept past eight o’clock. Lin Song took a yellow windbreaker from the coat rack and put it on. This jacket, bought on Taobao, had a huge kangaroo silhouette printed on the back. With this logo, he could go to the “Mr. Rice” downstairs and eat his fill for just ten yuan.