Minha Vida no Mundo Subterrâneo de Dongguan

A few days ago, when I got out, I didn’t notify anyone.

Yet word still got around among my old brothers on the streets, and they all contacted me one after another.

Some are still running hotels in Dongguan, others are in Shenzhen handling import and export trades.

It’s no exaggeration to say that, if I so much as nodded, luxury cars and beautiful women would be delivered to my door at any moment.

With a single word, I could be that man of influence once again, commanding crowds with a wave of my hand.

But I refused every offer.

I didn’t even reach out to the brothers who once followed me.

All these years inside, I had plenty of time to think.

The world of the underworld is behind me now. What I want is a plain, uneventful life for the rest of my days.

If I must sum up my years in that world in a single passage, the first thing that comes to mind is a poem from Tsui Hark’s film “Swordsman.”

I dedicate this poem to myself, and to all of you, in the hope it might serve as a warning. The underworld is nothing but an illusion, a fleeting mirage.

Heroes rise amid the storm; once you step into the underworld, the years rush past.
Empires and ambitions are but idle talk, life itself a drunken haze.
Sword in hand, galloping through ghostly rains, bones piled like mountains, birds startled to flight.
Worldly affairs surge like tides, people flow like water, and one can only lament how few return from the underworld.
How few ever return…

Like so many outlaws in the stories, I wasn’t born into wealt