On July 2, 1997, the Thai baht suddenly depreciated, the Southeast Asian financial crisis broke out, and the economy of Southeast Asian countries completely transformed from a miracle to a crisis. This hurricane, specifically manifested as a currency crisis, affected the entire world in the following days, and the world economy suffered a huge blow.

The story begins in October 22, 1997...

Pedestrians are still in a hurry on the streets of Central Hong Kong, but unlike in the past, the white-collar workers in suits and tie seem particularly worried. Most of them lock their eyebrows tightly, and while moving forward quickly, they are thinking about something secretly.

In this already high-tempo world, this worry makes the atmosphere in the entire Central ring even more solemn, and the haze seems to be covering here, thus spreading the entire port area.

"According to a Xinhua News Agency spokesperson, the Hong Kong government will set up a Hong Kong stock chase fund in the short term to effectively curb the continued decline of the stock market. The spokesperson once again reiterated that the Chinese government promised not to depreciate the RMB..."

The 29-inch flat color TV that has always been popular for this period is gone. The owner of the electrical appliance store can only label it as "jumping the house price" and put it in front of the store, and started a sale at a low price. The fat boss looked at the shop with a deserted shop, listening to the beautiful female director on the TV broadcasting the news in a solemn voice, while cursing: "I've just come out to rescue the market now, and I don't know what's going on..."

A minibus happened to be parked in front of the appliance store because of a traffic jam. Most of the cars were elementary school students, and it was the time for them to get off school.

Near the car window, a nine-year-old elementary school student was watching the female director on TV. He seemed to be a little ignorant of the words "currency depreciation", "chasing funds", "unemployment rate continued to grow for three consecutive months", etc., and at a young age, he actually frowned like those white-collar workers who came and went in a hurry.

"Chen Zihua, why are you stunned?" Another little guy jumped back from the front and patted his companion who had already put his whole energy on TV news, saying, "I got off the car just now and asked people, guess why the traffic jams ahead?"

Chen Zihua turned his little face back, and because he had not yet come back to his senses from the news just now, he asked a little foolishly: "Send...what happened, Lai Zhiyong?"

"So someone jumped off the building in front!" The child named Lai Zhiyong said with a hint of grace: "I heard that because the stock market fell sharply, someone jumped off the building."

Hearing the words "stock market", Chen Zihua's little face sank slightly, and he unconsciously looked at the source of the traffic jam in front with some fear, and then said, "When will we go home?"

"This is hard to say!" Lai Zhiyong shook his calves and said, "I don't want to go home so early anyway!"

Hearing Lai Zhiyong's answer, Chen Zihua seemed a little anxious. When he thought of someone jumping off the building, he felt guilty. He stood up and said, "I want to go home."

"The car can't even leave, why are you going home?" Lai Zhiyong pulled Chen Zihua back and sat down, saying, "Why are you so anxious to go home? Let's play poker first!" While speaking, Lai Zhiyong took out a pair of poker from his little schoolbag and distributed it very skillfully.

Under the comfort of his friends, Chen Zihua's previously nervous heart was slightly relieved. He picked up poker and looked at it twice. Suddenly, he heard the voice of a female director coming from the TV on the roadside: "Affected by the US Dow Jones Index falling 210 points on the previous trading day, the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index fell 765.33 points yesterday, and today the Hang Seng Index continued this momentum, falling 1,200 points. On the 21st, only 7% overnight rate distribution soared 300 times, causing panic among the public..."

"The refusal is rising?" Chen Zihua's heart jumped vigorously. Then he could no longer sit down and put the poker on his seat. He did not greet Lai Zhiyong. While running towards the car door, he shouted: "Uncle driver, open the door, I want to get off the car."

Anyway, it was time for traffic jams, so the driver didn't care. He opened the door a little and let the primary school student who had a little face flushed off the bus.

Lai Zhiyong stared at the figure of his classmate gradually moving away on the street. After a while, he said to himself: "Why are you so anxious? It's still a long way to go back to his house from here."

Chen Zihua got up and ran up. He was not in good health since he was a child, so his whole body seemed to be thinner than his peers. At this time, the big schoolbag on his back could almost overwhelm him. Only the idea of ​​rushing home to see him support him to continue rushing forward-

"Chasing! You can't let him run away!"

The unique North American accent English came from a small alley with the sound of messy and rapid footsteps. Immediately afterwards, a group of foreign men in straight suits appeared in the narrow alley. There were about twenty people, each of them looked very tall and burly. Although they were all wearing sunglasses, the flashing light in their eyes seemed to be able to shoot through the sunglasses.

The blonde man in the lead waved his hand, and most of the people behind him immediately dispersed and walked in one fork in the alley. From their searching eyes, we could tell that they seemed to be looking for something.

About three minutes later, the foreign man who had dispersed quickly returned to the blond man. The blond man looked at them, and saw that they all shook their heads, frowned vigorously, and threw a "*" hatefully, and then hurried to the next alley on the left.

The uninhabited alley returned to peace. After a while, a tiny sound came from a trash can next to the alley. Then the lid of the trash can suddenly open, and there was a person hidden inside.

The man was covered in sour and smelly garbage, and he was in a very embarrassing state. He staggered out of the trash can, regardless of the dirty body, and swayed straight towards the opposite direction when the foreign men left before.

Turning left and right, Chen Zihua's small figure passed through alleys one after another. He was not so panicked that he could only follow the road, because he knew very well that he would go home faster by taking shortcuts.

After passing a place where there was no one, a figure suddenly rushed out of a fork in the alley. Chen Zihua was knocked heavily to the ground by the figure without any preparation, and his whole body fell as if it was about to break.

"Ouch!" Chen Zhihua's moan was still full of childishness, but after just a while, he went to see who the person who knocked him down.

It turned out that the one who knocked him down was an old man with white beard and white hair. The old man was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and the wrinkles on his face were like rolling mountains. Perhaps he didn't expect to "collide" with someone like this in the alley, so he fell to the ground and was looking at Chen Zihua in panic.

"Uncle, didn't hit you!" Chen Zihua didn't think about why the old man's body was so dirty and smelly. He understood the principle of respecting the elderly and loving the young, so he couldn't care about the pain on his body. He quickly got up and helped the old man opposite him up, and then said apologetically: "Uncle, I'm sorry, I walked too fast just now and didn't see you. You... didn't you fall, did you?"

After a while, Chen Zhihua suddenly found that the old man's stained clothes were covered with many blood stains, which scared him in the court.

The panic in the old man's eyes disappeared a little, and he straightened the golden glasses on the bridge of his nose: "No... it's okay!" As he spoke, he looked at the alley behind him again. Although he said it was okay, the collision just now really made his body, which had already exhausted, even the strength to support his standing up.

"How about this, Uncle, I'll help you to the hospital. I know there is a hospital after passing the intersection in front of me." Chen Zihua also noticed that the old man in front of me seemed to be in poor health. He hesitated for a long time when he was rushing home. He finally took the initiative to say this.

"How can I go to the hospital?" The old man sighed in his heart, shook his head and said, "I'm fine, you go!"

Chen Zihua thought about it, put down his schoolbag from his back, then opened it and flipped it out, took out a piece of chocolate that he had never been reluctant to eat, and handed it to the old man: "Uncle, you are hungry, I only have this little thing to eat, I can fill your stomach!"

The old man looked at the piece of chocolate in Chen Zihua's hand in a daze, and then couldn't help but smile. He looked at his clothes and dress and understood that the child probably thought he was just a beggar. Because he didn't have enough food, he had this situation in front of him, so he gave himself chocolate so that he could fill his stomach. This made the old man feel very moved.

The childish child in front of him gave him care when the old man was at his most desperate situation. A thought suddenly arose in his heart: "Otherwise, give him that thing..."

"I still have water here!" At this time, Chen Zihua had no idea what the old man was thinking. After putting the chocolate into the old man's hand, he flipped through his schoolbag, took out the small kettle inside, and handed it to the old man.

When Chen Zihua flipped through his schoolbag, a statistical yearbook released by Hong Kong fell out. The old man's eyes lit up and picked it up. After looking through it twice, he asked, "Is this book yours?"

When Chen Zhihua was very young, his mother was no longer by his side. Only his father depended on him for life. When he was a child, his father could play with him frequently, but after he went to elementary school, his father had less time to spend with him because of his work becoming busier and busier. Therefore, Chen Zihua always hoped to be closer to his father, and the only way to achieve this hope was to take the initiative to understand what his father was coming into contact with.

For three years, Chen Zhihua, who was only nine years old, always stayed by his father to watch financial news. From the beginning, he forced himself to understand these things that he didn't understand at all, to gradually gaining a certain understanding. Although he didn't know much, at least the terms mentioned by the financial news directors were already familiar. In this process, he was able to finally share a sentence with his father, and the father and son had a common language again.

What can a nine-year-old child expect him to know from the deep financial news? However, the father could see that there was only a little change in his son. Whenever he heard his son spit out the professional terms that frequently appeared in the financial news, he always praised his son without hesitation and smiled and touched his son's head to express his happiness.

Because he had no mother since he was a child, Chen Zihua seemed a little more mature than other peers. He loved his father very much for his father who would always drag his tired body back home in the middle of the night. He understood that his father's work was very hard. It was precisely because of his father's inconspicuous encouragement that he worked harder to understand what his father came into contact with in his spare time in his homework, just to make his father smile more happily.

This statistical yearbook was stolen by Chen Zihua from his father's study this morning. Unexpectedly, the old man would see it at this time, so he shook his head embarrassedly and said, "It's actually my father's."

"Do you like to watch?"

"I like it!" Chen Zihua was almost determined, but soon, his face turned red again, and he whispered: "But I can only understand a little bit."

What he said was that he could understand was just the Chinese characters in the book. As for what the words expressed in combination, they were far beyond his cognition.

The old man smiled. He liked the confession of his children, and was also a little surprised why such a child liked to read this statistical yearbook. Although the government spends a lot of taxpayers' money to compile the statistical yearbook every year, not many people will go to see it, especially ordinary people. Even if there are probably none of the ten people, let alone such a primary school student.

"What does your dad do?"

"My father is an accountant!" Chen Zihua always raised his chest and answered proudly whenever this time. His father's image was extremely tall in his heart.

"Oh!" The old man vaguely understood something, and he asked again: "What about your mother?"

"I..." Chen Zihua seemed a little discouraged, "I don't have a mother."

When the old man heard the little guy's answer, he couldn't help but show sympathy and kindness in his eyes. In an instant, the thought in his heart became even more firm: "Leave it to him, everything is left to fate!"

While thinking about this, the old man quietly reached into his arms. While the little guy was not paying attention, he pressed the syringe that had been tightly wrapped in his arms on Chen Zihua's neck, and then quickly pressed the button of the syringe.

"You..." Before Chen Zihua could express his panic completely, his little head felt dizzy, and then his eyes turned black, and his small body fell down completely without any sense.

"It is difficult for children without adults to stay awake in the early stages of protein injection!" The old man held the wall and stood up from the ground with difficulty. He looked at Chen Zihua who was lying on the ground reluctantly, and murmured to himself: "I hope the Lord can bless you... Alas, it's a pity. If I could have more time, it would be great... How great..."

When he said that, he continued to walk out of the alley, pressing his lower abdomen with one hand tightly, and blood flowed down his crotch and penetrated into his shoes. Fortunately, it did not drip on the ground.
Chapter completed!