Three Stories of Investment Beyond Shanhaiguan

Attempted Assault and a Midnight Escape

Shandong natives venturing into the northeast are a well-known phenomenon.

Many of my older relatives are settled in the Northeast.

In early 2007, a group of us young men from Shandong visited relatives in Benxi before the Spring Festival.

Drinking is an unavoidable part of dining in the Northeast.

While Shandong people are famous for their drinking tolerance, we were no match for the local “relay battle.” After two cups of liquor, we were completely incapacitated.

I lost all consciousness and couldn’t remember anything when I woke up in the evening.

And how did I wake up? Someone forcefully shook me awake.

Why?

To escape for our lives.

We had to flee Benxi that very night.

It turned out that during the drinking session earlier, we had offended a local relative from Benxi with our words. That night, he came wielding a knife to kill us.

This wasn’t a mere scare tactic. He wrapped his hands in cloth to prevent fingerprints and avoid losing grip, entered the courtyard where we stayed, and injured a family member trying to stop him. It took his elderly father wrestling the knife away to diffuse the situation.

While he went off to find another knife, our relatives woke us from our drunken stupor and rushed us to the train station that night.

In 2016, news from Benxi reached us.

The knife-wielding man was involved in illegally producing explosives for others. A warehouse explosion severely burned him. He barely survived and now relies on his wife’s fortune-telling to support the family.

Since then, I’ve never crossed Shanhaiguan again.

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The Train Without Attendants

This is a story my father experienced firsthand.

In 1992, my father, along with my aunt’s husband and three others, traveled to Hegang to work as coal miners.

The train journey lasted over 30 hours.

Late at night, after a temporary stop at a small station, the train restarted.

What happened next was a scene straight out of A World Without Thieves. A gang of robbers systematically went through each compartment, looting passengers.

My father and his companions didn’t carry much money, knowing the risks of the Northeast. They had sewn their cash into the linings of their underwear and the soles of their shoes.

One of them, my aunt’s sister-in-law, was holding her infant child, who woke up crying during the robbery.

The robbers, irritated by the noise, threatened to throw the child out of the train if the crying didn’t stop. Terrified, she handed over the money and fled to the toilet to hide.

After the robbers left, they declared, “We’ll take that child’s life next.”

Panicked, my father’s group decided to get off at the next stop. When they went to fetch her from the toilet, she wouldn’t respond.

Breaking down the door, they found her attempting to hang herself in despair.

The group hurriedly disembarked at the next station, but unfortunately, the robbers also alighted there.

The gang continued their threats. In a desperate moment, my father grabbed the baby and ran toward the train station’s police post…

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Employee’s Fraud Attempt on the Boss

In 2008, an uncle of mine ran a renovation business in Mudanjiang.

One day, his wife received a frantic call claiming he had been in a car accident and was undergoing emergency surgery, requiring ¥100,000 immediately.

Concerned it might be a scam, she asked for his name, workplace, and other details—all of which were answered correctly.

She tried calling her husband’s phone, but it was off.

Panicking, she told the caller she didn’t have the money and needed time to arrange it. The caller agreed to ring back in 30 minutes and provided a bank account number.

In the meantime, she sought help from her brother.

Her brother, however, was skeptical. Although he couldn’t reach her husband either, he insisted on verifying the claim with local authorities or hospitals before transferring any money.

The sister scolded him for being heartless.

Unfazed, her brother countered that no hospital would refuse emergency care for lack of funds, especially with employees from her husband’s company around to help.

Calls to the police and hospitals yielded no information about any accidents involving her husband.

When the scammer called again, her brother tried to extract more information but found nothing unusual. Despite his sister’s urgency, he continued to press for further verification.

Half an hour later, they managed to contact her husband.

The phone was answered not by him, but by one of his employees.

When asked about the accident, the employee seemed confused. The husband then took the phone and clarified: he’d been in meetings all day, and his phone had been charging, left with an employee.

Further investigation revealed the scammer’s phone number was linked to a recently departed employee.

The uncle chose not to disclose the incident but eventually fired the suspected insider a few months later.

Three years ago, he closed his Mudanjiang business for good.

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After business tycoons like Wang Jianlin, Pony Ma, Liu Qiangdong, and Xu Jiayin invested heavily in the Northeast, Jack Ma also embarked on a “Northeast adventure” on July 16, 2019. His visit to Harbin, engagements with universities, and signing of agreements marked his declaration: “Alibaba will invest beyond Shanhaiguan.”

Perhaps, under the scrutiny of the entire nation, the business environment beyond Shanhaiguan has begun to change, prompting a wave of renewed interest from major entrepreneurs.