The Burden of Thousand-Yuan Gold
Like a sudden high fever, news that the price of gold was about to break the one-thousand-yuan-per-gram barrier quickly swept through the northern industrial city where Wang Jianguo lived. Wang Jianguo, an old master craftsman retired from the state-owned machine tool factory, initially scoffed at it. In his view, gold, apart from adding a bit of "face" for his daughter-in-law at the wedding, had no real practical use. You couldn't eat it or wear it, and keeping it at home meant worrying about thieves.
However, the heat of this "gold rush" permeated his peaceful retirement life in an undeniable way. First, Old Zhang from the neighborhood chess room mysteriously showed off the "small gold bars" he had just withdrawn from the bank, claiming they were "hard currency" against inflation. Then, Old Li, who sold tofu at the wet market, also started muttering about converting his hard-earned savings into "gold beans" to "feel secure." Financial commentators on TV analyzed the global economic situation with modulated tones – the weakness of the US dollar, geopolitical tensions – seemingly endorsing this golden frenzy. Every fluctuating number, every emphasis on "risk aversion," hammered away at Wang Jianguo's originally solid values.