A Nose for the Whole World

On the day Liu Jinu decided to go find Zheng Ye, the wind in Beijing was lighter than the days before. The ash still drifted, but it settled on his shoulders thinner than before.

He stood in the shop a while. The seal was still pasted on the doorframe, the signboard still hung on the wall, facing inward. Both things were in their old places; he had looked at them every day, and looking at them day after day he had let the days go hollow. The counter was filmed with dust, the two clerks had long since left, and the room was so quiet he could hear the street-sweeper's broom outside the window. Yesterday he had closed that ledger missing a few pages, pushed the wooden box back under the counter, and brushed the dust from his hands. Then he told himself: no more keeping watch — go and find.

Whom to find, he had not yet worked out. But there was one door he had to push open first.

He left the shop, leaving that signboard behind. The other shops on the street were still open, a few with old-style plaques, their lacquer fresh and gleaming. He did not look up at those plaques, yet his step slowed for a beat. The door he was going to — behind it were the busiest pair of eyes on this half of the street. Zheng Ye had blackened his name for half a month, and most of the people who watched Zheng Ye's livestream were also vendors on this street. He wanted to turn those eyes into his own.

So he went to the livestream room Zheng Ye usually worked from.

Zheng Ye's livestream room was on the third floor of an old mall. By the door were piled goods others had returned and failed to sell, cardboard boxes stacked to knee height. When he pushed the door open, Zheng Ye was talking to the camera, his phone propped on the windowsill, light coming from the side and lighting half his face brightly. Zheng Ye saw him, tilted the lens aside, but did not switch off.

"So you came on your own," Zheng Ye said.

"You've eaten for half a month off blackening my name," Liu Jinu said. "Now I'm asking you to film the other way round."

Zheng Ye did not answer. He turned the lens back to his own face, made a gesture with his right hand, and signaled the chat to hold a moment.

"A blind test," Liu Jinu said. "You bring a pile of things, real and fake mixed, and I'll identify them one by one on the spot. If I get one wrong, I'll never open my mouth in this trade again. If I get them right, those two words of yours — 'exposing fakes' — have to become 'the man who tells things apart.'"

Zheng Ye stared at him for two seconds. His gaze moved from Liu Jinu's face to his dust-flecked shoe tips, then back.

"What makes you think I'd agree."

"If you agree, filming me crash gets you followers, and filming me actually having skill gets you followers too. Either way you win. If I lose, you get a clip; if I win, you get a bigger clip."

Zheng Ye took the phone down from the windowsill, set it on a tripod, adjusted the angle so the counter and half of Liu Jinu's body were in frame. He pulled open a paper bag holding seven or eight items, separated by newspaper.

"Blind test," Zheng Ye said. "I'll hand them over one by one; you won't know where I got them or what I paid. One wrong call and we stop tonight — nothing more to film."

Liu Jinu nodded.

The first item was a tube of stick incense. Zheng Ye tipped it out of the bag and slid it toward him, the tube's mouth facing himself.

He picked it up, held it to the window light, looked, and set it down.

"Real," he said. "Material from living wood — the oil veins follow the wood's own grain, neither crossing nor branching. Dead stock can't show that."

Zheng Ye took it away without a word and fished the second item from the bag.

The second was a strand of beads. The beads were rosewood-dark, their drill-holes and chips all facing one way; the red cord had been replaced several times, and the marks of the joins still showed on the string.

He turned the beads between his fingers, then raised them to his nose.

"This strand has been worn," he said. "Worn for decades. The cord grooves run the same direction, and the patina on the skin-side is thicker than the outer side. It came off a living person, not staged as antique."

The chat began to scroll up. The viewer count in the top right jumped once, then jumped again.

The third was a small box of incense powder. When Zheng Ye passed it over, the lid was ajar, showing a little powder-white inside.

Liu Jinu opened it, dipped a fingertip in, and rubbed a little out on the edge of the paper. He leaned close and smelled, paused a breath, and smelled again.

"Fake," he said. "Pressed out of fragrance oil, not something the tree itself produced. Heat a needle and burn it — what comes off is a straight chemical sweetness, with no finish."

Zheng Ye actually pinched a needle, held it with tweezers, heated it to dull red, and drove it into the powder. The sweetness came first, very pure; half a beat later something else followed, like sugar scorched at the bottom of a pot.

"That's chemical fragrance oil," Liu Jinu said. "The real thing smells foul in the first few draws — you think it's gone off, but it's actually right."

The fourth, fifth, sixth. He handled them one by one — the warm-water soak and count to thirty, the white-paper streak, the burning needle — all the old methods. For each he gave his reasoning; Zheng Ye took each away, and the lens pulled back a little, hiding where the things came from beyond the frame.

There was one he picked up and held to the window light for a long time.

"This one's oil flows wrong," he said. "Soak it and it'll spit. The beads held no oil to begin with; it was pressed in later. High pressure forced oil into the wood's seams — it looks bright, but one soak and it shows. This is called returning oil, also called re-firing."

Zheng Ye took that one away too, with no comment.

When the seventh was handed over, Zheng Ye gave him an extra glance.

It was a piece of material, palm-sized, its surface dull and ashen, as if someone had tossed it in a drawer bottom long ago. Liu Jinu took it, turned it over and over three times, leaned close to smell it, and after smelling set it back on the counter — but did not let go.

"Real," he said. "But its price was beaten down. Someone called it fake, so now it looks fake. It itself hasn't changed."

Zheng Ye took the piece back and tossed it into the paper bag.

Zheng Ye turned off the fill light, brought the phone closer, the lens on Liu Jinu's face alone. This was the prelude to Zheng Ye's real question, and Liu Jinu knew the gesture. The seven items before were for the onlookers. The next sentence was for the people on this street.

"Seven items," Zheng Ye said. "Not one mistake."

The viewer count scrolled in the top right for a long time, climbing to a height Liu Jinu had never seen, before it slowly settled. Zheng Ye turned the lens to himself and steadied the phone with his right hand.

"Boss Liu," he said. "You really do have a knack for telling things apart. So tell them — where do all those fakes on the market actually come from."

Liu Jinu hesitated a beat.

He should not have taken that sentence. The moment it left his mouth, everyone on the street would know his face, and know whom he was speaking of. He thought of the seal on his shop door, of that ledger with pages pulled out, of that thread of saltiness that had fallen in his room a second time. He had kept watch for so long, kept it until even those pages were taken from his cabinet. Keeping watch was useless.

"The biggest batch of fakes on the market," he said, "aren't slapped together at roadside stalls. They come out of little workshops that brand themselves with names like 'century-old house.' They dare to label themselves that way because few can really smell the difference. The older the brand, the fewer dare to ask."

Zheng Ye did not stop him.

The chat froze for an instant, then exploded. Line after line scrolled up too fast to read. Zheng Ye's hand made a gesture beyond the lens, signaling the volume down; he himself said nothing.

That livestream ended late. Liu Jinu came down from the third floor; the night wind wrapped in ash made him squint. He pulled out his phone; the screen was lit, unread messages jamming a full page, most asking whether he could help look at a piece, whether they could place an order for real goods he'd vouched for. One was specific, signed with a name he'd never seen, saying they had a strand worn for years they'd like him to handle, price negotiable. Two more: one asked if he could proxy real stick incense, one asked if a fallen-apart bracelet could be restrung. He, one shop, one man, had only been able to feed himself before; after tonight these people pushed their trust to him a step ahead, and he had to catch it. He scrolled two pages, replied to none, and stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

Fame was something he'd never lived on before. After tonight, it began to speak for him. He received the first orders of his life placed under his own name — not through the shop, but through this public telling-of-goods that people had watched.

The cost he could not yet name. He only felt that several doors down the street would, from tonight, treat him as someone who should not be there. Among the unread messages was one from a sender he knew — another shopkeeper on this street — with only a line: you named me among the people you spoke of tonight. He did not reply.

The larger party, he could not see. But that party had always been nearby, had entered two doors before him, and taken the few ledger pages from his cabinet. Tonight's words would be heard by that party. From now on he would no longer be just a young man keeping a seal; he would be a name remembered.

Another unread, from Zheng Ye, held only a replay link, nothing else. Liu Jinu tapped it open and glanced — the viewer count was still climbing. Traffic can't be turned into money, but the name had spread. What a name could trade for, he did not yet know tonight; he only knew that from tomorrow morning, every order he took would have more people watching every word he gave.

Behind him Zheng Ye folded the tripod, slipped the phone into his pocket, glanced at him, and said nothing. At the stairhead Zheng Ye paused, as if meaning to say something, and in the end only brushed the ash off his shoulder and went down first.

He walked back to the shop; the lock was still open, the seal still there, the signboard still there, facing inward. He reached out and pulled the door shut, but did not bolt it. A little wind squeezed in through the gap, carrying ash.

The phone buzzed in his pocket.

He took it out to look. It was an anonymous private message; the sender field was blank, and the content was only six characters:

"The five incense must not be gathered."