I think a lot of my experience with this work of flash fuction will be a bit skewed because I have visited China (albeit I have never been to Shenzhen), so I do believe I got to enjoy this story a bit more.

The plot centers around an engineer whose high tech prototype product security job is in danger because the Chinese government has started to dismantle a series of border fences separating Shenzhen and Hong Kong and the companies located somewhat illegally in those lands being paid un foreign currency are about to be eaten alive by the mainlanders. After convincing a coworker to help him distract his boss to send a protoype to a bootleger (a real dog eats dog society), it looks like he is caught and has to flee into a Shenzhen slum where he becomes entranced by a beautiful prostitute named Winter Lotus who has a high tech holographic tramp stamp on her belly and he starts to become curious about her...

I think the highlights of the story is the real life history lesson of rural landowners buildings shambled buildings in prime real estate to get higher severence payme ts when the government inevitably expropriates the land to feed an unrelentingly hungry urban sprawl and how locals don't protest or criticize: they try to game rhe system to make a profit and cash it.

The story was pretty interesting and I would have wanted to know more about the technology the MC uses to spy on Winter Lotus but the book sadly either doesn't develop it much or it was sadly lost in translation.

I do think it was entertaining, informative and a different kind of story rhan what I am used to. Might give the author the benefit of the doubt and read some other of his translated work. ( )

Rather depressing tale of a one-way romance with a prostitute which leads to murder.... ( )