Chapter 1

"Miss, take these six meat buns. Eat them while they're hot. They're free today."

In the middle of a heavy snowfall, I pressed a bag of steaming hot buns into the hands of a blonde Russian girl.

Back then, I was just a down-on-my-luck man setting up a stall in the Siberian wind to hide from my debt collectors.

I didn't expect anything back from her—after all, it was only a few cheap buns.

But I never dreamed that those six steaming meat buns would completely change my fate in a foreign land, and hand me a life for my later years that I'd never even dared to imagine.

"Louis, that foreign girl is eyeing your big meat buns again—she can't pull her eyes away!"

Ronald Finch, who sold grilled cold noodles at the stall next to mine, jabbed me with his elbow and winked, lowering his voice.

I followed Ronald's gaze.

Out on the edge of our noisy open-air market, that blonde Russian girl was standing there again.

In the Russian Far East back in the early 1990s, the winters were cold enough to crack the marrow in your bones.

At more than thirty below, water froze the instant it dripped, and a single breath would turn to white frost on your eyebrows in a heartbeat.

We Chinese traders running small businesses over here were all bundled up like big bears, in thick military overcoats and dog-fur hats.

But that girl was dressed far too thinly.

She had on an old wool coat that was clearly years past its prime, the collar worn through, and a pair of old leather boots on her feet.

She wasn't wearing a hat. Her long golden hair was tousled by the cold wind, her fair, pretty face was flushed red from the cold, and her shoulders kept trembling faintly.

But her eyes were fixed on the big bamboo steamer in front of me, the one billowing rolling white steam.

There was a longing in that gaze that made your chest ache to see it.

My name is Louis Chavez. I got cheated in business back home and ended up buried in debt. With nowhere left to turn, I fled to Vladivostok with some fellow countrymen.

I didn't speak Russian and couldn't deal in bulk goods, so all I could do was fall back on the dough-making craft handed down in my family, set up a stall in the market, and sell buns.

Big pork buns, pickled-cabbage buns, plain steamed buns—the aroma of Chinese food was what scraped me by in this frozen wasteland.

That Russian girl wasn't coming for the first time.

For the past week and more, she had shown up at my stall every day at noon, right on time.

She was exceptionally beautiful, with striking, sculpted features and eyes like blue gemstones.

But she never bought meat buns.

She would always stand a little way off from the steamer, watching quietly for several minutes, secretly swallowing a couple of times.

Then she would walk slowly over, dig a few of the smallest ruble coins out of her pocket, and say to me in halting Chinese.

"Boss, one, plain steamed bun."

Every time she bought that cheapest, unfilled steamed bun, she would cup it carefully in her hands as if it were some precious treasure, then turn and walk off into the wind and snow.

Today was the same.

She stood in the wind for a long time, and only after all the customers buying buns had drifted away did she rub her frozen hands and come over.

She lowered her head and rummaged for a long while through an old cloth bag washed pale with wear.

With two clinks, two coins dropped onto the wooden board in front of me.

"Boss... a steamed bun..."

Her voice was very small, with an unmistakable tremor, and even her lips had gone a little purple from the cold.

Looking at those two coins on the board, I suddenly felt an ache I couldn't put into words.

I quickly lifted the lid of the steamer, plucked out a piping-hot plain steamed bun with the tongs, dropped it into a plastic bag, and handed it to her.

She took the bag, and as she felt the warmth of the bun, her fingers, stiff with cold, curled in a little.

"Thank you."

She said it softly in perfect Russian, then turned to leave.

"Hey, Louis, how does a Russian girl who looks like a movie star end up in such a rough spot?"

Beside me, Ronald flipped his grilled cold noodles and sighed.

"I hear the economy over here in Russia's in a slump right now, and plenty of ordinary folks can't even afford to eat. This girl's probably run into some kind of trouble at home."

I kneaded the dough in my hands and watched her thin figure vanish into the wind and snow, my feelings all tangled up.

The truth was, seeing her reminded me of myself.

Back in the day, I'd been a small business owner riding high at home—a car to get me around, someone always picking up the tab at meals.

Later I trusted the wrong person, watched millions go down the drain, and even had my house seized by the court.

Hounded by my creditors, I fled my hometown overnight, rode a slow green train for days and nights on end, and arrived in this strange, snowbound country like a drifter with nothing.

When I first got here, I didn't even have the money to buy a stove. All I could do was haul sacks for people down at the docks—soaked in sweat in the dead of winter, and the money I earned only enough for a bowl of the cheapest borscht.

That feeling of eating one meal with no idea where the next was coming from, your self-respect ground under someone's heel—I knew it all too well.

So I could read the longing and the shame in that girl's eyes.

The next day, the weather here suddenly turned, and a rare blizzard rolled in.

The wind cut like a knife, and more than half the vendors were gone from the market, with barely anyone left to buy anything.

To sell a few more buns, I gritted my teeth and kept the stall open.

By a little past noon, when the wind and snow were at their fiercest.

That familiar figure appeared in front of my stall once again.