#DEEPEST SWORD DRAGON SERIES#

Behind it, the mill staff planted a row of 230 saplings - peach trees, specially selected for their ability to withstand a Maine winter. He ordered a high, 2,000-foot fence erected along the perimeter of the cemetery. This was inauspicious, Feng Shui Eddie advised, because it allowed restless spirits to peer into the factory grounds. The mill property was abutted by a cemetery, a slope covered with gravestones of 19th-century millworkers. The company had flown its feng shui consultant, known within the company as “Feng Shui Eddie,” from Hong Kong to look over the mill complex. “We were short that money, but now, this year, it’s almost like being dropped from heaven,” Mr. It sponsored Little League teams, underwrote the Memorial Day and Riverfest parades, bought canoes from the town’s other large employer, Old Town Canoe, to give out as raffle prizes. ND Paper, the company’s United States affiliate, seemed to bend over backward to win the good will of the community. When the company began interviewing candidates for 130 jobs, 1,200 people applied. Four hundred and fifty contractors began showing up daily at the mill, and a pizza shop opened on Main Street. Mahan watched as the mill became a hive of activity. That business model was shaken in 2018 when the Chinese government sharply limited the import of American recycling scrap, in a policy known as the “National Sword.” Paper manufacturers began searching for new sources of virgin pulp, which can be exported under lower tariffs and mixed with lower-grade fibers from Chinese scrap to strengthen cardboard.Īnd that decision had sent ripples all the way to Old Town, where Nine Dragons announced an initial investment of $45 million. Zhang, amassed her vast fortune by exporting recycling scrap from the United States, and then breaking it down to pulp that could be made into boxes. Nine Dragons is Asia’s largest producer of containerboard, which is used to make cardboard boxes and packing material. If demand for pulp had wavered in the United States, it was building in China. “Then Brian says, ‘Yes, ND Paper, we’re affiliated with Nine Dragons.’ I went, ‘Whoa, O.K.’ Once I heard that name, I was like, ‘O.K.

“I’m going, ‘ND Paper, are you kidding me?’” he said. Once he had parked and taken a seat in a conference room at the mill, he dialed into a call with someone he had never met: Brian Boland, vice president of government affairs at ND Paper, which already owned one pulp and paper mill in Rumford, 125 miles to the west.

“You need to come back right now,” the liquidator told Mr. “I think we hit rock bottom at a certain point,” Mr. Mahan had even talked about phasing out trash collection, a service that costs the city around $330,000 annually. The City Council, struggling to fund services from a dwindling tax base, agreed to cut 20 municipal jobs. The city’s spirit flagged, as the crime blotter documented drug busts and methamphetamine labs. Most people in town expected it to be sold for scrap. The mill sat empty for three winters, and holes opened in the roof. One owner after another had given up on the 130-year-old pulp mill, which had contributed about $500,000 annually to the city’s tax revenue, said Bill Mayo, Old Town’s city manager. But it has a name - and a dramatic story - all its own.

#DEEPEST SWORD DRAGON SERIES#

Viewers of the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building” know the Upper West Side apartment building as the Arconia.Meet the medical experts fighting bogus science, one “stitch” at a time. TikTok is flooded with health misinformation.Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of Monowi, Neb., where she operates a tavern that serves as one of the last gathering places for the remaining residents of the county.

The Great Read More fascinating tales you can’t help but read all the way to the end. Because this was also true: Finally, after so many years, there was opportunity to be grasped in Old Town. But she had spotted the site manager for Nine Dragons lingering at the back of the crowd and wanted to catch him. “Most people who do this do it out of greed,” she said. She had grown up, as she put it, “under the stack,” the daughter and granddaughter of millworkers, and had a Mainer’s suspicion of outsiders. “You want my honest opinion? This country is being recolonized by Asia,” said Katie Bosse, 77. No amount of trade-war bluster would change either of these things.Īlong with gratitude came a tinge of apprehension, a sense that unpredictable change had come to the north woods. To keep its paper plants humming, Nine Dragons needed this mill.Īnd the Old Town mill, cast aside by a parade of short-term investors, abandoned to the elements, needed a savior. The Chinese government had cut off the import of American recycling, jeopardizing the supply lines that fed Nine Dragons’ broader business.

But a different story was unfolding in this battered New England mill town, population 7,500.

Deepest sword dragon