Before long, father had collected bamboo mats, pillows, quilts, mosquito nets, chopsticks, spoons, bowls, pots, pans, kettles, buckets, basins, brooms, mops and low plastic stools to reuse. What he kept collecting to sell was foam, paper, bottles, cartons, flirtatious magazines, romantic fiction or sentimental novels, broken pieces of plastic and metal, parts of electronics and wires that he would skin to separate the valuable from the less valuable.