Chapter 13: One Mistake After Another Is Still a Mistake

Yes, and no.

Titanium, this rare metal, was never meant to be a commodity traded openly in the market.

Wei Dong wasn’t particularly sharp or worldly, but he wasn’t stupid either; in those days, anyone who finished high school had a decent intellect. Flipping through those contact lists, it was clear many of them could make money. Fabrics, building materials, appliances—so many goods could turn a profit if you found the manufacturer and sales channels, skimming something off the margin. But none of them offered the profit margins that cured pork did.

He’d realized this since the days of the silk quilts. It was also the reason he hesitated about following You Qili, that god of wealth, to make his fortune. Would risking prison, in an environment rife with pickpockets, robberies, and scams, ever yield profits five or six times what he was making now?

At his core, it was the mindset of settling for modest prosperity, a thought that returned once seven thousand yuan filled his pocket. Seven thousand! At that time, being a “ten-thousand-yuan household” could get you interviewed on TV; in an entire province, such a person would draw crowds. Who would have guessed that the dirty “porter” sitting in the corner had already saved seven thousand yuan selling cured pork?

So, after searching high and low, Wei Dong felt titanium alloy was the only thing that seemed high-end, maybe with big profits. He decided to make a call.

The phone bill alone cost several yuan—enough to feed a family for two days.

But the customer wanted titanium alloy, and what Wei Dong mentioned sounded like pure titanium. The latter was already involved with military products, produced only in a few secret factories under the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry nationwide! There was said to be one in the southwest, but even the emerging private factories in Jiangsu and Zhejiang didn’t know where it was hidden.

Their sales rep had simply come around, left a note in You Qili’s contacts. So it wasn’t a big issue—they had connections to find a place to smelt alloys. Pure titanium could skip an extra layer of middlemen and markup, making it easier to control the supply of scarce materials.

Now, hearing a new lead, they were intrigued: “Can you give me the manufacturer’s address and contact?”

That was impossible. What Wei Dong had learned outside the Wanshang Trading Company was that business in these days thrived on information gaps: “How much do you need, and what market price can you accept?”

The other side quickly fell into that half-interested, half-impatient tone reserved for outsiders: “How much? Pure titanium ingots—only a few hundred tons produced nationwide each year. Going rate is sixty-six thousand yuan a ton. Whatever you have, we’ll take—one kilo or several tons. But that’s the delivered price. Right now, imported Australian rutile only costs seven hundred dollars a ton. Let’s talk when you actually have the goods!”

With a huff, the phone was slammed down.

Perhaps they wanted to act proud, hoping he’d call back humbled.

Wei Dong, though, had brought pen and paper, carefully noting down all the information they’d just mentioned.

Then, on Sunday, he took the river boat to the provincial capital, and appeared early the next morning at the door of that non-ferrous metal processing plant.

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There was no need to observe—Wei Dong’s decades-old impression was that Shi Linyan was a very simple woman. Busy with activities on Sundays, squeezing in study time, and never venturing out at night. Keeping watch during the day was just to see if any wolves were lurking; danger would only arise after evening classes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

So, taking advantage of this window, Wei Dong went to pick up his father—and incidentally, inquire about the titanium plates and ingots.

The woman inside the glass counter, knitting, had bought cured pork before and didn’t think much of their own products: “I don’t know the price. We’ve never sold them. Higher-ups always come and take the goods. Early this year, they suddenly asked us to find our own buyers. You, a country kid, know where to sell?”

Her hands were skilled, needles never pausing—not worried at all. State-owned jobs were iron rice bowls; the country wouldn’t let anyone starve.

A complete outsider, Wei Dong kept a cautious mind, not revealing the Jiangsu-Zhejiang market price: “My classmate is in university—her coastal friends’ family does this. Right now, Australian rutile imports are seven hundred dollars a ton. Is that used for titanium alloy?”

The woman cared only about the amount: “What’s rutile? Seven hundred dollars a ton? How much is that in yuan?”

It’s hard for those living in the internet age to imagine how closed off information was back then—if you didn’t know, there was absolutely no way to find out. In a system of unified purchase and sale, the factory really didn’t know where their product went, or for how much. Unlike fabric, which had some market benchmarks, theirs was hidden deep in the mountains: mining, refining, manufacturing in silence, then handing it all to the state, which paid them and kept them alive.

That was planned economy—not part of market trading.

As for foreign exchange rates, except for people in Shanghai, probably no one nationwide cared or could see them. If they realized the yuan was worth less than the dollar, it might make them feel inferior.

Wei Dong scratched his head, trying his best—he recalled seeing short videos mentioning the exchange rate breaking seven or eight: “One to seven? So about four or five thousand yuan?”

“You rascal! Seven times seven is forty-nine, so it’s five thousand! Don’t try to fudge the numbers. All right, I’ll report this to the manager.” The knitting woman’s hands moved quickly, never looking up.

Wei Dong had only been testing the waters. He took the hand-cranked phone number and went to pick up his father.

He didn’t know that the factory, upon hearing this news, immediately called a meeting!

Because titanium, in theory, could be refined from rutile or ilmenite—the former had higher purity, but China’s mineral resources and refining technology meant they used the latter. They didn’t even know the technology for refining rutile, nor the ratio of rutile to pure titanium.

This information struck the mountain-bound factory like a mortal blow.

Anyone who could mention rutile wasn’t just talking nonsense. Factory leaders inquired about prices with their superiors, the technical department worked overnight to calculate costs—rutile was five thousand a ton, so what price could they sell at without taking a loss?

In truth, the dollar exchange rate at that time was actually one to two—but no one knew.

Wei Dong had no idea his casual words had stirred up such a storm.

He was only focused on bringing his father home.

The elder Wei, just out of a full-body cast, was trembling, but it wasn’t a skeletal or spinal issue—just muscle atrophy from nearly a hundred days of immobilization.

But he insisted on walking himself.

Under hospital guidance, he could already stand by holding onto the wall.

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He could only sigh—the doctor had caught him smoking and forbade it for half a year. Hard to bear!

Wei Dong was overjoyed, hovering around his father, asking how his back felt, if there was any discomfort, if the fracture was healing well.

In the end, he carried his father to the dock and onto the boat.

His mother regretted that only half of the third month’s rent had passed—several yuan wasted.

Wei Dong told her to lock the door and leave: “It’s fine. Next time, if we need to rent, we’ll just do it again. Every time we come to sell cured pork, we need a place to stay. But this business needs some serious thought.”

He’d spent days sitting across the street, pondering: “There are three or four months before the Spring Festival. This year, we’ll buy more pigs for the New Year slaughter, buy more piglets for the village to raise, so next year we can slaughter and smoke more cured pork. Gradually, the business will grow.”

After seeing his son make a dozen trips for sales, his parents, seasoned workers in the city, were more accepting than rural folk: “You still need to be careful not to get caught.”

His mother cared about the gossip Dog Egg had spread: “I heard Er Feng is helping you collect cured pork. Did you hand all the money to your wife?”

This detail seemed to sting his mother—not even married yet, and already the family finances were being seized.

Wei Dong immediately denied it: “No such thing. If Dad were paralyzed and couldn’t stand, and I kept selling but got caught, her father wouldn’t recognize this so-called engagement. We wouldn’t pursue the match, either. I just want to work and make money. She helps me collect cured pork, and I pay her. Everything is clear.”

His mother surely felt that this would be embarrassing among neighbors.

But the veteran, his father, approved: “We’ll settle down and slowly talk to Old Li about this. If you have ambition, you should see the world outside. In the army, you could get promoted, but marrying messed up the chance for many.”

For rural folk, entering the city was, aside from university, the only way.

Of course, it was fiercely contested.

Wei Dong was delighted by his father’s openness: “We’ll stay in Shangzhou for a while, keep doing rehab in the city. Once the cured pork business is up, we’ll have places to store goods in the country, city, and provincial capital.”

On Tuesday morning, the family happily moved into the rental house. Passing by the sealed Wanshang Trading Company, Wei Dong took a long look.

Because the boy selling newspapers at the dock was shouting:

“Extra! Extra! Shangzhou individual business owner You Qili, under the guise of a general merchandise and hardware shop, employed illegal methods, colluded inside and out, bought up and resold state-controlled commodities, cornered the market, speculated and profiteered. Police have shut down the shop and detained eight main members for investigation!”

Many were buying newspapers.

In reality, from what Wei Dong saw in the provincial capital—factory contacts made by phone, even the train timetables he bought—a thick stack of advertisements for all kinds of goods from across the country followed behind.

The pace of reform was already unmistakably underway, but in these cloistered mountain cities, old rules still held tight.

This business really had to be done carefully.

But whatever happened, with his father discharged and his parents settled in the rental house, Wei Dong could finally devote himself fully to his work as a porter.