Chapter 149 A Mix of Hot and Cold

The meeting dragged on until very late.

Rang Weidong openly arranged for Shen Cuiyue to share a female dormitory room with He Yuemei. This not only projected the boss's attitude of frugality—spending when necessary, saving when possible—but also demonstrated a pure and proper relationship between men and women.

Indeed, this could instantly build up a respectable persona among college students. No one wanted to follow a guy who was a debauched hedonist obsessed with women. An entourage surrounding such a boss would consist of nothing more than worthless parasites, utterly devoid of any real combat effectiveness.

Third Sister Shen proved to be quick-witted; she cooperated smoothly by saying she also wanted to have a good discussion about work with He Yuemei. This prompted Xiao Xiao, another female student from the Steel Institute among the seven, to ask to rest in Sister Yuemei's dormitory as well. There were plenty of vacant dormitory rooms for graduates, and the main thing was to seize the opportunity to study and build good connections.

Following that, the male students eagerly crowded into the guesthouse to continue chatting. Rang Weidong casually called away the two brothers who were diligently washing and polishing the car under the streetlight.

Therefore, bright and early the next morning, everyone joined the teachers and students of the Steel Institute to admire the beauty of an industrial product hailing from the American Empire!

Northern cities were inherently dusky and gray, and Beijing's sandstorms were even more commonplace in the 1980s, so even a summer morning lacked the lush, vibrant green feel of the southwest. Yet this JEEP CJ-7 off-road vehicle, wiped and polished in the dark, shone brilliantly like a carved gemstone!

Many people passing by stopped to look and reached out to touch it, leaving fingerprints all over the metallic paint and the transparent plastic film on the windows. But this could not obscure the rich, mellow blue-gray spray paint; instead, it made the mottled, brilliant luster stand out even more dazzlingly. On the hood was a black, gold-trimmed decal streamer, with the white word "Renegade" strikingly centered in the middle. Complimented by the rice-coffee-colored fabric canopy, the car's crystal-clear paint job was accentuated even further.

Who had ever seen anything like this at the time? Currently, most domestically produced cars were still hand-painted, and only a tiny fraction could manage a crude spray job—far from the visual experience of modern spraying techniques. And yet, it wasn't as if imported cars were scarce in Beijing. Though mostly serious black, white, and beige official vehicles, none of them were this uniquely striking. At the very least, those were washed clean daily as a routine chore by various motor pools.

The professional competence of the Steel Institute was beyond doubt. Several male students eagerly crowded around to observe: "Is the polishing effect of toothpaste really this good?"

"After long-distance transport, the surface exposed to wind and sun must have formed an oxide layer. Could it be that the imported cars we saw before were never polished like this?"

They didn't consider what kind of skill was required to buff it out. The God of Gamblers' Shadowless Hands combined with the Wind and Thunder Mother-and-Son Blades, plus forty-nine days of bitter practice of virgin kung fu, were just barely enough to replace a modern electric polisher.

Rang Weidong brought the two younger brothers out, and they too looked on in amazement: "I say, the two of you should go open a car detailing shop. Your fingers are so nimble; why gamble with cards or play with knives?"

Pitiable it was that their bitter practice of ancestral secret techniques had left their hands cramped like chicken claws; even after sleeping all night and eating breakfast, they were still shaking! The two didn't want to speak, but leaning against the car, they couldn't stop smiling. They kept pulling at their sleeves to wipe away fingerprints.

A man naturally loves this sort of thing from the bottom of his heart.

The elder sister came over and let out a slight gasp: "Is this going to ruin their hands?!"

The older brother was merciless: "Ruined is ruined. Being an ordinary person is better. Rest well at home today; I'm taking people out to talk business."

The two younger brothers curled their lips in dissatisfaction, mostly because they couldn't bear to leave the car.

The university students still had resourceful ways. Among the peripheral salesmen from the Steel Institute, there was a sophomore approaching thirty years old who had been a commune tractor driver before entering university and was said to have driven farm vehicles extensively.

Summoned early in the morning, he drove a Beijing 212 jeep around the open space outside the guesthouse for a few laps and swore up and down that there was no problem.

Thus, four male students plus the half-baked driver crammed into the 212, while Rang Weidong led the three female students, and the entire group set off for the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives.

He Yuemei and Xiao Xiao hugged their knees in the narrow backseat, thrilled and excited: "This is so comfortable! It's so much smoother than riding in that jeep yesterday!"

"It's because Old Rang has good driving skills; yesterday's driver was completely absent-minded."

Rang Weidong encouraged them: "You should all seize the opportunity to learn how to drive. You'll become successful people who commute to work in cars."

The two girls replied that they didn't even dare to imagine such a thing.

The high-backed bucket leather seats of this car were incomparable, completely crushing the 212.

Sitting in the front passenger seat and mindful of her work responsibilities, Shen Cuiyue turned her upper body back to remind them: "Sister He, you're in charge of all the accounts. Sister Xiao, have all the photos ready. We need to present ourselves to the other side as a very capable operation. Let's go over the details once more."

The two female college students immediately grew nervous.

Feeling that Third Sister Shen was putting people through the wringer with such serious pretenses, Rang Weidong glanced at the rear-view mirror to deflect: "Why don't we all just go buy new clothes? I saw a pretty decent shopping mall yesterday near the airport bus spot."

With that, he took the lead and turned the vehicle, and the tractor driver behind naturally followed suit.

Having a car made things convenient. With virtually no traffic congestion in downtown Beijing at this hour, quick as a flash, even the tractor driver was outfitted in a brand-new shirt, dress slacks, and athletic shoes. There was no rigid requirement to pair them with leather shoes; mainly, people didn't have the habit of styling their hair back then, so everyone's hair was as messy as Rang Weidong's.

So they bought a box of pomade, Rang Weidong demonstrated it on his own head, and tossed the rest into the 212 for everyone to mess with each other's hair, as long as nobody looked unkempt like a performance artist.

The girls, meanwhile, emulated Third Sister Shen by tucking their shirts into skirts to play the role of office ladies.

Rang Weidong had to quietly shift his holster to his thigh. Who told him to insist on bringing a gun to Beijing? Now it had completely become a burdensome hassle; worn close to his body and unable to be left behind, he had no choice but to carry this half-a-catty piece of metal and treat it as practicing light kung fu.

The martial arts girl seized the opportunity to pull out her fine-toothed comb and slicked Rang Weidong's pomaded hair into a style resembling Wang Jingwei.

Glancing occasionally in the rearview mirror, Rang Weidong felt it looked pretty good and thought he should preserve this image to show his wife back home.

Along the way, he also imparted his own experience to He Yuemei: "During this period, you must seize every opportunity to look around places similar to the shopping mall we just visited. Feel what the masses need most. Once you see it in Guangzhou, purchase that inventory. If you don't have enough money, tell me, and our trucks will ship the goods back to Beijing and Jiangzhou. Won't the profits roll right in?"

At this time, even suits and jeans were rarely seen in Beijing's shopping malls and clothing stores, so Rang Weidong knew that the era of speculative profiteers had not yet emerged. He encouraged the soon-to-be-appointed Guangzhou manager to start reselling these items first.

He Yuemei completely forgot what major she studied in university and nodded heavily, saying okay.

The young freshman could only feel envious; she still had to endure two more years.

Rang Weidong comforted her as well, telling her to assist her partner and prop up the Beijing sales company over the next two years. They should strive to secure a low-cost retail storefront near the Steel Institute soon—not to sell a huge volume of goods from the shop, but primarily to provide the salesmen with a formal business address.

While talking, they had already arrived. Beijing was quite convenient at this time; most of the boastful government agencies were located along both sides of Chang'an Avenue, so there was no need to drive very far.

Yet this gray-blue compact off-road vehicle was simply too eye-catching. When they returned to the Steel Institute covered in dust yesterday, it hadn't stood out quite as much. Now, it looked precisely like the American imperialist imagery of someone wearing a cowboy hat driving into the sunset, braving mud paths and picturesque rural countrysides in North America, leaving only a wisp of dust behind.

It was pure leisure—exuding the refined and unconstrained swagger of a wealthy young scion.

Meanwhile, the entire city of Beijing over the past couple of years was still wrapped in the gray haze of reform and opening up, and even the clothes worn on the streets were mostly gray, white, black, and green, lacking any vibrant colors.

Parking in front of the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives drew numerous gazes.

As long as she wasn't facing the cops, Shen Cuiyue remained quite composed. She hopped out to accompany Rang Weidong inside, tossing the car keys to the tractor driver to guard.

Then, the four male students tried their best to project the majestic momentum of the national flag-raising guard, only for Rang Weidong to laugh and scold them, saying they looked like they were carrying a sedan chair.

The people at this rather serious national institutional unit—essentially a super state-owned enterprise—found this group of fellows to be outrageously young. Thirty years later, having this kind of direct access to senior executives would be virtually impossible.

With the Sunshine Daily pulling strings, several leaders attended, mostly women, and the newspaper had also invited cadres from the Women's Federation.

Yet the moment he sat down, Rang Weidong noticed another group of people. The factory-management aura of their attire instantly reminded him: could this be the paper mill that had imported the sanitary napkin production line a couple of years ago?

Now an expert himself, a paper mill doing this sort of thing? Heh.

Sure enough, after brief pleasantries, the Supply and Marketing Cooperative side began inquiring about his production scale and cost data.

Normally, when doing business with others, if a buyer or distributor asked a manufacturer for their bottom-line price like this, one would simply slap their thighs, stand up, and walk out. It was a product in short supply anyway; why subject oneself to this kind of constraint?

Rang Weidong's goal was nationwide advertising to sell across the country, which required securing this first foothold through the nation's largest retail chain...

Therefore, he kept his patience and displayed the photos he brought, with Third Sister Shen and Xiao Xiao respectfully passing them back and forth.

The office space at the time was also very simple—probably just two or three ping-pong tables covered with a tablecloth serving as a conference room.

From the "disinfected dust-free packaging room" to the high-temperature sterilization conveyor tracks, and finally to the neat rows of dozens of impressive sanitary napkin machines, everything was displayed. Fortunately, the bamboo winnowing baskets used to shovel sanitary napkins were kept out of the photos.

Following the details she familiarized herself with the previous night, He Yuemei began analyzing with clear logic: the production cost was controlled at around forty-eight cents, with retail prices for ten-pack bags ranging from sixty cents and eighty cents to a suggested retail price of one yuan.

In reality, factoring in machine depreciation, management costs, and sales expenses, eighty cents was practically "making no money." Of course, they still enjoyed tax-reduction and exemption benefits from Jiangzhou City.

"Our tenet is to serve the people, to solve urban surplus labor employment through the production process as much as possible, and for the product to primarily solve issues for our women comrades rather than for profit."

That group of factory-participating personnel naturally couldn't hold back anymore and completely ignored these boilerplate remarks. Seeing Xiao Xiao holding a few packs of sanitary napkins and unsealing them on the table to "inspect," they inquired about the details of the three-layer raw materials of the sanitary napkins.

When the Supply and Marketing Cooperative introduced them as the state-owned paper mill that was the first in the country to import a Japanese sanitary napkin production line, Rang Weidong instead turned the tables to inquire about the other party's raw material situation.

The answer wasn't important; probing their attitude was the key.

It was quite amusing. Even if the Beijingers carried a bit of innate arrogance and looked down on others slightly, they still admitted that they had no capability whatsoever to produce non-woven fabrics. Naturally, their tone was superior to the world: "Domestically, there is basically no such capability to produce advanced European and American paper products!"

Perhaps they still felt that only the capital inherently understood everything.

Smiling, Rang Weidong slowly exerted his influence: "Let me popularize a piece of trivia: the upper and lower interlayers of imported sanitary napkin raw materials are not paper; they are polyester fiber derivatives of the petrochemical industry. To put it more colloquially, they are closer to plastic, and are actually great materials for making masks."

The mask girl wasn't wearing one today, but her large eyes lit up.

In human society thousands of years prior to computers for instant searching and smartphones for image recognition, knowledge was unevenly categorized, separated by professional boundaries as vast as mountains; if you didn't know something, you might never know it. Even experts couldn't grasp the actual conditions across the entire industry. For example, the Red Light Factory had no idea where the titanium industry market was.

Drawing on his vague impressions and familiarity gained from the Jiangzhou Industrial Bureau and Commercial Bureau, Rang Weidong said: "Indeed, even that petrochemical city in the remote suburbs of Shanghai, which ranks at the forefront of the country, lacks this technological capability right now. The only place coming somewhat close is that large petrochemical project near Jiangzhou that was just completed last year; they are striving in this direction, but it still requires a multi-year construction and refinement process."

Therefore, the conclusion was very clear: "Your factory must be using entirely imported raw materials, right?"

Hesitating for a moment, the other side nodded and admitted: "Yes, so our costs remain high, and market acceptance is difficult. But we produce strictly in accordance with the technological processes of European and American developed countries, and we can definitely withstand international standard testing!"

Rang Weidong smiled: "Are foreigners' standards our standards? Let me popularize another piece of hot trivia: everyone's skin sensitivity tolerance is different. Different regions and different ethnicities experience completely different skin sensitivities due to dietary structures and lifestyle habits. Therefore, for this kind of intimate daily necessity, the standard should still be based on our own. After all, what we make here is for the vast masses of our people to use, rather than to be exported back to foreign devils."

Cold or hot trivia aside, his persona as a knowledgeable and scientifically minded person was successfully established.