Chapter 29: So Wealthy Yet So Diligent—Is There Something Wrong With Him?

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Of course, Wei Dong knew that selling music and entertainment was a risky business; even listening to decadent tunes could bring the "hat uncle" knocking at your door, so you had to keep the curtains and windows tightly shut. Especially since the device came equipped with a radio capable of picking up enemy stations.

Selling such things in Shangzhou City or the county was sure to end in disaster—the three tape recorders at Wanshang Trading Company were still hidden in the warehouse. But Mrs. Shi had given him a tremendous excuse: this was a powerful tool for learning foreign languages.

"We’re selling cooking knives. If you use them for murder, that’s none of my concern."

So, sitting at their office desk, he haggled until the price settled at eighty-two yuan per unit, which included three blank tapes; eighty-five yuan for the whole package delivered to the dock. Five hundred units—he paid 2,500 yuan upfront, with the remaining forty thousand to be paid in full upon error-free delivery at the dock.

In reality, the route from the Northern Jiangsu Electronics Factory to the dock was shorter, so after signing the contract and receiving a receipt, the other party promised delivery within three days.

They agreed on a daily phone call to confirm progress.

Wei Dong then went out to the commercial street and spent money to buy exchange vouchers from scalpers—these were a kind of foreign exchange token, somewhere between foreign currency and renminbi.

Since foreign currency couldn’t be used domestically and the exchange rate was heavily skewed, foreigners or those working in foreign enterprises could exchange their salary for these vouchers. It was a temporary measure under the dual-track foreign exchange system, particularly useful in places catering to foreigners.

Near that upscale photo studio in Jiangzhou, there was a foreign-related mall filled with rare imported goods unavailable to ordinary citizens.

Wei Dong and Gou Dan Er Feng had tried to visit before but couldn’t even get in.

So he asked Manager Zhang for information.

Spending a little extra, he could buy these vouchers outside to shop inside. The markup was about twenty or thirty percent. He collected them inconspicuously over two or three days, and once the five hundred units arrived, he finally bought a Sanyo dual-cassette recorder—a rarity in the country at the time—for over nine hundred yuan!

That was the annual income for a typical dual-income household.

In his bag, aside from some music tapes bought in Shanghai, he had a set of English practice tapes, and he got himself a Russian set as well.

The huge tape recorder box was conspicuous, so he withdrew fifty thousand yuan and took a taxi back to the dock.

He handed over payment and checked the goods with the factory’s finance staff waiting in the transport truck, bundling the big tape recorder for shipment. This time, he didn’t travel with the ship.

The Jiangzhou state-owned freighter, sailing against the current, would take half a month—was he supposed to spend another ten days playing cards?

Knowing the routine, it was enough to watch the shipment being loaded. With a modern mindset accustomed to express delivery, he wasn’t too worried.

He had over twelve thousand yuan left, so he took the train back to Jiangzhou without needing to hide it.

Wei Dong, despite never having played "The Age of Exploration," knew his buy-low-sell-high business required the same persistence as a video game: run back and forth, tirelessly.

The bacon had given him seed capital, now he dared to sell titanium; next, he’d dare to sell airplanes!

With a ten-thousand-yuan deposit tucked away in Shanghai, he bought a sleeper ticket for the return journey—fifty-plus yuan was no longer a concern.

He comfortably purchased a few magazines with the most advertisements from the Shanghai newsstands, flipping through them leisurely.

Lying on the upper bunk felt incredibly safe.

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Only the mature woman across from him, who boarded at Ganxi, removed her coat at night, revealing a taut, close-fitting sweater and letting her wavy hair fall as she slept opposite him. When Wei Dong glimpsed her breathtaking curves, he felt a strange excitement.

He couldn’t focus on his book, and in his hazy sleep, he dreamed of Shi Linyan wearing that red turtleneck sweater, but upon closer look she turned into that female thief; they all exuded the same seductive aura, and then, in a blur, she became the sales clerk—her ample bosom wrapped in a red blouse...

In the middle of the night, he had to quietly slip to the restroom to wash his underwear.

So annoying.

Luckily, when he woke again, the woman was gone, leaving him oddly disappointed.

He thought about inviting someone for cards, but with over ten thousand yuan strapped to his leg, he decided against it.

Suppressing his inexplicable restlessness, he returned to his book.

As Jiangzhou drew near, his heart began to cheer; what he longed for most was his big truck!

He quickly left the train station, which was full of shady characters, caught a bus to the dock, and went to the freight department to hand out cigarettes to a few familiar faces. Then he retrieved his truck keys from the leg brace and hit the road!

The solution was simple: he stopped near the steps where he’d met the female thief, parked, went to the wholesale market, and bought some pillows and quilts to pad the seats for comfort—even the two side passenger seats were padded.

Happily heading home, he felt as if he’d returned from a pilgrimage.

Aunt Wang was more excited than his parents: “No problems, right? Sold everything? The factory’s been waiting, tomorrow’s New Year’s Day!”

Wei Dong showed her all his money, counting out eleven thousand five hundred—hard-earned, with little left.

Aunt Wang was shocked: “You only made a few hundred yuan?”

Her math was clearly off; Wei Dong had already paid over eight thousand, so he should have made more than ten thousand.

He just nodded and shrugged: “What did you expect, it’s not as easy as selling bacon. But at least I’ve paid next year’s contract fee.”

Aunt Wang hurried him to the station to return to the factory: “If your parents didn’t miss you so much, I wouldn’t insist you take me back. Before the Spring Festival, I finally won’t need to come anymore!”

Fine; sending her off, the two-story storefront finally became the Wei family’s home.

Old Wei squatted at the door, eagerly waiting for his son, smoking several cigarettes: “Take me for a spin, a spin!”

Wei Dong brought his busy mother from the gas stove along: “Tonight, we’re eating a feast! Western food!”

His mother, still wearing her apron, was baffled: “What kind of food?”

Wei Dong declared grandly: “Food foreigners eat!” He’d seen it while wandering downtown after making calls and wanted his parents to experience something exotic.

His parents teamed up to curb his reckless spending: “There’s pig’s feet stewing on the stove, hurry home!”

“You put quilts on the seats? It’s slippery and comfy. None of the construction company’s trucks were as good as yours, and you never let us sit—just once in the cargo bed.”

Wei Dong, mindful of fire safety, drove home: “This trip earned several tens of thousands, plus the few thousand at home—you’ll never have to worry about hardship again. I’ll keep doing small business for safety, not big profits. I’ll earn the money.”

His parents were stunned into silence.

Tens of thousands!

And that money had turned into goods, ready to generate more!

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Wei Dong had already thoroughly studied the contract for the Hongguang Labor Service Company.

This organization, born from post-reform efforts to solve the problem of idle returnees and unemployed youth, was either a collective unit managed by the city or street, or an internal unit run by a large state-owned enterprise.

The contract included the original documents, and the military factory handled such matters rigorously, specifying everything precisely.

In short, almost any business was permitted; its scope was much broader than the individual business license Yao Qili and the others had struggled to obtain.

And as long as it wasn’t illegal, the local commerce bureau couldn’t touch this labor service company.

Because Jiangzhou had only recently been designated as a separate planning unit, although the higher authorities had quickly cut off Hongguang Factory’s supplies, other procedures hadn’t yet been updated. At least for now, this labor service company still belonged to the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry’s mailbox factory, which meant it wasn’t under local jurisdiction.

It was purely exploiting a loophole in the era of great change.

So Aunt Wang was right: they could sell groceries, and tape recorders were no problem—just inventory allocation between industrial units!

Wei Dong had picked up these tricks while playing cards on the freighter, from a chorus of opinions. Whether true or not, it was a direction.

He wasn’t in a hurry to return to Shangzhou; even if Yao Qili was released, those few thousand worth of goods were still with him. As long as he showed the sales clerk where the goods were going, it wasn’t theft.

He’d have to wait.

Meanwhile, he spent some time helping his parents prepare cold dishes and spicy hot pot.

At the time, most city folk scorned such street hawking as beneath them, while rural people weren’t allowed to enter the city to make a living and didn’t know how to go about it.

Having eaten plenty of takeout and street food, Wei Dong was ahead of the curve.

His mother, after ten days, had perfected the flavors of cold dishes and spicy hot pot, though Old Wei complained that eating spicy hot pot every day had worn him out.

Wei Dong laughed and told his mother not to make it so spicy, but to prepare a bowl of chili oil for customers to add themselves.

Then he went to the nearby engine factory, bought several ball bearings, and together with his father built a wooden pushcart—cabinet drawers underneath for the liquefied gas tank and stove, and a tabletop one meter by two meters on top.

Around the end of the workday, they pushed the cart to the gate of the most crowded cotton mill nearby.

Twenty or thirty kinds of vegetables, bought fresh at the riverside farmers’ market in the morning, skewered on bamboo sticks—five cents a skewer. Meat slices, fish, bacon, sausage, and crispy meat skewered on wire—ten cents each.

Three to five skewers boiled to make a bowl of food; cold dishes cost twenty cents a plate, rice was unlimited.

Those last four words crushed the competition in this era!

At the time, almost all restaurants and hot pot places charged for rice.

Because city rice purchases required grain coupons, offering unlimited rice was like casting a spell that solved all problems.

Business instantly boomed, leaving Wei Dong scratching his head; he’d wanted to find something for his parents to do, not keep them running off their feet.

He was probably ranked among the richest in Jiangzhou, so still doing this felt crazy!

But once you found the right spot and swallowed your pride, this business truly made money.

Not earning would be an insult to heaven.