Chapter 31: Leaving Is Still Leaving

Originally, Weidong was supposed to take both his parents back home together. It was already mid-January, just over ten days before the Spring Festival, so it would have made sense for everyone to take a holiday and return together, then come back after the festival.

But his parents, deeply invested in their thriving cold dish and spicy hot pot business, were reluctant to leave their venture behind. They wanted to ride the wave of their current success right through to the New Year. Even the neighborhood committee and Uncle Maozi had come to eat, so safety was no longer a concern.

So Weidong had to take his father, who went to the riverside market every morning for groceries, and once again board the ferry with him, teaching him how to buy tickets and ride the boat back to Shangzhou, and then on to their countryside home.

Old Yang, as always, was impatient: “I have to get back and buy groceries. I already made an appointment—the old chap’s vegetables are good. When I went off to join the army, you weren’t even around, and when I was laying bricks, you still had snot bubbles hanging from your nose!”

The sixty-year-old “young man” chuckled helplessly, coaxed his father into the tobacco shop to buy a few cartons of Shancheng cigarettes—he’d take them ahead as gifts to show off to the villagers during the New Year.

He also packed up the few tape recorders they had left, several bolts of various fabrics, silk quilts, a large bundle of bedsheets and covers, and dozens of pairs of suede shoes in different sizes, wrapping everything up in tarpaulin in the truck bed before setting off.

He withdrew the savings from the nearby bank—just as he kept ten thousand in reserve in Huhai, he left another ten thousand here, and deposited the rest in several major banks downtown.

By the end of the year, he had sixty-five thousand yuan in capital.

That meant he’d earned thirteen thousand in the past six months selling cured meat and such, plus seven thousand from tape recorders, which covered the cost of a ton of titanium and the three-thousand-yuan contract fee.

The net profit was sixty-six thousand; over the past half year, all his expenses amounted to just about a thousand.

Coming from the tax bureau, he of course knew that, no matter how the accounts were checked at this time, with no networked banks or real-name system, dispersing deposits was still a discreet and hidden way to store wealth.

He only carried five thousand yuan in cash, to be used as business capital while waiting for You Qili to be released in Shangzhou.

The rest—those sixty thousand—were essentially his fixed assets, only to be touched when it came time to buy a house or tons of titanium.

He happily calculated as he left the city, already well into the afternoon. According to Brother Maozi, who’d been that way, the roads were decent and the entire trip on the national highway would take about three hours.

It was his first time driving long distance, and Weidong was a bit excited.

He filled up the tank at the city outskirts, unable to suppress a smile.

He even loaded a tape recorder with batteries to play music on the road, bringing a touch of the cozy atmosphere of a future family car to this otherwise bare and simple truck.

He remembered how much he had envied the freedom of this kind of life in the past—being able to go anywhere, anytime.

The formal photo in its frame had been happily received by his mother, who hung it in their upstairs bedroom. She carefully wrapped and secured the pillows and quilts on her son’s seat, to minimize the jolting of the hard, unyielding truck, since there was no high-density foam around.

Even on national and provincial roads, potholes were common, and with irregular meals, most long-haul truck drivers ended up with stomach problems—a hazard of the job.

But Weidong was unfazed by the bumps, bobbing his head and relishing the novelty of the ride. He was like a bird released from the security room.

The truck performed well, and by nightfall he arrived at the township marked on the map.

Anyone raised in the countryside would be surprised:

A seemingly ordinary small town by the highway, but a turn off onto a side road through what looked like fields and hills, and suddenly a cluster of factory buildings and dormitories appeared in the hollows of the rolling hills.

The buildings weren’t particularly neat or eye-catching; brick and concrete structures of varying heights were scattered among terraced fields and vegetable plots, so that even from above, it was indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside.

Only the cement road branching off from the national highway hinted at something unusual.

Even a train station was hidden here, in this nondescript mountain town.

Weidong drove into this secluded, self-contained little city, where the bustle and laughter far exceeded that of the “official” town outside.

As night fell, there was a vegetable market, a department store, a staff canteen, a school, a kindergarten, a guesthouse, a hospital, a bathhouse, a cinema, a library, and even a lit sports field!

It had an atmosphere even the county town couldn’t match. While most places were dark and empty at night with no entertainment to speak of, here it was lively and prosperous.

Children ran and played alongside the shiny new truck, so that Weidong, feeling as though he’d stumbled into a utopia, had to slow down.

He knew that in a few years, this place would most likely become a deserted ghost town.

Soon, someone poked their head out to ask, “Comrade, who are you looking for?”

Weidong tapped the white paint lettering on his truck door: “I’m from the Hongguang Factory, here to see your Camera Sales Department.”

Very quickly, the head of sales, wrapped in an army coat, and even some factory leaders, hurried to the office building’s conference room to meet this salesman from a fellow factory.

Although they had nothing to do with the nonferrous metals plant that produced titanium ingots, as long as he showed his work ID, letter of introduction, and the spray-painted truck, he was a brother-in-arms.

Their attitude immediately changed.

Weidong got straight to the point: “I’m a sales rep out in the field. I heard you have a backlog of cameras, so I came to see if there might be some business opportunity.”

He handed out cigarettes with practiced ease.

He also showed off the tape recorder he’d just taken from the cab: “This is a portable dual-band single cassette recorder we shipped in from northern Jiangsu. We sold several hundred units in just two days, so I wanted to see if your products could be sold the same way.”

A group of people crowded around in a smoky haze to inspect the tape recorder. One even whipped out a screwdriver, eager to take it apart!

Someone restrained his reflexive urge.

Another person pulled back the red silk cloth on the long table beside the conference room, displaying their products.

Sure enough, Weidong noticed several different brands of cameras that all looked quite similar.

The sales chief spoke with pride: “This is our improved SLR camera, with an annual output of twenty thousand units. It’s won a series of research awards from the provincial, ministerial, and National Defense Science and Technology Commission...”

Market price: over three hundred yuan each!

At this point, Weidong was ready to leave.

So expensive!

There were over a dozen types of accessories for just a few models of cameras on the table—waist-level viewfinders, reverse adapters, lens hoods, external cases, self-timer stands, and more than ten interchangeable lenses.

Buying the whole set could easily cost over a thousand yuan.

He scratched his head, “This... probably isn’t suitable. The market doesn’t want this kind of camera.”

To be honest, Weidong had never used a camera before.

His one good finger was hardly enough—he even found pressing the shutter awkward.

But in later years, when it became normal for everyone to have a camera phone, he had his own opinion: “We should make products the common people can afford. For example, there are bigger and better tape recorders out there, but right now, most people just want something to play music, learn languages, and listen to the radio. So even at 99 yuan, they’ll chip in to buy one.”

At this point, some of the others looked displeased.

But Weidong, not adept at reading the room, continued with the most pointed remark: “I think cameras should just go ‘click’ and capture the moment. Why make things so complicated? Ordinary people don’t know a thing about aperture...”

There was an immediate outburst in the conference room. Someone slammed the table, the leader in his army coat scolded him for talking nonsense, and some stormed out in anger.

Everyone had stayed late, expecting a serious meeting, only for an outsider to spout nonsense!

If Weidong hadn’t been a salesman from a “brother factory,” they might have suspected him of sabotage and detained him on the spot.

In no time, the once lively, smoke-filled conference room was empty.

Only the salesman who had helped unveil the cameras quietly covered them up again, sneaking glances at Weidong, wanting to speak but holding back.

Weidong scratched his head.

He never thought of himself as a sales champion or a master at selling things—he just said what was on his mind.

He really was an amateur when it came to cameras.

But from what he remembered, the best-selling cameras in the next decade were the simple “point-and-shoot” kind.

Then film cameras would be completely replaced by digital ones and smartphones.

In the tax bureau, from the early 2000s to the 2010s, everyone went through a phase of buying SLR cameras just to show off—it became a trend among civil servants in the whole city.

But after that fad, hardly anyone bothered to lug one around anymore.

So he’d never taken it too seriously.

If he could get his hands on some point-and-shoots to sell for a profit, that would be good business. As for these expensive SLR camera sets, could they really compete with foreign brands?

He got up, disgruntled, picked up his tape recorder, and asked in passing, “Is there a guesthouse around here?”

The truck drivers had taught him: with these dim candle-like headlights, you should never drive at night unless absolutely necessary, especially in the mountainous areas where a small mishap could leave you stranded.

The salesman who had wanted to speak pointed him in the right direction.

But perhaps the staff at the guesthouse were annoyed at this brash outsider—he was told there were no beds available.

This was hardly a tourist spot during a holiday rush. There were rarely any outsiders here.

At least, he was glad they still let him eat, so he grabbed a bowl of noodles at a small diner.

In the end, he decided to sleep in his truck. The cramped three-person seat was uncomfortable, so he spread out the tarpaulin, used his raincoat as a mat, covered himself with a silk quilt, and slept in the cargo bed—very comfortable.

Before closing his eyes, he mused about those future camper vans with beds, kitchens, and bathrooms—wasn’t he already halfway there with this truck? If he added a canvas cover, he could take Goudan with him on long-haul trips, delivering goods and sightseeing for a couple of weeks. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

He didn’t spare another thought for the camera business and fell into a sweet sleep.

Then, at dawn, he was woken up.