Chapter 63: Catering to Desires, Gaining Control Over Fate

But what Wei Dong certainly didn’t expect was that the real focus had nothing at all to do with the military representative assigned to him by the munitions factory.

The Xishan Factory actually stood right at the edge of the Sichuan Basin. Unlike the rolling mountains surrounding Jiangzhou and Shangzhou, the land toward Guozhou and Shudu’s provincial capital was nothing but broad, open plains.

So, although it was a little over a hundred kilometers away, their route even passed through a stretch of city. Yu Songhai casually remarked on this, noting that Jin Shang’s hometown had developed quite well.

They arrived in Guozhou just before dinner. It was Yu Songhai who guided them to the chemical plant.

It was nearly April now; after crossing the Qinling Mountains, Wei Dong and his companions had shed their winter jackets for shirts and military uniforms. Now, at the factory gate, stood a man in his thirties, his sharply parted hair and trendy jacket cut a striking figure. He’d even turned up the collar of his red T-shirt underneath—a look both eye-catching and upright.

His demeanor was utterly out of place in this dusty, minor city.

Yu Songhai made the introductions: “This is my comrade, Jin Zhuoqun. I was a clerk, he was a performing artist—one of the few who made it to the southern front. After demobilization, he was assigned here.”

From this somewhat legendary introduction, Wei Dong immediately sensed a familiar shadow.

The journalist pulled his comrade straight onto the car; the secretary squeezed closer to the driver, but displayed none of the usual bad habits of leaning or slouching.

Jin Zhuoqun’s gaze flicked quickly over the female soldier, then lingered on Wei Dong’s face. In the brief conversation from the factory gate to the office building, he instantly set the tone for the gathering.

He had a wonderful way with words.

Both his cadence and the content of his speech were delightful; rumor had it that in the army he specialized in northern-style comic storytelling.

Wei Dong couldn’t help but imagine: If only I had such a gift for speaking, I’d have no trouble at all when negotiating business.

So far, he’d been piecing together sentences from the new terms he’d overheard at the tax bureau and the strategic analysis he’d picked up from short videos—barely scraping by.

He relied entirely on his forward-looking vision to accomplish what most people wouldn’t even dare to dream.

That’s why he pinned his hopes on clinging to the coattails of the mighty You Qili once he got out of prison.

The petty profits before him now meant nothing.

Take, for example, the chemical plant’s oil business: Wei Dong had bought three tons of industrial beef tallow, delivered it to the factory at the purchase price, for a total gross profit of about a hundred and twenty yuan.

After deducting the fuel costs for over a thousand kilometers, there was essentially nothing left—this was assuming he could even get the internal price using the oil book from the Hongguang Factory.

The Dongfeng 140 burned over thirty liters of fuel per hundred kilometers even when empty!

It was a gas-guzzler unfit for anything but road trips.

The whole journey, plus meals, meant he was paying out of pocket.

No wonder the chemical plant, even knowing there were sources of raw material up north, wouldn’t bother fetching it themselves unless they could use a railcar. This was a losing proposition.

In truth, this was just a sightseeing trip. Fortunately, he’d managed to settle the camera dealership and film business in Pingjing, so the expenses were negligible.

Wei Dong left the oil business entirely to the oil merchant: “Here, you handle it. They really do need it, and you have plenty of surplus. The rest is none of my concern.”

He turned to leave.

Unexpectedly, the oil merchant quietly asked, “Could I get in on this camera business too?”

Wei Dong was surprised: “What made you think of that?”

The oil merchant, who’d been with him since Jicheng, confessed he’d been observing: “This business is excellent! It’s not just the big city in Pingjing—everywhere people want photos. We travel all over: rural markets, grasslands, everywhere. These things will sell. You can even use them to earn money by taking photos for people!”

Wei Dong had a sudden realization. If you treated the camera as a tool for making money, this thirty-yuan camera yielded a return far better than a hundred- or even four-hundred-yuan SLR.

In rural markets, just snapping a black-and-white photo for a country folk who’d never seen such a thing could earn you fifty cents a shot—a tidy profit!

Especially since black-and-white film could be developed at home, with minimal cost and time.

He cast a sly glance: “So you’ve been watching all along but saying nothing. You’ve visited the film factory and the camera factory, so why didn’t you try to sneak in and buy directly from them?”

The oil merchant sheepishly replied, “I thought of it, but didn’t you sign some exclusive sales agreement this morning? I asked around yesterday, and the factory people say all their overtime production goes to you. It’s so strict, no one else can get in. Now that you’ve got an exclusive, and even been handed a pretty young wife, what can I do?”

Zhang Lanzhi, after a hundred-kilometer journey that wore away her initial excitement, had returned to her composed, graceful manner. She said nothing, but always stayed within a few meters of Wei Dong.

She could have been seen as a secretary, or as a young bride.

Wei Dong just reckoned she’d been sent by Xishan Factory to spy, just like that Xu-whatever from Hongguang Factory.

So he had to stay vigilant: “Alright, I’m offering a price of twenty-four yuan each. If you’re sure, wire me the payment, and I’ll ship them to you by rail. The Jingjiang line runs through your place, right?”

The oil merchant wasn’t greedy, nodded in agreement, and said he’d wire the money for two hundred cameras as soon as he got back.

Wei Dong didn’t mention it until he sat down at the banquet that Jin Zhuoqun had arranged, casually telling Yu Songhai that he’d developed a new distributor.

The journalist eagerly took note—these were the kind of details that made for a good story.

As he filled the glasses, the former performer observed, “But the price this oil merchant sells at isn’t under your control, is it?”

Wei Dong blinked.

It was a revelation; he had to admit he lacked that kind of mental agility.

The point was clear at once: “Right... Honestly, he could sell the camera for forty-nine, seventy-nine, even ninety-nine yuan, and it wouldn’t be excessive. My aim has always been to set a price so low, so irrefutably low, that no competitor can match it—only that way can I sell high volumes with small profits.”

This was, in fact, the very logic of the internet age that everyone would later come to know.

Even the vegetable delivery apps at the doorstep would undercut prices until no rival could follow, ensuring a monopoly.

Only with monopoly could you sell hundreds of thousands, even millions, of units—especially in an era when the market hadn’t abandoned film cameras, there was a fortune to be made.

Pleased with himself, he let slip too much.

Jin Zhuoqun immediately complimented his thinking: “When Songhai told me about your low-priced cameras, I thought it was genius! But even more impressive is how you, at such a young age, dared to take hundreds of cameras out on the road and actually managed to sell so many every day—now you don’t even need to oversee the sales yourself. Incredible! Come, let me toast you and learn from your example.”

It wasn’t a high-end restaurant, nor was there any luxury on display.

But it was clear Jin Zhuoqun knew the area well; he’d picked a place with excellent food. Gou Dan and the others sat at another table outside, eating with gusto, the air filled with the clatter of bowls and plates.

The secretary, of course, stayed with the business crowd in the private room, her demeanor perfectly suited to the occasion. She served herself slowly, even helping Wei Dong pour wine.

But it was obvious that, when the lazy Susan turned, she would linger a little over her favorite dishes, quietly savoring the food as she listened in on the conversation.

Wei Dong, of course, couldn’t let slip that he’d already sold cameras in West Lake, and simply drank his glass of baijiu.

Yu Songhai also drank: “Exactly. Especially since others are buying the cameras for photo businesses, even seventy or eighty yuan is acceptable. The camera business is way more profitable than his beef tallow trade. Industrial oil only nets twenty or thirty yuan a ton—the ease of the camera business is on a completely different level.”

Jin Zhuoqun certainly didn’t seem like someone content with a small town: “That’s the dual-track system at work. Industrial oil is subject to the planned economy, so the price is low. Cameras, on the other hand, are already influenced by the market economy, with prices set by supply and demand. So Xiao Dong’s high-volume, low-margin strategy means the purchase price is set by the planned economy, but the sale price could have matched the market—yet he’s kept it absurdly low. That’s brilliant. Another toast to you!”

If Wei Dong had really been just twenty, he might have been swept away by all the praise—especially since he’d made quite a bit of money, and now had a pretty secretary and a big-shot reporter at his table.

But the old security guard inside him instinctively thought: You flatter for no reason, so I’ll just smile, touch my lips to the wine, and not drink much: “Well, I didn’t think that far ahead. I just wanted more people to have People’s Cameras.”

A rousing slogan was always on hand, and with that, he managed to hide his real thoughts again.

The secretary couldn’t help but chew her food with a proud expression.

Yu Songhai and Jin Zhuoqun seemed to understand the art of slogan-chanting and both laughed.

The journalist chimed in, describing how Wei Dong had dared to approach the film factory, organized a national photography exhibition as a National Day tribute, and finally created a sensation at the symposium in Pingjing.

Jin Zhuoqun listened with ever-brightening eyes, until Wei Dong mentioned offhand that he’d handed over a hundred or so cameras to a few university students, letting them develop sales in the Pingjing area.

The former performer frowned and spoke up: “Is that all?”

Wei Dong was puzzled: “What do you mean? Wasn’t that enough to launch sales?”

Jin Zhuoqun paused, searching for the right words, and then gently “criticized”: “You’d already brought together giants like Sunshine Daily and Triumph Film Factory, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them, and even caused a stir at the university symposium. Yet all you did in the end was leave a few cameras for sale—wasn’t that missing the real prize?”

Wei Dong was even more puzzled: “What else should I have done?”

Jin Zhuoqun let out a long sigh and pointed at the ceiling: “For starters, you could have asked Sunshine Daily and Triumph Film Factory, through their higher-ups, to find a leader to inscribe the name for the exhibition. Wouldn’t that have raised its status and value tremendously?”

Wei Dong thought, How could I possibly pull off such high-level maneuvers? Internally, he was thinking: Damn, this guy is a real master—no less than You Qili himself.

He kept his face neutral, trying not to let those thoughts show: “You’re right, that would’ve been great. Maybe I can make up for it if there’s another chance. What else?”

Jin Zhuoqun seemed entirely at ease: “Then, isn’t it likely you’d have the authority to decide which submissions made it into the exhibition? Couldn’t we give special recognition to, say, the joyful celebrations of the people from our neighboring city? You understand what I mean, right?”

Wei Dong could only think: Some people are just born to work the system!