Chapter 94: I Was Just Speaking Off the Cuff, and You All Scrambled Like Headless Flies

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Sure enough, Dong Xueying pinched her nose and stayed up all night, cooking the entire basket of pig offal in every conceivable way. Braised, red-cooked, pan-fried, cold-tossed, simmered in soup, deep-fried. The two farm girls helping out in Shangzhou were also kept busy throughout. Mao'er assisted the whole time but offered blunt advice: "Sister Dong, this flavor might not cut it. Boss, for flavor you'd best ask Third Sister—she can't cook, but she knows how to eat, and she's familiar with the chefs at Second Master's restaurant." His intent to peddle his own third sister was obvious. The young married woman laughed with a graceful sway, wanting to cover her mouth but finding her hands slick with grease, so she could only partially shield herself with her arm, appearing even more alluring. Rang Weidong didn't dare look too long, holding the child as he sat nearby like a landlord of the old society, relaxed and at ease, waiting for each dish to be prepared and brought over for tasting, with Shitou nearby handing him chopsticks and pouring tea. The flavor was off by more than a little—not to mention compared to the time-tested, well-refined old-brand braised dishes and dry-fried preparations, it was even noticeably worse than Dong Xueying's usual cooking. Offal done well truly required special skill and experience. Rang Weidong decided: "Tomorrow I'll confirm the situation again, then buy another basket and bring it back to White Peak Mountain. Ask Li Erfeng how it works with cured and smoked flavors, and bring back a batch of hands at the same time." He had just returned and been called in by the city government, and that very night had the few young lads from Shangzhou take a boat to Jiangzhou to help at the restaurant, since there would be people at the dock to receive them, so no risk of getting lost. But he had originally planned to keep his return from Erfeng until the very last moment—now it was bound to slip out. Dong Xueying couldn't help grinning again: "Then I'll come along too, and bring Xiaodie to see the old home of her great-grandmother and great-grandmother's mother." Her habit of using her daughter as a shield really could not be changed. Rang Weidong figured having an extra shield wasn't a bad thing either. The next day he met Ding Haifeng privately, and the young policeman could indeed see that Rang Weidong's future path was beyond what an ordinary man could compare to, and nodded in agreement to let his wife participate in this side of things. Rang Weidong assigned tasks with practiced ease: "I know what I'm doing. Sister-in-law's salary will quietly be the best in Shangzhou without drawing any attention—start at a hundred yuan for now, and add bonuses once there are returns. You two keep your mouths shut about it. For now, set up a food company, a private one, using your wife, Dong Xueying, and two of my hometown folks as shareholders on the books. Then find a site for the food workshop, and I'll work on the food machinery." Ding Haifeng had clearly been thinking all night: "I still can't figure it out. With over a thousand sets of offal coming in every day, even if you counted every braised-meat and cured-goods stall in the whole city, you couldn't sell it all. And country folk can't afford it anyway." In a city of just over a hundred thousand people, there were at most a dozen or so braised-meat and cured-goods stalls, each only preparing a few varieties. Before the massive influx of rural people into urbanized life, purchasing power was truly weak. Hadn't the slaughterhouse leader yesterday said that the city's entire offal-noodle and pork-liver-noodle market had become worth nothing? An ordinary bowl of plain noodles cost eight fen, minced-pork noodles fifteen fen, beef noodles eighteen fen—but offal noodles and pork-liver noodles only added one fen. There was simply no way to eat through it all. Rang Weidong, driving, gestured toward the road ahead: "Who said anything about selling only in Shangzhou? If we make this stuff taste good, we sell it nationwide. Is this amount even a lot? Even the output of this slaughterhouse wouldn't be enough."

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Ding Haifeng immediately recognized the gap between himself and this extraordinary man: "Ah?! Your thinking is certainly broad. But how do we guarantee safe transport? Cured goods go bad too, don't they? And cured offal—cured meat is one thing, but would anyone buy cured innards?" Rang Weidong had already parked the car in front of the largest machinery factory in Shangzhou: "That's why I've come to see if the factory with the strongest technical force in our city can build a vacuum packaging production line." The young policeman racked his brain but still couldn't understand how vacuum packaging would make people all over the country want to eat it. Rang Weidong didn't explain that it would be made into finger-sized snack treats—he could only say that the great predecessors who came up with these ideas must have gone through many setbacks and failures before finally turning a greasy offal waste station into a gold mine. The young policeman's white uniform could even serve as official corroboration at a time like this. The two walked into this factory, which during the War of Resistance had been a major arsenal manufacturing榴弹—high-explosive shells. Later, most of its main equipment was dismantled and shipped to the right bank, and it was developed into the largest machinery factory in eastern Sichuan, under provincial administration and even ranked on par with Shangzhou itself. Only last year had it been handed down as a state-owned enterprise to be managed by the city. For someone claiming to be the director of the city's reform committee office, without a police escort, they'd probably have dismissed him as a fraud with a skeptical question and sent him on his way. Rang Weidong really did look far too young. Even Ding Haifeng could see the other man's impatient and somewhat sulky attitude. But Rang Weidong paid no attention to such trifles, focused solely on his inquiry: "I saw from the enterprise directory that this factory once produced oil presses, lathes, grinders, hot presses, and the like, so I've come to ask whether you can produce vacuum packaging machines." The man was genuinely annoyed. He thought back to how he used to attend provincial and municipal meetings alongside city leaders, and now he'd been reduced to sitting with a bunch of street-level workshop nobodies. A man who cared about such things, facing such a young "city cadre," had even less patience: "Never made one. Don't know anything about it." Rang Weidong simply wanted to solve the problem locally and remained unhurried: "Could you gather a few technicians and engineers so we can have a meeting? If we solve this, it might become a fine piece of equipment, selling so many units a year, marketable across the country." The man's state of mind had collapsed, and he found fault with everything: "You say it'll sell nationwide and it will? If it were that simple, modernization would already be accomplished." Rang Weidong still didn't get angry: "Then what do you have that's worth showing off right now?" The other man hesitated, then grudgingly said: "Stone crushers. Concrete mixers." Rang Weidong asked the prices and then said: "Fine. Then buy two of each—and then we'll have a meeting to talk about this vacuum packaging machine. Deal?" The factory leadership was finally won over by such an approachable manner: "R-really?" Rang Weidong nodded: "Arrange the contract immediately, pay the deposit, deliver to the dock as soon as possible for final payment. Now let's hold our meeting to discuss the vacuum packaging machine." His tone had already shifted to commanding. The man had no choice but to yield to the ready-made order and immediately set things in motion with brisk efficiency. The one truly shaken and transformed in his understanding was the young policeman. He was beginning to see where the gap between himself and this extraordinary man lay. Watching the factory leader stride out the door calling for people at the top of his lungs, he said in a low voice: "I'm in awe. Your attitude and methods in handling work leave me in complete admiration. I hope to keep learning from you in the future."

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Rang Weidong nodded: "We're all learning. Remember what we came here to accomplish, and just focus all our effort on heading straight for the goal. That's something I learned from You Qili and other extraordinary people. They certainly have flaws, but isn't discarding the dross and keeping the essence the most common attitude to take?" Ding Haifeng nodded earnestly: "But most people couldn't solve a problem by buying a few machines like this. Are you really going to buy them?" Rang Weidong said "Mm": "The sand and gravel shipped to the dock are actually all hand-crushed by the various communes along the river—uneven in size, quality pretty mediocre. If we want to make money, each commune buying one of these would be a serious upgrade, but that also means a lot of labor loses their jobs, since only a few people are needed to run the crusher. So I'm buying two for the city, to filter what comes in. As the construction sites use them, they'll gradually realize our quality is better." The special-case team members had certainly been keeping an eye on the ongoing sand-and-gravel hauling operation. Dong Xueying had taken it over these past few months, following Rang Weidong's model—selling prices the same as other sand dealers, purchase prices similar too, but with one exception: the transfer cost from boat to truck was deliberately set very high, dispersing the profit to the large number of urban poor living by the docks through that point. This not only won over the families of the goods-yard workers and porters, but also built up goodwill with the transport company and the surrounding neighborhoods. Even workers at construction companies were calling their wives and kids over to earn a bit of money. It was truly through this scattered distribution of benefits that this unprofitable business kept building up a reputation. Now if it was also going to win on quality, wouldn't the other sand-and-gravel operators gradually get squeezed out? The young policeman thought the same: "You want to grab control of the entire sand-and-gravel trade in Shangzhou?" Rang Weidong was taken aback, then smiled and shook his head: "Do I look like the kind of man who'd chase these scraps of mosquito meat? Look at the world outside and you'll see how little this in front of you amounts to. Buying the mixers is the same logic—the sand and gravel delivered to our door, and we can also provide mixing services. Doesn't that add a few more jobs... Though mind you, keep an eye on that. The mixing business is the one that could easily turn into monopolistic bullying down the road." More than a decade later, places all across the country would be plunging headlong into real estate construction, evolving into the stage of cement tanker trucks and batching-plant operations. Shangzhou had seen its fair share of vicious cases where people fought over such lucrative monopolies, and the later deputy director had often shaken his head over such matters. Ding Haifeng could only strain his mind to think about why the mixing business would become a monopolistic racket, but he'd come to believe Rang Weidong's claim that he could have unified the sand trade with ease yet only wanted to give more people a chance to earn some wages. In Rang Weidong's view, this really was chump change—and the blood and sweat of women and children and laborers at that. He wouldn't feel right profiting from it. Better to research the vacuum packaging machine instead. Anyway, by now the young policeman was numb, sitting there completely unable to understand how this former porter lad could hold forth so convincingly with the technicians and engineers. Later on, plenty of households would have vacuum packaging machines, after all. Even though Rang Weidong knew industrial ones surely differed from home-use ones, he felt the principle was more or less the same. "It should be a small plastic film pouch, you clamp it like this and feed it up to be gripped, suck the vacuum... zzhh... heat and clamp to seal it shut..." The technicians and engineers all blinked. Say he didn't understand—he spoke with vivid specificity. Say he did—industrial equipment didn't work that way at all. But Rang Weidong wasn't gunning for capitalist-level efficiency anyway: "Good enough is fine. Hire a hundred workers, a hundred of these machines, churning it out nonstop... Huh, that doesn't seem right—a hundred machines would cost how much?" It was, in a word, equal parts absurd and yet somehow plausible. And that was that.

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