New term, new start.

The second semester of first year had one more period than the first, and on top of that everyone had to take an online elective — but the good news was that Friday afternoons were still free, which meant that once the two Friday morning classes were done, the weekend had started.

Company business quickly got back to normal too, with very healthy takings coming in. Jiang Wei went to the office every evening to do the accounts, and once she’d finished she would send Xu Ye the day’s revenue.

The fruit shop was much the same as last year, its takings holding to roughly the same range every day. Xu Ye had become a completely hands-off boss, leaving the shop entirely to Li Tongwen and Xu Wanying and only occasionally dropping a few red packets into the customer group chat to keep the mood up.

Because Xu Ye was often to be seen driving around the campus, more and more people had come to know who he was. Plenty of them now knew that he had not only opened a fruit shop on the school food street but had founded a trading company as well, and a fair number said behind his back that he had made a lot of money last year.

People fear fame the way pigs fear getting fat.

Early on Friday morning, Xu Ye had barely arrived in the classroom when several people from the student union turned up looking for him.

The two at the head of them were Jiang Ming, head of the student union’s external liaison department, and Li Lulu, its deputy head.

Xu Ye came straight out with it. “Something you need?”

“It’s like this. Our student union is going to be putting on a campus singing competition in April this year, and external liaison is mainly responsible for lining up sponsors and raising the funds. We came to ask whether you’d be willing to sponsor it.”

Xu Ye heard him out, then asked back, “What’s in it for me?”

Jiang Ming seemed to have guessed the question was coming, and answered promptly. “We’ll run advertising for your fruit shop, and the host will plug it from the stage as well.”

Xu Ye knew perfectly well that advertising of that sort didn’t do much — but the fruit shop was inside the school, and it was making its money off fellow students to begin with. He said, “How much are you looking for from me, then?”

Li Lulu, the deputy head, spoke up. “Five hundred minimum, no upper limit. But we allocate the advertising according to how much you put in.”

“If… let’s say if I put in three thousand, could you hang a banner on the main stage for me?”

“No problem!”

Since taking on the job, Jiang Ming and Li Lulu had approached a great many businesses around the school. Most had said they weren’t interested, and even the small number willing to sponsor had all put in the five-hundred minimum. If Xu Ye were to put in three thousand on his own, it would save them an enormous amount of work, so the two of them agreed on the spot.

Xu Ye nodded. “How about this — class is about to start, so let’s add each other on WeChat, I’ll transfer you the money later on, and then I’ll find someone to liaise with you about it.”

“Sounds good.”

Li Lulu hurriedly got out her phone, brought up her QR code and held it out. Jiang Ming, beside her, saw how eager she was and could only put his own phone away again.

“We’ll head back, then.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Xu Ye went back to his seat, and Zhang Xinzhou beside him immediately wanted to know, “What did the student union want with you?”

Xu Ye laughed. “They’re putting on some campus singing competition and they wanted sponsorship money.”

“And you said yes?”

“Mm.”

Zhang Xinzhou didn’t follow. “That’s a bad deal. Our fruit shop is already well known in the school — advertising inside the school isn’t going to have much effect.”

“I know.” Xu Ye was editing Li Lulu’s contact name as he spoke. “Which is why I’m planning to use it as an opportunity to run another campaign. Kangyuan Fruit Shop put on a spend-and-save promotion the moment term started, didn’t they? This time I’m going to show him properly how a campaign is supposed to be run.”

Seeing that Xu Ye had it all worked out already, Zhang Xinzhou didn’t interrupt any further. Once he’d finished with the contact name, Xu Ye tapped Li Lulu’s profile picture out of habit — the picture was of her, and there weren’t many university students who used a photo of themselves, which meant Li Lulu had a good deal of confidence in her own looks.

Just as Xu Ye was about to put his phone away, Yang Fei leaned in out of nowhere, grabbed his wrist, stared at the screen for a moment and asked, “Xu Ye, who’s this?”

“The student union people who came to see me.”

“Can you push me her WeChat?”

“What, spring’s here and it’s time for you to go into heat again, is it?”

Yang Fei burrowed into Xu Ye’s chest, rubbing his head against him, and said in a wheedling voice, “Bro. Please. In my next life I’ll be your ox and your horse.”

“Get lost.”

“Dad!”

“I’ll push you the card at lunchtime.”

“Dad, you’re too good to me.”

Zhang Xinzhou shook his head helplessly and said, laughing at him, “Yang Fei, weren’t you talking to some girl you met online last year? What happened, you break up?”

“Online relationships aren’t reliable. I still haven’t seen a photo of her to this day.”

“Ha. It’d be a miracle if it were reliable.”

Seeing the lecturer step up to the podium to begin, Xu Ye lowered his voice and finished, “We haven’t all got together since term started. Get Xu Wanying, Jiang Wei, Ruan Xiaolu and Xia Minghui in at lunchtime and we’ll all eat together.”

“Mm.”

…

At lunchtime Xu Ye made two round trips to get the whole company over to Baolong Plaza.

After a brief discussion the group settled on a restaurant called Siji Dapaidang.

Over the meal Xu Ye brought up the student union’s approach that morning, and Ruan Xiaolu said at once, grinning, “Boss, we don’t need to sponsor them. If you just entered the singing competition and took first place, wouldn’t that work better than advertising?”

Xu Ye had played and sung at the freshman welcome party, and since Ruan Xiaolu had been on the dance team with Jiang Wei at the time, she not only knew he could play the guitar but that he sang very well too.

But Xu Ye had no interest whatsoever in a campus singing competition. Entering a contest like that at university, even coming first, brought no reward of any substance — at most it got you the so-called pick of the litter. And Xu Ye already had Chen Qingqing. He had never had any thought of entering.

“Forget it, I haven’t got the spare time. The main reason I’m raising it with you is that I want to talk through what sort of campaign we should run off the back of it.”

“A campaign? Another campaign?”

“Mm. That three thousand can’t be spent for nothing. Beyond running a promotion at the fruit shop, I’m wondering whether we should advertise the company too.”

“How would we advertise the company?”

“I’m thinking of getting a batch of those advertising fans made. Details of the fruit shop promotion printed on the front, and franchise details for the company on the back.”

“Franchise?”

“Mm. We took on all those salespeople last year, and to date they’ve closed barely a handful of deals. I’m wondering whether switching to franchising might work better. The actual terms of the arrangement stay the same — the other party provides the site, we provide the machines, the installation and the stock, and then we split the profit with them.”

Jiang Wei said, “You decide that one. Making money is your area anyway. The rest of us don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Right,” Yang Fei chimed in. “You’ve got a natural gift for being a crooked merchant.”

“Crooked merchant, is it?” Xu Ye said, unbothered. “Do you still want Li Lulu’s WeChat or not?”

“Bro, I was wrong.”

Xu Ye ignored him, ate a couple of mouthfuls, and then started explaining things to them. “Actually, the saying 无奸不商 — no merchant who isn’t crooked — started out as 无尖不商, and it was a compliment. Merchants selling rice used to measure it out with a dou, and when they sold it they wouldn’t just fill the measure, they’d add a bit more so the rice heaped up into a little peak on top. That practice was what 无尖不商 meant. Only later did the saying turn into 无奸不商.” [TL: 尖, “a peak,” and 奸, “crooked,” sound identical in Mandarin. The original phrase meant no merchant worth the name fails to give the customer a little over; the modern one means no merchant is honest.]

Xu Ye laughed. “But that has to do with the environment too. Haven’t you heard the line? If a man is good at what he does and still isn’t getting anywhere, the odds are it’s because he’s a decent person.”

“Christ. That does actually seem to be true.”

(End of Chapter 208)