Xu Ye was in the middle of enjoying the conversation.
Zhang Xinzhou suddenly pushed the door open and came in from outside. The first thing he said was, “Xu Ye, I’ve got bad news for you.”
It took Xu Ye a moment to catch up. He frowned hard. “Bad news? What bad news?”
Zhang Xinzhou’s face was grave. “I was just eating at a street stall on the food street, and I heard a group of people talking about opening a shop.”
Yang Fei didn’t follow. “Plenty of shops on the food street close every year and plenty of new ones open. What’s so unusual about that?”
“They’re opening a fruit shop.”
“What?!”
Hearing that, Xu Ye changed expression at once as well.
What was bound to come had come.
Kangyuan Fruit Shop had long since stopped being any real threat, but one more competitor on top of it was certain to hurt his own shop’s business.
Zhang Xinzhou said, “I sat next to them and listened for a long time. Once they open they’re planning to go straight into a price war — take a loss of tens of thousands up front and pull all the foot traffic away. And they seem to have a solid supply line, a lot cheaper than what we pay.”
“I’d actually worked out a long time ago that new competition would turn up eventually. I just didn’t expect it this fast.”
“Xu Ye, what are you going to do?”
Xu Ye shook his head. “There’s nothing to be done. They’ve got the supply line and they’ve got the capital — completely different from Luo Wenbing at Kangyuan. Every time Luo Wenbing runs a promotion it’s over before long, and put plainly it’s because he can’t stand the low margin and isn’t making money. From what you’re saying, whoever’s opening this shop has real weight behind him. He isn’t short of cash. If we go head to head with him we’ll come out on the losing end, no question.”
“So what do we do? The winter and summer breaks take up three months on their own, and business is bad once it turns cold. Add another competitor to that, and after we take costs and rent out of what we make there probably won’t be much left.”
“One step at a time. If it really stops making money we’ll transfer it. We’ve still got the company either way.”
Zhang Xinzhou heard him out, and as a shareholder himself all he could do was let out a long sigh.
Fortunately that group wasn’t opening properly until after the summer break — September, in other words — so for the next two and a half months at least the fruit shop’s earnings wouldn’t be badly affected.
Xu Ye went out for a meal, then stopped by the fruit shop anyway. It was the busy period, and he only walked a circuit of the place; he didn’t pass Zhang Xinzhou’s bad news on to the two of them.
Xu Wanying at least was all right. Her grad school results had come out the month before, and she had a postgraduate place at their own university. After the summer she would be back to studying, and in all likelihood wouldn’t be staying on at the fruit shop.
Xu Ye thought that if business fell off badly he would just have Li Tongwen mind the shop on his own, and think about the rest when the lease ran out.
From the fruit shop Xu Ye drove to the company office.
He had hardly been over lately, because Jiang Wei had the company running in perfect order and there was nothing for him to worry about.
The vending machines brought in steady money every day, and apart from arranging deliveries, restocking, and paying the staff, there wasn’t much else to do.
When Xu Ye arrived, Jiang Wei, Xia Minghui and Ruan Xiaolu were sitting together inside talking about what was in the news.
“Have you two been watching My Sunshine?”
“Of course. Wallace Chung is so handsome — he’s the absolute ceiling for the older-guy type.”
“He’s not my type. I still prefer Lu Han. Listen, let me tell you—”
“Xu Ye, what are you doing here?”
Xu Ye rolled his eyes. “I’m the boss. Isn’t coming into the company perfectly normal?”
Jiang Wei cut the gossip off. “You’ve come at just the right time — as it happens there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“Our school is putting on a national fencing competition this month. The school president has noticed our vending machines, and he wants us to change all the advertising on them to promotional images for the fencing. My uncle told me specially.”
Xu Ye laughed. “You can decide that sort of thing yourself.”
“One more thing.”
“Go on.”
“Have you been making a lot on the stock market lately?”
Xu Ye shrugged. “It’s all right.”
Jiang Wei said, “Don’t play dumb. You can see the market on Alipay. It’s been climbing since last year. You’ve definitely made a lot.”
“I’ve made a bit. But we agreed at the start that you were just parking the money with me and I’d pay you a dividend at five percent annual interest.”
Jiang Wei handed him an eye-roll. “I’m not after your money. I’m giving you notice — give the money back to me before the summer break.”
“What do you want it for?”
“I want to use the summer break to have my grandmother’s house done up again.”
“Weren’t you saving that for your own dowry?”
“I can earn my own dowry.”
“Ha ha.” This bull run happened to be ending around the summer anyway, so Xu Ye agreed readily. “No problem. I’ll definitely have the money to you before the break.”
Xu Ye stayed at the office about half an hour. Back in the car he thought about it for a few minutes, then messaged Jiang Wei’s birth father, Jiang Chao, after all.
Xu Ye: “Uncle Jiang, are you there?”
Since the two of them had met, Jiang Chao had been in touch two or three times a month, mostly to ask how Jiang Wei was doing at school. He replied quickly: “Here. Something up?”
Xu Ye: “Jiang Wei wants back the two hundred thousand she has with me. She says it’s to renovate her grandmother’s house.”
About two minutes went by.
Only then did Jiang Chao reply: “Give it to her. That house should have been done up long ago. Find some excuse to give her a hundred thousand more, and I’ll cover it.”
Jiang Chao: “But whatever you do, don’t tell her it came from me.”
Xu Ye: “No need. The market’s been good lately — her two hundred thousand has more than doubled with me. I’ll give it to her myself, and I guarantee she’ll take it.”
Xu Ye: “But — could I also ask you a favor, Uncle Jiang?”
Jiang Chao shook his head and smiled. He had known there would be a second half to it. He messaged back: “What favor?”
Xu Ye replied at once: “I want to meet some people of standing in finance.”
Jiang Chao really had not expected Xu Ye to ask for anything of the kind.
Wherever you do business, connections and backing matter more than anything else. Plenty of adults never work that out, and it had genuinely not occurred to Jiang Chao that a university student would already be thinking along those lines.
He typed his reply and sent it: “Why?”
Xu Ye: “I want to get into investment.”
Jiang Chao: “That circle isn’t one you can just walk into. It demands judgment, and it demands money.”
Xu Ye: “I know.”
Seeing that Xu Ye had nothing more to add after a long pause, Jiang Chao thought for a moment and replied straight out: “Wait to hear from me, then.”
Xu Ye put the phone back in his pocket, a faint smile on his face.
The resources an associate dean at one of the country’s top universities could lever were beyond an ordinary person’s imagining.
A hundred thousand yuan for a foot in the door of the financial world — the trade could hardly have been better value.
(End of Chapter 228)