Chapter 5: 5

From the start of school in September throughout the month before the National Day holiday, Jiang Xiao was hard at work.

He seized all the time he could to study. So far he’d covered the main points of the first and second years for the main subjects: Chinese, math, and foreign languages. The other classes were a little rough, but he had a grasp on the essentials, so he moved on to review the final comprehensive exam of year two. The basic questions weren’t a problem, and his results were in line with his study plan.

At that time, Houlin No. 3 Middle School didn’t have make-up classes. The National Day holiday was a full seven days. A week before the holiday, Jiang Xiao had already planned out how to spend his time.

He wanted to make some money.

Jiang Xiao was in the kitchen that night making chicken stew when he heard his mother suppress a cough in the living room.

Jiang Xiao knew Xia WanWan had been in poor health since she was a child. His grandpa’s family lived in the countryside the next county over, and their family was poor. All the good things went to her brothers first. She was able to go to a junior college to study accounting because of her hard work. Later she met Jiang Xiao’s father, and he managed to take better care of her, but now things weren’t as good. His mother’s family was far away, and they thought a married daughter was like spilled water. No matter how well Xia WanWan was doing, they didn’t care. Jiang Xiao wasn’t very familiar with his cousins, so they couldn’t help at all.

Her death back then was partly due to overwork and partly caused by illness and heart disease, worsened by her husband’s death and Jiang Xiao’s rebellious ways. Recently Jiang Xiao had been well-behaved, which relieved a lot of stress. Seeing that her looks had improved, her heart disease should have gotten better. Now that she had more time to concentrate on her health, her sickness shouldn’t be as serious as it was in her previous life, but the root of her illness still existed. She had to take good care of it, which meant frequently going to the doctor.

After Jiang Xiao came back he took her to the hospital several times, seeing both Western and traditional Chinese doctors. They prescribed a lot of medicine. But Xia WanWan was reluctant to spend more money. She always said she was fine, telling him to study hard and not to worry.

Although the family still had income, the small company she worked for didn’t have much business and the pay wasn’t high. His late father had a good income, but they didn’t have much savings left. After all, their savings weren’t infinite, and his father’s pension was scammed by his paternal cousin’s family. Although they still had some savings, Xia WanWan couldn’t bear to spend more on her health. If Jiang Xiao wanted to go to university, it would cost more money. As the saying goes, a teenaged boy could eat a person out of house and home. With a son that age, there were too many things that needed money.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see a doctor or get better. Jiang Xiao knew Xia WanWan had a gentle personality, but when it came to this, she was stubborn. To sum it up in one sentence—there wasn’t enough money at home.

But Jiang Xiao was, after all, reborn. Although the factory closed down before his rebirth, his previous savings and the income from the land sale would have supported him into old age. He was considered a successful and affluent man. He was now younger, with limited resources, and his primary focus was studying, but if he found the right opportunity he wanted to go out and make some money.

After Ye YingYing made a few deals with some girls in the next class, Jiang Xiao tagged along to ask those girls a few questions.

The girls knew Jiang Xiao. After all, Jiang Xiao was tall and good looking, and when he smiled he showed his little tiger teeth. He was a figure that a lot of girls in school would secretly talk about. They even thought his sudden drop in grades made him cool.

Who knew that this intriguing, tiger-toothed boy with his trademark smile would ask about the painted bracelet design on their school uniforms.

“If you like it, why not get the real thing? There must be bracelets that look like the one on the TV series, right?”

The girls looked at each other. The fans of the drama really did want the same style of bracelet, but…

“Where can you buy one?” They complained, “I looked in the small stores by the school entrance, and they all said it was out of stock.”

“I have a friend who bought one. Her relative brought it back from the big city, but it was so expensive.”

Most of the students in the school were from ordinary families. They had a little pocket money, but not a lot. It only cost a couple of yuan to hire Ye YingYing and relieve their craving. Relatively speaking, it was very cost-effective.

Before he asked these questions, Jiang Xiao went to some shops near the school and other boutiques in town. These days there wasn’t much awareness of online shopping. The circulation efficiency of small commodities was low. All the popular items in central counties lagged behind. Not just small boutique items for the girls, but also toys for the boys—racing cars and similar items. It wasn’t unusual to wait months or even a year or two for items which had been popular a long time in developed cities.

It was the beginning of the new millennium. Even though the whole country would see rapid development in a short period of time, today the distribution channels for goods and information were so narrow that the developed cities on the coast and the small counties in the center might as well be in different worlds.

There was a very important reason for the slow turnover of goods in the county’s small shops. Their upstream distribution channels were basically set in stone. Jiang Xiao’s father was a big truck driver, so Jiang Xiao was able to ask several uncles he knew about it.

Small retail goods at this time didn’t travel long distances. The idea was small profits but quick turnover. If you hauled in goods from far away, you wouldn’t earn back the transport cost. Their upstream market basically consisted of several large wholesale markets in the next county, and they were limited to that city. When purchasing goods, they were actually choosing from the limited selection of dealers located there. It wasn’t that the business owners didn’t know which goods were hot, but popular items had to be grabbed before they sold out, and the lag time was significant. They couldn’t get the products from their distributors. Even if they wanted to buy certain things, they couldn’t.

Jiang Xiao found this out before he went to ask the girls. But what he mainly wanted to know was if he brought a few of these things back, would they want them?

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“Just don’t be too expensive.” The girls in the next class pondered for a while, and one of them even whispered, “I want a photo card of the male lead, a plastic photo card.”

As if this sentence was a reminder, another girl spoke up. Her eyes were a little bright. “I want one too, but I want the second male lead. If you can really bring some back, a lot of girls will want one. Really, my sister wanted to get one too, but the ones at the school gate are old. We want new ones.”

There was a target market, and there was a demand gap. Jiang Xiao did some basic market research and he finalized his plan.

Before the National Day holidays he went to find his late father’s colleague.

Jiang Xiao’s dad had an outgoing personality. In the past he had a lot of friends, many of whom were drivers for the same company. After his accident, they helped out a lot, but big truck drivers were busy, and they had their own families. They couldn’t provide much real-time care. Jiang Xiao was grateful for what they did to help his family through difficult times.

Now, when Jiang Xiao boldly went to knock on the door, although the older man was surprised, he listened seriously.

Jiang Xiao had always called him Uncle Ye. This was one of his father’s best friends. He often ran back and forth on the Huainan Province route. In Huainan Province one of the most developed cities was Liujiang City, where Jiang Xiao had lived for many years. Huainan was a coastal province, and large-scale production plants took root there. Until the day Jiang Xiao closed his eyes in his last life, it was still one of the best developed industrial provinces in the country.

If you wanted to give Jiang Xiao an appropriate name for this kind of activity, it would be a domestic purchasing agent or proxy.

But Jiang Xiao didn’t have much to spend. He hadn’t saved much of the New Year’s money he received before. If you added up some pocket money he saved recently, as well as what he borrowed from Ye YingYing, he barely had five hundred yuan. If he really wanted to go on a trip by himself, he didn’t even have enough to pay the bus fare.

Jiang Xiao’s target customers couldn’t afford anything too expensive, so he knew he had to reduce his costs as much as possible. He knew that Uncle Ye was going to make two trips to Huainan Province during the National Day holidays, and it just so happened Jiang Xiao was going to the industrial park to pick up merchandise. He wanted to hitch a ride.

It wasn’t a big deal for a truck driver and co-driver to bring another passenger. It was also a trivial matter to bring an extra package of goods. It was common to bring some small things along the way to earn a little money. If they could lend a helping hand to the Jiang family’s orphan and widow, they would do it.

But… Jiang Xiao was too young. This wasn’t the same as going out to play. It would be okay if he took a bus to get there, but the truck driver needed to load and unload goods. He was too busy to babysit a child.

“I’m not young anymore, Uncle Ye. I’m fifteen years old.” Jiang Xiao looked at him. “My dad is gone, and I have to take care of my mom. Trust me, just help me this time.“

When it came to the Huainan industrial region and Liujiang, the foremost industrialized city in China, he probably knew it better than Uncle Ye.

 

TL Notes:

“a teenaged boy could eat a person out of house and home” – adapted from 半大小子，吃死老子 – A half-grown boy can eat Laozi to death.

National Day – 十一 – A public holiday in China celebrated annually on 1 October as the national day of the People’s Republic of China, commemorating the formal proclamation of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949

 

Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:

You can find the master list of transliterated names and titles in Chapter 0 – TL Notes. New in this chapter:

Uncle Ye – 叶叔叔 – Same surname as Ye YingYing (叶影影), MC’s school friend

Huainan Province – 淮南省

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