money player

Paris, 9th arrondissement.

About seven minutes' walk from the Champs-Elysées in the 8th arrondissement, there is a five-story building from the Haussmann renovation period. The ground and second floors used to be a restaurant. The owner of the restaurant passed away last month, and as there was no heir, the restaurant had to close.

Du Juan, who was looking for a storefront for a Chinese restaurant, received the news first. After inspecting the site, he negotiated with the landlord for two days and signed a 5-year lease agreement with an annual rent increase of %. There was also a compensation clause, which meant that no matter which party breached the contract, the other party could make a fortune.

After the facade was completed, Du Juan immediately began to prepare for the renovation. She adopted a relatively cost-effective renovation plan, leaving the hard furnishings almost unchanged, and for the soft furnishings, all the tables and chairs left over from the original restaurant were retained, with only the lamps and decorations replaced.

The original crystal chandelier was removed and replaced with a lantern-shaped lampshade, which was free of charge and was the same one used in the secret press conference.

White jade lanterns with Kuilong patterns were placed in every corner of the restaurant. This was the style used by the imperial court. Du Juan gritted her teeth and placed an order with a jade shop in Peking. They were made of leftover materials from high-end Beijing white jade. One lantern cost as much as 25 yuan, enough to buy seven or eight dinners at Quanjude.

The walls of the restaurant will be rationally laid out, with various calligraphy and paintings hung on them, all of which are antiques. The most recent ones are from the 38th year of the Republic of China, and the vast majority are works by famous artists from the late Qing Dynasty, including Tang Bohu's paintings of ladies, Wu Daozi's pavilions, Song Huizong's thin gold script, Mi Fu, Wang Xizhi, Yan Zhenqing, etc. Almost all the top figures in calligraphy and painting are there.

It can be said that he spent a huge amount of money. The cheapest calligraphy piece costs 4000 yuan. He can eat a bowl of noodles with soybean paste in the old city, and he can also generously ask the boss to give him half a bowl more to play with, pouring it slowly to make some noise.

The two most expensive paintings of modern women cost 1000 million yuan. Lu Xiaoman and Lin Huiyin were invited to be models, and the two were asked to write inscriptions, which basically meant "Wishing Han Gonglou a grand opening." Xie Yi spent 800 million yuan and 200 million yuan for the painting labor.

The two girls are big stars and have great appeal at the dining table. If they hang the paintings on the wall, they can make a profit by having four or five tables of guests come specifically for them. The possibility of losing money is not high.

The plates and bowls in the restaurant were also purchased in Peking. They are all Hongxian porcelain, well, imitations, and not high-quality imitations.

Yuan Shikai was emperor for a total of 83 days. The extant Hongxian porcelains are rare and the craftsmanship is very exquisite, so the price is naturally high. Even the top-grade A-grade Guo porcelains imitated by Guo Baochang are not cheap, and one piece can cost tens of millions. Du Juan only purchased one set of Guo porcelain to show off, and the rest were all low-quality imitations that were only for show.

Anyway, the restaurant has no intention of bragging about this as a selling point, and is just waiting for the fancy and talented fans to help it carry the sedan chair, neither admitting nor denying it, and is happy to pretend that nothing has happened.

In short, the principle of decorating a facade is to do big things with little money, but for the real thing, people will not hesitate to spend huge amounts of money.

For a restaurant, everything else is just icing on the cake, but making the dishes well is the real skill. In order to save costs and prevent poaching from other restaurants, Su Lizhen helped contact the Yangcheng Municipal Committee and asked them to send a team of chefs with superb cooking skills to Paris, under any name.

In short, the chef team is not from the restaurant. Their personnel relationship is with a unit established by the Yangcheng Municipal Party Committee. The restaurant pays foreign exchange to the unit, and the unit pays wages to the chef team. This kind of cooperation is of the nature of human resource dispatch.

Of course, the restaurant will give the chef team an additional monthly subsidy.

Du Juan stood at the entrance of the restaurant, looking up at the plaque on the door. Inscribed on it were three powerful characters "Han Gong Lou". This was the restaurant's signboard.

Han Gong is Han Yu, who made great contributions to the recording and dissemination of Cantonese cuisine. The restaurant is named after him, firstly to commemorate him, and secondly to make clear the restaurant's purpose of spreading Chinese cuisine to the world.

Named after Han Gong, a chef was invited from Guangzhou. Needless to say, Han Gong Lou is a Cantonese restaurant, and a restaurant that takes a reformist approach. The plates are large, and the portions are small and exquisite. The restaurant will be in business for a maximum of half a year, and then it will switch to a reservation system. No one will be served without an advance reservation.

Du Juan stood there looking at the plaque for a long time, during which time she dealt with several groups of people who greeted her. Her huge photo had been published on the front pages of major newspapers, and she was quite well-known in Paris.

Soon, she lowered her head to look at her watch, turned around and got into a car behind her. Another company, Kitchen Garden, had undertaken the food supply business for Lafayette, Taiwan, and she was going to the suburbs to check on the food preparation.

Xian Yaowen chatted with Yang Lihua for a few words, then left Hengyang Hotel and headed for the construction site in Lafayette.

When he arrived at the construction site, before he located Wang Chaoyun, he found that many of the workers on the site were extremely short. After a quick observation, he could tell that they were Japanese. He frowned, knowing that Wang Chaoyun had hired a lot of Japanese who were operating illegally in Taiwan.

He immediately let go, it wasn't a big deal, at most he would just have to pay for tea when the police came to cause trouble.

I walked to the tunnel in the foundation and looked inside. I saw workers piling up bluestone and filling the joints with mortar. Their hands and feet were very skillful. However, a few of them had bulging cheeks and spat rusty-colored saliva on the ground from time to time.

It’s obvious that they are chewing betel nut. I didn’t expect that betel nut, which had been banned by the Japanese for fifty years, has now resurfaced.

Suddenly, his brain had a stress response, and various information was automatically retrieved according to a certain logic. In less than half a minute, a first draft of a business plan for betel nut was presented.

First, Elizabeth Hospital established a branch in Taipei focusing on dentistry. Then, it set up a betel nut company, criticized the backward way of eating betel nut in the past, launched commercialized betel nut, step by step eroded the group of people eating betel nut and expanded the group. When the number of addicts reached a certain scale, the price of betel nut increased significantly, and the profit margin hit 500%.

At this stage, the Elizabeth Hospital can stand up and righteously criticize betel nut companies and warn betel nut addicts to quit using betel nut, while at the same time serving clients with periodontal disease, oral submucous fibrosis and oral cancer.

If possible, we will launch "betel nut substitute" and "betel nut candy" products and open up the white business, so as to reap profits from every link of betel nut.

It's true, this is quite promising. You can make quick money in a few years, sell the betel nut business and brand before the government takes notice and imposes heavy taxes, focus on the hospital sector, get rid of the embarrassment of fighting between the left and the right, put down your butcher knife and become a Western doctor, making profits with the scalpel.

“I wonder if betel nut can be ground into powder and inhaled through the nose, or if we can simply make a betel nut nutrient solution for intravenous injection?”

With a wave of his hand, Xian Yaowen saved the betel nut plan into the "making connections" category. He looked along the foundation tunnel and saw Wang Chaoyun behind a pile of bricks at the corner.

Wang Zhaoyun also noticed him and came forward, "Takano-kun."

"doing what?"

"We just saw off a guest." Wang Zhaoyun saw that there was mud on the instep of Xian Yaowen's leather shoes, so he quickly took out his handkerchief and bent down to wipe it.

"Don't worry about it, just go back and wipe it off." Xian Yaowen supported her, "What guest?"

"Mr. Lin Deng from Guochan Xingye." Wang Zhaoyun straightened up and smiled.

"Sounds familiar, is it Lin Deng who worked with asbestos?"

"It's Mr. Lin Deng. He not only deals in asbestos, but also in foundation piles, electric poles, and cement."

"Cement?" Xian Yaowen thought, "Lin Deng came here for cement?"

"Yes, Lin Deng wanted me to give him some cement."

"How many?"

"One hundred tons."

Xian Yaowen chuckled and said, "You are so arrogant. You can even use the word 'evenly' to describe a hundred tons."

The cement that Lafayette wanted to use was specially approved by Taiwan Cement through the channel of the US military advisory group. The price was NT$35 per bag (50kg), or NT$1 per ton. This was a price controlled by the national government, which was similar to the planned allocation price. It would only be supplied to the military and public institutions. In theory, individuals with approval slips could also get cement at this price, but in reality the quantity was extremely limited.

Taiwan has a huge gap in cement, and a large portion of it has to be imported to make up for the lack of production capacity. Civilian use is not currently within the consideration of the government. Military use will be the priority, and infrastructure will have to wait in line. It can be said that cement is quite eye-catching. The people from Taiwan Cement can do small things, but if they dare to do it on a large scale, there are countless eyes watching them and they will be dealt with in minutes.

Because of this, even if the children of powerful and wealthy people want to be profiteers, they will not choose to sell cement. There are too many inconspicuous options and there is no need to wade into the muddy water of cement.

Leaving aside the black market, just talking about cement from regular sources, even though Taiwan Cement's annual production capacity is just over 15 tons, tons accounts for a very small proportion, but it is still a very large amount.

The main building area of ​​Lafayette is 3200 square meters, plus the parking lot and semi-enclosed courtyard wall. Taiwan Cement approved a total of 400 tons of cement, with a budget of less than 125 kilograms per square meter, which was not enough to build according to the standards of Soviet-style factories, so the standards had to be lowered appropriately.

Fortunately, the buildings currently under construction are only transitional in nature, and the standards do not need to be set too high. They can be constructed roughly according to the standards of century-old buildings under the premise of proper maintenance. In this way, the cement will not be used up, and perhaps hundreds of tons can be saved.

"I have already declined Lin Deng's offer, saying that there is not enough cement on the construction site, but he still said he wanted to see you."

"By name?"

Wang Zhaoyun nodded, "Lin Deng knows you."

"Interesting." Xian Yaowen stroked his chin and said, "Do you think I haven't been here today and don't know about this matter...Are there more people from the province or from other provinces on the construction site?"

"I'm looking for a construction team from our province. There are only locals and Japanese people."

"Oh, it seems that the news that I was here today cannot be concealed. I take back what I said before. If Lin Deng comes to the construction site again tomorrow, you must directly agree to arrange a meeting between me and him at a time to be determined."

"You want to see him?"

"There's no harm in meeting each other." Xian Yaowen put his hand on Wang Zhaoyun's shoulder. "Have you moved out?"

"A tenant on the third floor of the hotel just happened to move out, so a room was vacated and I moved in."

"How big is it?"

"19 pings, enough for one person." Wang Chaoyun said with a smile: "I ordered two sets of pajamas for you and bought some daily necessities."

Xian Yaowen nodded and said, "I'll go there when I have time."

"Hai~"

Then, the two chatted about the recruitment of waiters, and as soon as they finished the conversation, Xian Yaowen left.

He was not busy with any serious work, but ran to the 44th South Village located on the south side of the 44th Arsenal of the Joint Logistics Command.

This village is the earliest military dependents' village in Taipei. The black-tiled bungalows with bamboo-reinforced rammed earth walls are arranged in a herringbone pattern. The alleys are narrow and the neighborhood relationship is quite close. The earliest residents were the former Shanghai Arsenal workers who moved to Taiwan and their families. Now it is a bit more complicated, with other people moving in.

He walked through the welfare house at the entrance of the village and entered the alleys of the village, observing the water latch, the sundries in front of the houses, and the people he met. When he reached the end of the alley, the stench of feces penetrated his nose. He chased the stench to the public toilet built with wooden boards, waved his hands to drive away green-headed flies, peeked into the cement grooves of the squat toilets, and analyzed the ratios of straw paper, newspapers, and exercise books among the endless mountains of feces.

Newspapers accounted for the largest proportion, nearly 70%, of which 60% had straight edges, regular shapes, and were carefully cut, while the other 40% had irregular edges and were obviously torn by hand.

Exercise books account for more than 25%, of which there are few whole sheets and most of them are torn into two or three pieces.

Straw paper accounts for less than half of the total, and is the cheapest kind on the market. Few of them remain intact, and most of them have holes in them. Suspected blood stains can be found on the edges of the holes, probably because too much force was used when wiping, disturbing Juhua's spring dream.

The piles on the steep mountains are mainly made of sheep dung balls, occasionally covered with off-white and sparse fluid green. Going up along the goat path and glancing between the teeth, one can conclude that the owners who made them had insufficient dietary fiber intake and had been on a low-protein diet for a long time.

You can tell a villager’s living standards by looking at his dung hill.

After leaving the public toilet, he paid some attention to the ground, avoiding the mines thrown by chickens and ducks, as well as the wood ash that covered the mines.

Wade through the minefield and come to the children's playground, endure the scrutiny of innocent and strange eyes, and listen to their innocent words.

After a quick tour of Sisi South Village, he gained a deeper understanding of the current situation of the residents of the military villages. These were all his potential customers and he needed to spend some time studying them.

Five o'clock.

When I returned to the garden at home, as soon as I got out of the car, I saw Fei Baoshu and his two sisters coming towards me from the pavilion.

"Yaowen."

"Sister." Xian Yaowen responded, walked over to hug Fei Baoshu, and then said to Fei Baoqi: "How come you have time to enjoy tea and cool off today, but don't have a card playing partner?"

Fei Baoqi smiled and said, "From your tone, it sounds as if Baoshu and I play cards every day."

"Not every day, but every now and then." Xian Yaowen chuckled, "Eating here?"

Fei Baoqi tapped his watch and said, "It's time for dinner."

"Hey, is my brother-in-law coming?" (End of this chapter)