money player

Chen Azhu's tea garden is not far away, only two miles away. The hillside is not high and the road is not steep. There is a sturdy path. Two manure buckets, when fully loaded, can weigh about 130 jin (a unit of weight). When they are eight-tenths full, they weigh just over 100 jin. With the weight of the manure buckets themselves and the carrying pole, the weight is a little over 110 jin. In the countryside, any decent laborer, without needing to be strong, can easily carry this weight.

Sin Yiu-man and his companion walked along the mountain path, chatting idly along the way.

Passing by a Taiwan apple tree, Sin Yiu-man picked two apples from the tree, wiped them on his clothes, and handed one to Chan Ah-chu, saying, "I had someone come to Jingmei to investigate your situation a couple of days ago."

"Is it that woman?"

“Yes.” Xian Yaowen took a bite of the apple, his mouth filled with a sweet and sour taste followed by a bitter aftertaste. “Her name is Chen Hua. You will be working for her from now on.”

"I haven't agreed to your request yet." Chen Azhu put the apples into her pocket. "They'll taste better if you sprinkle them with a little salt."

"Try it." Xian Yaowen took another bite and said slowly, "You're not old enough to retire to the countryside, nor do you have the desire to. You're just tired and want to spend a few days in peace to change your mood, but as time goes on, you don't know how to get out of it."

Chen Azhu brushed her hair, which was being blown by the mountain wind, and said, "Maybe this is the life I want."

"If what you say is true, you should have a man by your side."

"Can't I live alone?"

"Don't underestimate me just because I'm young. I've slept with just as many women as you've seen. I understand women's hearts." Xian Yaowen freed his index and middle fingers and scooped up an East Asian locust in mid-air, trapping it between his fingers.

Chen Azhu spat and said, "How dare you say that?"

Xian Yaowen pointed to a flock of red doves pecking at grass seeds nearby and asked, "What do you call this bird?"

Chen Azhu glanced at it, "Red Rice Bird."

"The red rice birds look a bit different; some of them are quite flashy."

"The ones with brightly colored feathers are the male birds."

"Strange, the male bird is actually more beautiful than the female bird."

Chen Azhu glanced at Xian Yaowen and said, "You had someone investigate me, and I also inquired about you. You are very famous in Taipei, so it was easy to find out about you."

Sin Yiu-man understood Chen Ah-chu's subtext and chuckled, "Understanding you is the bright feathers I adorn myself with."

"If I had a choice, I'd rather you didn't understand."

“It’s a pity I don’t have a choice.” Passing by a myrtle tree, Sin Yiu-man picked two dark purple berries, wiped the thorns off his clothes, and handed one to Chan Ah-chu. “I’ll prepare 100,000 NT dollars for you. Let’s work together to sell Jingmei’s fish and shrimp to Hong Kong.”

"Aren't there fish and shrimp in Hong Kong's ditches?"

"Of course there are, but they are not as good as the ones here. There is a group of people in Hong Kong who are quite picky about food. The fish and shrimp here can sell for high prices in Hong Kong. However, the business may not last long. They can only do one job at a time, and they will close down when they can't sell any more."

Chen Azhu took a bite of the myrtle, opened her purplish-red lips, and said, "Is this business specially prepared for me?"

"Half of the 100,000 yuan principal came from my sister-in-law. I only ask to get the principal back, and you and she can split the profits 50/50."

Chen Azhu stopped and asked, "How do you do this business?"

"Find a trustworthy person to buy live fish and shrimp here. Prepare 30 to 50 catties of each type and transport them to Hong Kong to test the waters. If they sell quickly, prepare about 100 catties of each type for the second batch and transport them to Hong Kong again."

After two rounds of road crossings, we can get a rough idea of ​​how much we can sell in a day, and then we can develop a transportation plan, such as how often to ship goods and how much to ship each time.

This business has two key points:
First, control the quantity.

We can't sell everything openly; we have to keep the supply just enough so that there are always some people who want to buy but can't.

Second, it must be kept secret.

We must never reveal to anyone where the goods were sold, and we must not use the Jingmei brand in Hong Kong. We must never let anyone easily figure out where we are.

If you do these two things well, this business can last longer, and there's even a possibility that it can continue indefinitely.

Chen Azhu nodded thoughtfully. "I'm not familiar with Hong Kong. Will anyone be able to help me?"

“I’ll get someone to help you.” Sin Yiu-man nodded. “You don’t need to worry too much about this business. I just want to give you some assurance that if anything goes wrong with the passenger transport, you won’t have worked for nothing.”

"What could be wrong with that?"

“The passenger transport business is very complex, and no one can guarantee success. Besides, I only think you can do it right now. We’ll only know if you can actually do it once we start doing it.”

"understood."

The two chatted all the way to the tea plantation. Chen Azhu weeded, while Xian Yaowen poured human excrement into a temporary latrine and carried the empty buckets down the mountain.

When he returned to the tea garden carrying the manure buckets, Chen Azhu had already cleared a large patch of weeds, but the sun was still a bit strong, and it wasn't the right time to fertilize. After emptying the manure buckets, he went down the mountain again.

When Sin Yiu-man went up the mountain for the fourth time, the sun had already set, and Chan Ah-chu was resting on the handle of a hoe.

Xian Yaowen put down the manure bucket next to her. "I saw two jujube trees on the hillside. Are they wild?"

"Someone else's."

"Oh, you rest, I'll fertilize it."

Xian Yaowen abandoned his idea of ​​picking a few green dates to try. He took the dung scoop off the handle of the dung bucket, scooped up human excrement and urine, and splashed it at the base of the tea tree. He moved quickly and was gone in no time.

Chen Azhu held a straw hat as a fan, fanning herself repeatedly, her gaze fixed on Xian Yaowen, intensely fixed and burning with desire.

Repetitive, mechanical physical labor is quite boring. Humming a song or thinking about things makes it a little better. While wandering among the tea bushes, Xian Yaowen thought about tea.

In the past, tea merchants would fabricate all sorts of legends to sell tea, and Xinyang Maojian was one of the best examples. They have been making up stories about it from ancient times to the present, but unfortunately, their storytelling skills were not good enough, and the price of Maojian did not rise smoothly.

To raise the price of tea, one can start from several aspects: first, create an imbalance between supply and demand; second, cultivate a high-end image; third, financialize tea; and fourth, enhance the perceived value.

Creating a supply-demand imbalance simply means controlling quantity and raising prices. Hoarding, fake production cuts, and limited releases are three tricks that can be used individually or in combination, supplemented by tiered price increases through left-hand to right-hand transactions to induce followers.

If they're really determined and don't care about saving face, they can even offer a high-price buyback promise, such as buying back the item at a 20% premium after one year.

Of course, this playstyle is only suitable for players who prefer to play in the wild, shooting and moving around. They can run away, but they can't hide forever, and they are easily attacked.

However, as technology advances, it becomes much easier to embezzle money and flee overseas. Ideas also evolve, and staunch materialists believe that death is the end of life, and digging up ancestral graves or throwing excrement on parents' graves will become less and less convincing.

Creating a high-end identity involves three key strategies: mythical origins, craftsmanship and metaphysics, and story-based marketing.

Looking at Taiwan, the most suitable place to produce tea is naturally Alishan. Go to the dangerous peaks to find a few "ancient tea trees with a thousand-year history". If you can't find suitable ones, you can transplant them and give the tea trees some shaping. Alishan "Welcoming Tea" is a good gimmick.

Find influential people to cooperate with, and station a squad of heavily armed soldiers in uniform near the tea trees. Officially, they would be called the Tea Tree Guard Squad, but the actual purpose would depend on how they fabricated their needs, such as targeting the MiG observation station on the mainland.

Of course, it would be even better if Soong Mei-ling or Kong Lingwei were interested in this business. They could bring over a few soon-to-retire Zhejiang men from the Imperial Guard, and the story could be made up to be very mysterious.

The art of tea making is a bit mysterious. You can put some thought into the identities of the tea pickers and tea makers. Before the white dew has dried, a sweet and tender maiden goes up the mountain to pick tea buds with her red lips. The picked tea buds are kept in her chest and dried using her body heat. This is called chest-warmed tea... (End of this chapter)