Back to the teenage years

Chapter 563: Fierce Animals (Subscription Request)

After the discussion, Hu Zhibiao and his party left.

Zhang Yunqi asked Wang Xiaokai to stay. The middle and senior managers of Aiwa Electronics Operation Center who were about to leave were more or less surprised when they saw this scene, because except Hu Zhibiao, no one else knew the relationship between Wang Xiaokai and Zhang Yunqi.

In their eyes, Wang Xiaokai was just a mid-level business manager of a branch company, and his salary was not high, but Zhang Yunqi was the biggest boss of the entire group. Ordinary leaders rarely saw him, let alone spend time with him alone.

Facing the gazes of the crowd, Wang Xiaokai was secretly happy, but he said nothing. He just stood there obediently. After the rest of the people left, he sat down on the soft sofa and said, "Boss, what can I do for you?"

Zhang Yunqi fiddled with his hair in front of the floor-length mirror and said, "Call Li Yufei. I want to go shopping in Xidan and then take you to Lao Yanjing for a midnight snack."

"Brother, you finally show some sympathy for a poor employee like me. I will follow President Hu to give you a work report tonight. I haven't even had dinner yet, so we have to arrange for the mutton hotpot." Wang Xiaokai's butt bounced up from the sofa again, and he went out with a smile and knocked on Li Yufei's room next door.

When Zhang Yunqi followed her out, Li Yufei had already opened the door. The door was half-closed, revealing a third of her white silk nightgown, which was soft and fitted. Her fine, straight black hair was draped over her shoulders. Her beautiful shoulder blades and slender neck were snow-white. Her bright eyes were looking at the two boys in the corridor in surprise. "What's the matter?"

Wang Xiaokai leaned against the door with a playful smile on his face: "Boss Zhang is going out for shopping and a midnight snack. Beautiful lady, are you interested in experiencing the life of the people in our capital together?"

Li Yufei was stunned and looked at Zhang Yunqi.

Zhang Yunqi nodded: "Why don't you go out for a walk?"

Li Yufei smiled and said, "Then you two will have to wait for me for a while."

With that, Li Yufei closed the door. She had been resting in the room for the whole afternoon. Of course, she also wanted to go around the capital, but it was particularly troublesome for a girl to dress up. The wait would take up half an hour. But when Li Yufei came out of the room after changing her clothes, the two grown men who had been waiting for her with their dicks clenched stared at her with their eyes wide open.

The three of them left the hotel and took a bus to Xidan.

As soon as they got off the car, they were surrounded by the noisy crowd.

Under the cover of night, neon lights flicker on the streets of Xidan, tinged with a mix of old and new prosperity. Looking up, the shouts of night market vendors and the ringing of bicycle bells can be heard one after another. The windows of state-owned stores display trendy clothing and time-honored watches. The reflected warm yellow lights and the colorful signs of emerging self-employed businesses outline a picture of the coexistence of the bustling city life of the old era and the vibrant business under reform and opening up.

Wang Xiaokai was a bit like Granny Liu entering the Grand View Garden. He was in a very good mood and had an excited expression. He looked left and right. However, as they walked deeper along the street, amidst the aroma of sugar-roasted chestnuts and roasted sweet potatoes, he suddenly smelled a faint pungent odor unique to low-quality plastic packaging.

Zhang Yunqi walked in front, and when they reached the depths of Xidan Street, he led the two of them through the crowd and turned directly into a back alley.

On the blue brick wall at the entrance of the alley, there are words written crookedly in chalk: "Newly arrived "True Lies", price 19.9 yuan."

Zhang Yunqi looked up and saw stall owners in military coats emerging from the shadows in the alley like gophers. There were also many young men and women squatting in front of the dazzling array of stalls, selecting VCD discs.

Not far from the alley entrance, there was an old man guarding a folding table under an old locust tree. Next to the chessboard was a book, "Animal Fierceness" by Wang Shuo. Under the book were a dozen VCDs wrapped in newspapers. He was cursing an old man playing chess with him in Beijing dialect: "Damn it, how can you play chess so badly? You're just like Saddam!"

Li Yufei chuckled, a pleasant laugh.

Zhang Yunqi also smiled and glanced at the old man playing chess. These old-timers who grew up in the alleys curse everyone with the rhyme of "Teahouse". It's just that the people of Yanjing grew up in such a wonderful language environment, it's too easy to be a writer. How come there is a Wang Shuo?

You don't take being a writer seriously enough.

Thinking of this, Zhang Yunqi looked at the dozen or so VCD discs wrapped in newspapers stacked next to the chessboard. The top one was "Beijing Natives in New York". Feng Xiaogang's square-framed glasses on the cover were printed like ink balls. Deep in the alley, the stall owners set up simple wooden tables, which were also filled with various kinds of CDs, openly selling "the latest Hollywood blockbusters at 20 yuan a piece".

There is no doubt that these discs are all pirated.

Compared with other regions, the capital, as an economic and cultural center, has many rich people, college students, and highly educated people. The typical characteristic of this group of people is that they have strong spiritual needs, which is similar to the meaning of "when you are full, you will think about sex". Naturally, they are keen on new things like VCD players, and pirates can provide inexpensive and richer content, such as American dramas and Hollywood blockbusters, popular movies from Hong Kong and Taiwan, Japanese and Korean TV dramas and animations, etc.

Where there is demand, there is a market. In 96, Zhongguancun, Wangfujing, and Xidan had become the distribution centers for pirated VCDs in China. Especially in Wangfujing and Xidan, two densely populated areas, small vendors were already selling pirated discs openly or semi-openly, and some even provided "customized services." Compared with other areas, the pirated discs here were cheaper, the categories were more complete, and the market was extremely large.

While Zhang Yunqi was looking around, Wang Xiaokai had already started picking through the old man's CD box. He took out a plastic-covered CD of "Seven Deadly Sins" starring Brad Pitt. The crudely printed plot synopsis read "A detective tracks down seven corpses corresponding to seven desires." He scratched his head and said, "I remember this movie hasn't been introduced to China yet, but there's a CD here." The old man came over and said, "My friend, you know what's good. This is the satellite version that just arrived this week."

As he spoke, he lifted the lining of his coat, revealing a canvas lining full of pockets, each of which was filled with pirated CDs with date labels on them. "They're all the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Which one do you want? The prices are fair, and we don't cheat anyone!"

Wang Xiaokai was amazed.

Li Yufei was also a little curious. She took the book "Animals Are Dangerous" off the table and flipped through the stack of discs underneath. Suddenly, she pulled out a disc with Akaname Rika's bright smiling face printed on it.

Zhang Yunqi glanced at the crooked words "Tokyo Love Story" on the cover. It was "Tokyo Love Story" from the neighboring island country. This love movie is a classic and moved the female college students in the 90s to tears.

He took out a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes and handed them to the old man, but the old man waved his hand, revealing the Sony Walkman hanging on his waist: "Give it up, the foreign tobacco my daughter brought you is too strong!"

Zhang Yunqi smiled and asked the old man, "How much is this movie?"

The old man held up four fingers wrapped in medical tape and said, "Fifty dollars for all 101 episodes, with bonus footage of The st Proposal."

Zhang Yunqi remembered that Tokyo Love Story had 11 episodes in total, and it only cost 50 yuan. It was really cheap. The genuine copy would cost at least 200 yuan, and it should be sold for hundreds of yuan in other places. However, Zhang Yunqi smiled and asked, "Last month, I bought it from the factory in Shijiazhuang for only yuan. Old man, how dare you charge yuan for this gold-plated disc?"

The old man narrowed his eyes.

He seemed to be taking a new look at the young man in front of him, wearing a white T-shirt and smiling.

"Beep! Beep! Beep..."

At this moment, several sharp whistles suddenly came from the distance.

The whole alley suddenly became silent, as if a radio had been unplugged.

“The wheels of cultural audit are coming!”

Outside the alley, someone on guard yelled.

The next second, the sound of rolling doors rang out one after another, and several men in leather jackets moved boxes of pirated CDs into a refrigerated truck with a banner that read "Vegetable Transportation". It didn't take much effort to load them, and the refrigerated truck sped away. By then, the men in military coats in the alley had also rolled up their cartons and entered the maze-like alley, which looked like the scene in the previous life when the Urban Management Brigade was driving small vendors all over the street.

Wang Xiaokai was shocked by this scene.

After a while, he finally reacted and said to Zhang Yunqi: "These are all pirated CDs. They are closely related to our Aiwa Electronics. No wonder you came here so late at night."

Zhang Yunqi nodded. He came here originally to understand the situation of the capital's pirated CD distribution market and see if he could get some clues about the manufacturers. Under the current circumstances, he could only come again next time.

Wang Xiaokai seemed very enthusiastic about this matter, and said to Zhang Yunqi: "The current genuine CDs are still too expensive, and the market prospects are not very clear, and it is difficult to promote them. I think these pirated CDs are very popular among ordinary people, and they have great potential. The problem is that this thing is illegal, so it may be very profitable, right? I don't know how much profit they make."

Zhang Yunqi lit a cigarette and said subconsciously: "It depends on the standard. For those who engage in underground retail, according to this year's market conditions, it is not difficult to earn over 800 yuan a month. You should know that the monthly salary of employees in the capital is only 500 yuan. As for wholesalers and upstream manufacturers, the profit margin is over %!"

"This... is really a huge profit!" Wang Xiaokai swallowed saliva twice in his throat. The sound was not loud, but Zhang Yunqi still heard it.

He was stunned and turned to look at Wang Xiaokai.

In the cold night, the young man looked in the direction of the refrigerated truck, his eyes particularly bright.

On the messy blue brick floor, there was the book "Animal Fierceness" left behind by the old man. The cold night wind blew, and the pages flew, finally stopping at page 78, which read: "Under the bright sunny days, all are the shadows of gambling youth for tomorrow."

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(End of this chapter)