The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 219 Concubine and System

At noon, Jiang Cheng, Shen Li and Ali had lunch at a tea restaurant.

Among the workers, the one who cooked was an auntie that Shen Li hired from a nearby neighbor. She was paid 300 yuan a month, including three meals, and she would also have to cook breakfast.

After all, this is not a formal place. Not only do they recruit young people, but they also exploit working hours. They make everyone start working at 7 o'clock in the morning, but they provide breakfast at 6:30. Breakfast is fish bone soup porridge, plus some sweet potatoes.

The fishermen who killed fish here at noon cooked half a grass carp head, and then cooked a large plate of vegetables, which you can pick as you like. A lot of rice was also cooked, and each person could have at least one bowl of rice.

The workers enjoyed the food very much. But if they come to work here often, they will eat so much fish that they will vomit. Of course, it is impossible for everyone to eat such food every day. There will be some adjustments occasionally, but at least they have to eat fish heads and tails for two days before changing to other dishes.

The people we hired today were only responsible for killing the fish, removing the bones and skin. Ali and a young man he hired were responsible for sending the packed fish meat to the cold storage. They also carried the fish from the basement over here for them to process.

Excluding various parts of a fish, one pound of fish can only produce half a pound of meat on average. Fish meat accounts for 70 to 80 percent of the fish balls, which means that one pound of fish can only make about 600 grams of fish balls.

If you sell fish balls wholesale, the profit is not high at more than two yuan per pound. But it is precisely because of the low profit that Jiang Cheng sells them cheaply that he can easily outsell others.

Even some cart noodle vendors who originally buy their own fish and make their own fish balls may choose to buy their fish balls directly here.

The wholesale price is 2.4 yuan, Jiangcheng sells it for 2 yuan, and it also has to maintain the taste and quality. Although it is only 40 cents, it actually accounts for 17% of the total sales. If it is calculated as pure profit, it is likely that the fish balls processing will have almost no profit.

But Jiang Cheng can do this at the beginning, as it is fine if the output is not high. But once the output is high, he will be reported and he will have to register a company and run a food processing factory.

In Hong Kong, some gangs fight for territory and collect membership fees without caring. The fact that Hong Kong can develop rapidly shows that its business environment is actually good.

At least most companies do not act recklessly in market competition. Jiang Cheng believes that as long as food production is regular and using price to seize market share is fair competition, at least they will not be targeted.

After lunch, Jiang Cheng asked Shen Li and Ali to buy some raw materials, such as ginger, onions and starch for making fish balls. He also had to go to the market to buy some things to bring back to the mainland, such as cloth, milk powder and liquor.

The liquor was reserved for Jiang Cheng to drink, or to use for entertaining people when he went to the north. He also bought a bicycle in the market, which he used to run errands for Shen Li and Ali, and even bought a cart to deliver goods.

In the afternoon, Jiang Cheng got another batch of fish in the basement, and he planned to get a bigger batch when he left in the evening.

Even though we catch a lot of fish in a day, we can only produce a few tons of fish meat. If we produce fish balls every day, even if three people work, it is not enough for a month.

One is responsible for removing bones, one is responsible for pounding the fish meat into meat paste, and one is responsible for making fish balls and putting them in the pot. It is easy to produce two or three hundred kilograms of fish balls a day by hand.

Moreover, this output must be maintained at the beginning, because the labor costs plus the cost of renting a cold storage are now two hundred yuan a day.

If it were other factories or workshops, producing such a small amount of fish balls a day and renting a cold storage of more than ten square meters would definitely not be cost-effective.

The cold storage that Jiang Cheng rented was enough to store the 700-800 kilograms of fish balls produced every day, and that was the amount that would last for a month if the fish balls were not sold. If the fish balls were sold well, a cold storage of more than 10 square meters would be enough for more than a dozen people to use for production.

The day passed quickly, and Shen Li didn't pester Jiang Cheng when she had something to do. It was mainly because Jiang Cheng didn't want her to pester him, and she had no other choice.

Shen Li herself couldn't tell what kind of feelings she had for Jiang Cheng, whether it was love and liking between a man and a woman, or more of a dependence. Growing up in a place where you could do that for ten yuan, she sometimes secretly did some shameless things to Jiang Cheng, and she didn't know whether it was the impulse of adolescence or something else.

Shen Li went back to the residential building to cook dinner for Jiang Cheng, while Ali had his work lunch there. At noon, Jiang Cheng gave him a month's salary, which made him full of energy to work.

Paying wages in advance is also a reward for Ali's choice to stay and work. "Brother Cheng, all the people I recruited to work today will call me the boss's wife."

"You are so young, why would those people shout like that?"

During the meal, Shen Li picked up some food for Jiang Cheng and brought up a topic. Jiang Cheng was a little bit surprised, after all, Shen Li looked very young, and he hadn't been there for long today.

"I told them myself. I said I was your little wife. Brother Cheng, we all sleep in the same bed, why don't you just let me be your real little wife? I promise not to show up in front of my sister-in-law." Shen Li put down her bowl and chopsticks, suddenly hugged Jiang Cheng and said.

"Let's talk about it later. Don't worry, I will give you an explanation no matter what." Jiang Cheng responded.

Facing Shen Li, Jiang Cheng felt that he was a scumbag, neither accepting nor rejecting her. While enjoying this improper relationship, he also had to maintain his bottom line in front of Zhou Lingying.

"Then can I say in front of others that I'm your concubine?" Shen Li did not force Jiang Cheng, but asked about the "status".

Jiang Cheng didn't care about this request, and she had promised not to appear in front of Zhou Lingying. The key point was that she couldn't appear in front of Zhou Lingying even if she wanted to. This girl thought that Jiang Cheng's first wife was also in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, being a mistress is quite common, although there is no legal support for it.

In fact, it was only in October of the previous year, that is, October 1971, 10. Hong Kong implemented monogamy. Before that, Hong Kong had always been a Qing Dynasty marriage system, a polygamous system.

But some provisions need a process to be implemented. For example, the Employment System prohibits the employment of child laborers under the age of 16. However, this provision cannot be fully implemented for at least ten years.

The same is true for Hong Kong's current marriage system, which needs a period of adaptation. The younger generation must understand that marriage should be monogamous.

The monogamy system has only been in place for a year, and many Hong Kong people don’t even know about it. And this system is completely useless for the rich.

In other words, many systems are aimed at the poor. Some people are poor, but they still have a lot of money and find several wives. The upper class people would definitely not like this. They have so few resources, and they think that young and beautiful women should be kept for themselves and not given to others as concubines.

But now Shen Li has no concept of monogamy. In her worldview, it is normal for a man to marry a concubine. A powerful man should be worth fighting for by women. When she had the opportunity to meet Jiang Cheng, she never thought about whether he had a wife at the beginning.

Moreover, in Hong Kong, being a concubine is not something to be ashamed of. That is why Shen Li took the initiative to tell others that she is the boss's wife and a concubine.

The people who recruited her would naturally understand her because of her age and when they heard her say that she was the boss's mistress. There would be no ridicule behind her back. In fact, because such cases happened so often, many women thought that it would be nice to be the mistress of a capable and wealthy man.

The mistress is just like the daughter-in-law who becomes the mother-in-law in China. When the first wife dies, they take over. Moreover, the mistress is protected by law in Hong Kong. It does not mean that you can treat the other party as a lover and dump them at will.

In Hong Kong, a concubine and her children can reasonably divide a portion of the husband's property after his death. However, Hong Kong no longer recognizes concubines in the 1980s and 1990s, and they were really mistresses at that time.

To be more precise, it was in the 1980s and 1990s that Hong Kong's monogamy system was fully perfected. The mistress can no longer get the property, but her children can still get a share.

This is actually still a game played by the rich, because in the 1980s and 1990s many women began to rely on men to get ahead, and they also wanted compensation if they didn't have children.

The fact that the mistress cannot get the property is actually to protect the wealth of some wealthy men who are no longer fertile. At one time, some women specifically looked for wealthy, old men to marry, just waiting for you to die and divide the property.

After the new rules are issued, at least those women will no longer target old men. At least they will look for rich men who are still fertile.

(End of this chapter)