The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 280 Shopping coupons are popular

Changcheng, Jinhe Commune, Kaiyang Village.

This summer, Jiang Juan went back to her hometown with her classmates. The main reason was that it was hot during the summer vacation and there were many eels in the rice fields at night.

Jiang Juan goes back to her hometown every summer vacation to help with housework. Her mother and grandfather still have to work in the fields to earn work points. When she goes home, she can at least help with laundry, cooking, and burning firewood.

It is best to catch eels late at night. In order to improve her family's life, Jiang Juan's classmate Liu Li goes out at ten o'clock every night and catches eels until one or two o'clock.

Then, almost every one or two days, they would take a bus to send eels to Zhou Lingying. Naturally, the news that Zhou Lingying was pregnant again was heard by Jiang Cheng's parents as soon as possible.

Now Jiang Changhe and Zhao Yuxia's hearts are on their two grandsons, but they actually rely on Jiang Cheng for their retirement.

One is for the son to take care of them in their old age, and the other is for the grandson to carry on the family line. In the past few years, the old couple had originally focused on Jiang Cheng. If Zhou Lingying gave birth to a son, they would not favor the son of the eldest brother who had passed away many years ago.

As for Jiang Lin's junior high school, Jiang Cheng did not take him to the city. Jiang Changhe had originally planned to go to the city to talk to his son about it.

But Jiang Juan came back from summer vacation and told her the actual situation. If she didn't go to the city to study, it was still a matter of household registration and grades. If her grades were good, even if her household registration was in the countryside, Jiang Cheng could use a connection to get her in.

If your grades are not good, even if you have a county hukou, it is still considered an urban hukou, and you can go to school in the city. But Jiang Lin refused to do that.

When Jiang Juan entered a junior high school in the city, the school actually had an additional condition: after a three-month trial period, if Jiang Juan's grades did not keep up with the average level of students in the city, she would be sent back.

Jiang Lin's grades are average now, and Zhou Lingying is pregnant again. What if she gives birth to a son? Jiang Lin will have no chance.

Jiang Changhe and Zhao Yuxia still hoped that Zhou Lingying would give birth to a son, because whoever's son it was would be their grandson. Since they were all grandsons, there was naturally no preference.

When Li Xianglan found out that Zhou Lingying was pregnant again, it wasn't that she was malicious, but that she was just a realistic person. For the sake of her two sons' future good life, she still hoped that Zhou Lingying would not give birth to a son.

Even some other people in the village who knew Jiang Cheng's situation often talked about how Jiang Cheng was destined to have no son. Li Xianglan would feel happy every time she heard this.

In rural areas, those who have no children or only daughters often treat their nephews better than their daughters. When their daughters get married, their children do not have the same surname as their family members, but their nephews do.

The key point of this saying is that once a daughter is married off, she will give birth to a child that does not have the same surname, which also means that they are not from the same clan or family. There are many people who think this way in this era, so in Li Xianglan's view, as long as Zhou Lingying does not give birth to a son, no matter how much money Jiang Cheng makes, it will belong to her two sons in the future.

So when she heard that Zhou Lingying was pregnant, Li Xianglan's first thought was not to be happy for her, but to feel annoyed that Zhou Lingying was really good at giving birth. She didn't have a big butt, but she was quite capable of getting pregnant.

Jiang Cheng's family in the city basically had everything they needed. As the in-laws, they were happy to go to the city when they learned that Zhou Lingying was pregnant. They didn't bring the chickens and eggs they raised at home because they really knew that their daughter-in-law Zhou Lingying didn't need them.

I did get some mountain products and went to the city to visit Zhou Lingying. Shiitake mushrooms, black fungus, wild chestnuts, etc. In fact, Jiang Cheng had no shortage of these things. He often stewed chicken at home, so how could there be no shortage of shiitake mushrooms as an ingredient?

It’s just that Jiang Cheng didn’t take out too much normally, but in terms of food and drink, the various ingredients he had accumulated in his space over the years were enough to last him a lifetime.

Wild shiitake mushrooms are small in size but have a strong flavor. This is true for many wild things, but it doesn’t mean that cultivated ones are necessarily not as good as wild ones. Some fruits are still delicious when cultivated.

Just like wild strawberries, their size, moisture and taste are incomparable to cultivated strawberries. Another example is apples. Wild green apples have a strong apple flavor, but they are not as delicious as the later varieties.

In the countryside, Li Xianglan only hoped that Zhou Lingying would not give birth to a son. At most, people were more realistic. Her son Jiang Lin thought that he could not go to the city to study, eat and drink well with his uncle and aunt every day, and have pocket money. He did not understand that it was a problem of household registration and grades, and no one explained it in detail.

Jiang Lin now thought that his aunt Zhou Lingying was pregnant again and didn't take him to the city to study because she wanted to give birth to a son. In addition, the last time he touched her cloth bag, there were some small change, a lot of cents, and some dimes. There was less than one dollar in total, and he even complained and got beaten.

Now Jiang Lin not only hated his sister Jiang Juan, but also his aunt Zhou Lingying. But he was too young and had no ability, so he could only hate her.

~~
Jiang Cheng stayed in Hong Kong for more than a week, mainly to accompany his daughter.

Since March, we have set up a factory in Shenzhen and expanded the meatball sales business of Jiangdonglai to Taiwan. It is relatively smooth because the personnel exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong are relatively close.

Many people in Taiwan have heard of the meatballs from Jiangdonglai. Although the sales of the direct-operated store there cannot be compared with those in Hong Kong, it is no problem to maintain the expenses.

After all, accepting a brand and its added value requires a process.

Jiangdonglai's meatballs cannot compete with prices at present, and cannot attract customers with prices as they did in the beginning. After all, the brand has been established, and the brand management is about concept.

Now the main focus is on the real ingredients, hygiene and health. The price is also mid-range and affordable for consumers. As for those cheap meatballs on the market, they may not have any additives in this era.

But in terms of ingredients and hygiene, some small workshops are really hard to say in too much detail for the sake of profit.

Anyway, the sales of meatballs are gradually getting better. The market has been buoyant for several months, and due to the increase in sales, the production of the factory in Hong Kong is a bit stressful.

Fortunately, the processing plant in Shenzhen can finally start production. Jiang Cheng has no control over or interference in the factory's recruitment.

But the leadership team of the factory over there, Jiangdonglai Food Factory, also sent an invitation to come over for study and visit.

They were asked to learn about hygiene, food selection, and assembly-line production methods. Jiang Cheng didn't want to ruin the brand he had worked so hard to build because of processing problems.

The fish heads and tails of grass carp and sea fish are not needed. In the processing plant in Xiangjiang, fish heads, tails, fish bladders and so on are now put in the cafeteria for employees to eat at work, and some people buy them.

Because there are too many materials needed for production, we can't feed employees fish heads and fish tails every day, because they will get tired of it. But some people in Hong Kong know that the factory here has a lot of fresh fish heads and fish tails, so many restaurant owners come here to purchase.

It is made into lunch boxes and sold to workers on construction sites, and some crews give it to ordinary actors. It is considered good enough to be able to eat this.

Chicken meatballs and chicken skeletons are also served in the cafeteria.

The visitors saw the production process and the handling of the remaining materials, which also made the visiting leadership team members feel a little embarrassed.

The raw materials, such as fish and chicken, were all purchased by Jiangdonglai, so the fish heads and tails should also belong to Jiangdonglai.

But in the factories in Hong Kong, the canteens provide free meals. In their factories in Shenzhen, workers have to pay for food stamps.

In Hong Kong, it is clearly capitalism, but the way workers are treated is a bit like the period in 1959, when everyone ate from the same pot for free and worked hard to produce.

To be honest, people in this era really can't arrange to go abroad at will, because their ideas can easily collapse under the impact.

At the Jiangdonglai Food Factory in Hong Kong, front-line production workers earn more than 3,000 yuan a month. Even if we calculate it based on the exchange rate, it is at least ten times higher than in China. But everyone knows that the current exchange rate in China is only inflow, not outflow. The real situation is that the difference between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is at least 40 to 50 times, not to say a hundred times.

What a concept, one day's work in Hong Kong is equivalent to one or two months' work in China. This is only for those who have jobs. For those who don't have jobs in many rural areas in China and rely on farming, the income in Hong Kong is definitely a hundred times more than that of farmers in China.

Jiang Ben originally wanted to invite some health quality inspectors to come and learn. But in China, how could the quota to go to Hong Kong really fall on front-line workers? All the people who came were leaders, and at the very least, they were small cadres who were the directors of production workshops.

The management positions at Jiangdonglai cost around 5,000 Hong Kong dollars. An economical sedan in Hong Kong costs 12,000 Hong Kong dollars, and a Beetle costs just over 8,000 Hong Kong dollars.

Working for two or three months in Hong Kong would allow them to buy a car, but in China, they cannot even buy a bicycle.

Therefore, it is difficult for those who come to visit and study not to have selfish motives, but they do not have the conditions to escape from the group, or they are just conflicted inside, and then return home unwillingly.

During these months, the 'Jiang Donglai' shopping coupons printed by Jiang Cheng himself became popular in certain circles.

One is that Shen Li gave the shopping coupons as gifts to some local leaders in Shenzhen. At first, some people did not take it seriously.

After all, you have to go to Hong Kong to use it, and it is not real currency. Many people initially thought that even if it could be used, it would be limited in scope.

But Shenzhen was developing its OEM industry at that time, and there were some people going to Hong Kong for negotiations through formal channels every day.

These shopping coupons were circulated in small quantities at the beginning, and some people even gave away some shopping coupons when they went to Hong Kong.

But when those people holding the shopping coupons actually arrived in Hong Kong, they found that Jiangdonglai actually provided one-stop service. Although the hotel was still under construction, Jiang Cheng converted a small building under his name into a bed and breakfast.

Eating might be a little troublesome, but there are many snack shops and restaurants in the Jiangdonglai shopping mall and supermarket, and they all accept shopping coupons.

As for shopping, there is no need to mention it. It is a large shopping mall and supermarket with everything you need.

Among the basic necessities of life, the only thing that is inconvenient is travel. This shopping voucher is not convenient for taking a taxi. But since Jiangdonglai dares to mark the coupons as equivalent to Hong Kong currency, naturally someone will see the business opportunity in it.

Just like the membership cards issued by many large domestic supermarkets in later generations, many people are willing to pay 20% or even 10% off to buy them. Some people buy the daily necessities, such as firewood, rice, oil, salt, tobacco, alcohol, etc. in supermarkets, because they have a demand for them.

What's more, the things in 'Jiangdonglai' are not expensive. If you can get a shopping coupon with a 20% discount, the price you pay when buying something from it may be almost the same as the manufacturer's purchase price.

In case someone is in a hurry to cash in the shopping voucher, it would be more cost-effective to receive it at a 30% discount.

Anyway, in a few months, the domestic shopping coupons were sold at a much higher exchange rate on the black market than on the market, and were even almost equal to the Hong Kong dollar.

Logically, shopping vouchers cannot be priced the same as Hong Kong coins. After all, this thing is not as useful as Hong Kong coins in Hong Kong, and the restriction on local use is a flaw.

The reason why the price of Hong Kong Coin can be hyped up in the domestic black market is because of a premise. If you want to buy Hong Kong Coin in the black market, it depends on luck, not just because you want it.

Since no one can buy Hong Kong coins, the only option is shopping vouchers.

In addition to some people in Shenzhen who paid attention to the shopping coupons, another place was FZ City.

Lichuan Reclamation Farm under Fuzhou has received attention from above in terms of agriculture. In the past few months, in addition to the first visit to inspect the project, we applied to send people to inspect the project several times later to implement the project, and also signed many cooperation projects.

Jiang Cheng has watched the projects there being implemented one by one in the past few months, but he feels that the people at the reclamation farm are playing a trick on him. Many projects can be inspected in one go, and several supply cooperation agreements can be signed at one time. But they insist on making one trip to implement only one or two.

For example, to supply poultry, we came to Hong Kong to sign a contract. Later, we went to Hong Kong again to supply eggs, and then we came to Hong Kong again to cooperate on Songhua eggs.

Jiang Cheng also saw through it but didn't say anything. Anyway, except for the first time, it was considered that we took the initiative to invite them and gave them 8,000 shopping coupons. Later, when they came to inspect and discuss cooperation, we only sent out invitations, but they had to pay for their own expenses.

Then, Director Hou used Jiang Cheng's relationship to purchase a large number of shopping coupons in the past few months.

Director Hou and some of his superiors have always believed that Jiang Cheng is the driver of a certain leader of Jiangdonglai in Hong Kong. He was the one who arranged the project, and the shopping coupons were obtained through him from the leader.

Many people gave Jiang Cheng cigarettes and high-end wines for these shopping coupons. Jiang Cheng received many boxes of Maotai and other things.

It is indeed a box, not a bottle. This Moutai may be difficult for ordinary people to get, but it only takes a little effort to get it in some units.

If these people knew that the 'Jiangdonglai' shopping coupons were actually printed by Jiang Cheng himself, but the anti-counterfeiting marks were well made and they were printed by a bank, plus the double insurance of the seal, no one would be able to forge them in the short term.

However, it is enough to prevent counterfeiting in the short term. In two years, Jiang Cheng will seek cooperation with the bank and ask them to make a batch of shopping cards, which will solve the risk of counterfeiting.

But I have to say that this voucher issuance is addictive. Just like mobile payment in the future, you put real money into your mobile phone account. For those operating companies, they only give you some data.

The cost of printing coupons by Jiang Cheng is just some paper and labor costs. But in China, a piece of paper with a coupon worth 10,000 yuan written on it requires real money to buy it.

When these shopping coupons are not spent, the money is actually in Jiang Cheng's hands. Jiang Cheng can use this money to directly purchase a large amount of raw materials in the future, and sell them in Hong Kong to make money.

In simple terms, no matter how many shopping coupons Jiang Cheng issued, as long as he issued them, he would get back the same amount of currency, even if he got these currencies by overdrawing the turnover of Jiangdonglai.

But it would be a waste of money if it was just kept in the bank and earned interest, not to mention that in the hands of Jiang Cheng, who had no transportation costs, how could he just earn interest?

With the knowledge of later generations, Jiang Cheng was really helpless. Some business opportunities were always seized by him suddenly. Later generations engaged in electronic payment and absorbed a large amount of deposit currency.

Jiang Cheng created a shopping voucher just for fun at first, but when the shopping voucher became popular, many people paid attention to it and the demand increased.

Jiang Cheng was really using sacks to carry money. After a few months, there were millions of RMB lying in the space. And this was just the beginning. Jiang Cheng was still doing it secretly.

When the Jiangdonglai supermarket in Shenzhen opens, it will openly issue shopping coupons for the Shenzhen-Strait chain. This will give everyone a more direct channel to obtain shopping coupons. Jiang Cheng feels that Jiangdonglai will explode by then.

There is another benefit of issuing a large number of shopping coupons. The wealthy people in the mainland all go to his "Jiangdonglai" supermarket in Hong Kong to shop. The sales of his supermarket in Hong Kong are also increasing.

Compared with other supermarkets in Hong Kong, he is overtaking on the curve, but it is not obvious yet. You should know that in the 1980s, many wealthy people in China went abroad to shop a lot, and only bought expensive things instead of expensive ones.

The poor people simply cannot imagine why some rich people in the 1980s were so rich.

(End of this chapter)