Film and Television World Life Record

After discussing it, the merchants decided to buy all the opium and offered a decent price of 100,000 legal tender.

Yesterday, Li Mu asked around and found out that since the July 7 Incident, the value of the legal tender has dropped. Currently, 100,000 legal tender is roughly equivalent to 85,000 silver dollars.

Li Mu had these cigarette cards appraised, and they were worth about 100,000 silver dollars. The price of 100,000 legal tender was also quite reasonable. Since they had come all this way, he had to leave them some scraps.

Over the next two days, Li Mu had someone make him a new identity document, which had nothing to do with his current security guard, Chief Tan, and was named Li Mu.

If he flies too frequently in the future, he'll attract attention; he can just change his identity and name multiple times. For him, obtaining several different identity documents in this small area is quite simple.

After arranging everything here, Li Mu led a platoon of guards, more than twenty men, and boarded a boat to sail along the Han River, passing Xiangyang, towards Wuhan.

Two days later, after disembarking and arriving in Wuhan, the city was incredibly noisy, teeming with people, and many students were demonstrating in the streets. Li Mu bought a newspaper and learned that fighting had broken out in Shanghai, and the Battle of Shanghai had officially begun.

Li Mu had no time to reflect on these things, because he knew this was just the beginning, and the war would become even more brutal, with half of China falling within a year.

As the only variable in this world, he can only flap his little wings as hard as he can to see if he can change the future.

As an important port city on the Yangtze River, Wuhan is connected to the sea. Its docks are lined with shops and warehouses, and merchants come and go in an endless stream.

Li Mu came to Wuhan this time for two reasons: first, to catch a flight from here, and second, to buy some goods to take to Singapore to sell.

With multiple layovers along the way, it would be a waste of time to only bring things from Singapore.

Li Mu had already selected the specific goods.

During the Republic of China era, there were not many goods in China that held a monopoly position in the world, but one item was unique to China: "pig bristles," or pig hair.

Pig bristles have natural advantages: they are wear-resistant, corrosion-resistant, heat-resistant, acid and alkali-resistant, not easily deformed, have moderate hardness, and good toughness, making them a major raw material for brushes used in the chemical and military industries.

Pig bristle brushes are indispensable for painting warships, airplanes, various tanks, military vehicles, and cleaning various gun barrels and cannon barrels.

Whether in daily life, industrial production, or weapons maintenance, scraps from pigs played a crucial role in war.

Before the invention of nylon plastic, pig bristles were the only material for brushes. Pig bristles are a traditional export product of China, ranking first in the world. During World War II, the United States classified pig bristles as a Class A strategic material, as precious as munitions, and a key material that could determine the outcome of the war.

Of the 65 boxes of pig bristles needed globally, 95% comes from China. Even major capitalist countries like the US, UK, and Germany rely on China for their brush manufacturing industries.

During the War of Resistance against Japan, transportation disruptions reduced China's pig bristle exports, leading to a severe shortage of pig bristles worldwide and a surge in global prices. As World War II expanded, the need for more weapons increased, and Chinese pig bristles became a sought-after military resource.

During World War II, the United States, as the "arsenal" of the Allied powers, had the greatest demand for pig bristle brushes. At that time, almost all brush manufacturers in the United States sourced their raw pig bristles from China. Pig bristles were also used to repay loans to China from the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States.

In 1939, the U.S. government instructed its embassy in China to formally request the Chinese government to ship all pig bristles exported from Chongqing to the United States, to which the government agreed. However, at that time, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain all urgently needed pig bristles. In order to allocate the bristles, the three countries established a distribution agency in Washington, D.C., with the participation of delegations from all three countries. This agency was responsible for negotiating how to obtain pig bristles from China and how to distribute them, thus resolving the matter.

From 1937 to 1945, pig bristles alone earned the country $30 million in foreign exchange, equivalent to 75 million Yuan Shikai silver dollars.

After planning what supplies I wanted to buy, I found a knowledgeable intermediary and immediately started looking at the goods.

It was only then that Li Mu learned that due to the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, Japan had blockaded the seas, making roads impassable and goods unsellable, resulting in a backlog of goods that needed to be exported.

For example, pig bristles are shipped in large quantities every year, and many merchants love to do this business, buying them up from all over the place.

However, now they are stuck with their goods, especially after the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai and the start of the full-scale war of resistance. With war raging everywhere, many merchants are living in fear and want to get rid of their goods as soon as possible to secure their profits.

In the warehouses of various trading companies, there was a lot of pig bristles piling up. Under the guidance of the intermediary, Li Mu met with many merchants in this field. Finally, a merchant from Hebei, worried about his family's situation, sold the pig bristles at half the usual price.

Li Mu spent 95,000 legal tender to take down several warehouses of pig bristles.

After quietly storing the pig bristles in his spatial storage, Li Mu exchanged some US dollars and British pounds with the legal tender before buying a plane ticket at a foreign firm and boarding a plane from Hankou to Kunming.

Upon arriving in Kunming, Li Mu did not linger. He managed to buy a plane ticket that very day. After inquiring, he learned that as China's only international air route, many people chose to fly out of the country from here after the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai.

As a result, airlines have increased the number of flights, sometimes with three or four flights a day.

Upon arriving in Hanoi, it was nearly evening. Li Mu bought a plane ticket to Bangkok for the next day and found a hotel nearby to stay in.

Vietnam is still a French colony, and compared to the ongoing war in the rest of the country, it maintains a sense of peace.

Without lingering there, Li Mu boarded a flight to Bangkok the next morning. Upon arriving in Bangkok, he found a flight to Singapore that afternoon, so he immediately bought a ticket and flew there.

They arrived in Singapore around 7 p.m. that day. It took them only two days to travel from Wuhan, which is quite a miracle in this day and age.

That night, he found a hotel of modest quality to stay in. The next morning, after finishing his workout, Li Mu began to explore the local market, mainly to learn about the current market price of pig bristles.

Unbeknownst to many, due to the outbreak of war and the blockage of trade routes, pig bristles are now scarce in the market. In addition, a group of speculators, seeing that China, which almost monopolizes the global export of pig bristles, has been drawn into war with no end in sight in the short term, have taken advantage of the situation.

Everyone got involved and started hyping it up.

The price of pig bristles tripled in just one month, and there was still no market for them.

Li Mu was astonished. He could buy pig bristles in China for half the market price, but here he could sell them for three times the usual price. Just by traveling from Wuhan to Singapore, he could make a six-fold profit.

It's truly insane.

After spending two days in Singapore, I chose a reliable trading company and sold all the pig bristles I had, earning about $200,000.

Li Mu knew that the exchange rate between silver dollars and US dollars in domestic banks and foreign firms was approximately 2.4, meaning one US dollar was equal to 2.4 silver dollars.

Two hundred thousand US dollars, equivalent to forty-eight thousand silver dollars.

Just one trip abroad and his money had multiplied so many times over, leaving Li Mu quite amazed.

Chapter 413 Procuring Weapons

The following day, Li Mu planned to purchase goods and return to China as soon as possible.

He also had a good idea of ​​what goods to procure; currently, the most urgent needs in China were medicines and military supplies.

Let's set aside military supplies for now. Without sufficient strength, selling military supplies would only create trouble for ourselves.

Medicines are much simpler, and their applications are even wider than those of military supplies; they are used not only by the military but also by civilians.

The first medication to choose was sulfonamide. The discovery and use of sulfonamide played a significant role in combating bacterial infections during World War II, greatly reducing the mortality rate of wounded soldiers. According to records, during World War II, every US soldier was issued a first-aid kit that hung on their belt, containing a packet of sulfonamide powder and a roll of bandage. Sulfonamide powder and tablets were also important first-aid medications carried by battlefield medics.

In many domestic anti-Japanese war films, sulfonamides are extremely difficult to obtain, and many main characters have to go through numerous hardships to get sulfonamides and deliver them to the rear.

On the other hand, since the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, Japan imposed a complete blockade on the import of medicines into China, and sulfonamides, a potent antibacterial drug, were among the prohibited materials. As a result, many soldiers died because they could not afford even a few sulfonamide pills.

Unlike China, the U.S. military significantly reduced its casualty rate during World War II due to the availability of ample sulfonamides.

Of course, there was another reason why the soldiers in China didn't have enough sulfonamides at the time: they were too poor and didn't have enough foreign exchange to buy these drugs.

Another drug that was widely used but relatively scarce in China at the time was the antimalarial drug quinine. Quinine is an alkaloid extracted from the bark of trees such as cinchona, which can inhibit the growth of malaria parasites. Its main place of origin is South America.

During the War of Resistance against Japan, due to the scarcity of relevant medicines, overseas Chinese donated a lot of quinine.

Li Mu spent all $200,000 on sulfonamides, quinine, and several other drugs that were scarce in China.

After purchasing the items, Li Mu did not linger and boarded a plane to Bangkok that same day.

Then Hanoi, Kunming, and Wuhan. This time, the journey took an extra day compared to the last one, totaling three days.

Upon arriving in Wuhan, Li Mu rested for half a day and immediately contacted several large, reputable, and powerful trading companies that had branches in Wuhan.

With the fighting raging on the front lines, medicines are scarce, especially those for treating injuries and illnesses, which are in high demand in the market.

We communicated briefly and discussed the price.

Li Mu then went to the warehouse, put all the medicines in the space inside, and called over twenty guards from the guard company who had come to Wuhan with him to guard the warehouse.

He then took the person in charge of the business to personally inspect and verify the goods.

Upon seeing so many medicines, the heads of several trading companies were overjoyed. After some haggling, they finalized the price, and two major trading companies decided to jointly purchase the batch of medicines.

Compared to Li Mu's purchase price in Singapore, the selling price is 2.8 times higher.

What was equivalent to two hundred thousand US dollars became five hundred and sixty thousand US dollars.

Actually, it's not too expensive. If these drugs are shipped from Singapore to China through normal procedures, there are not only shipping costs but also customs duties, and there are all sorts of extortion and bribery along the way.

To make a sufficient profit, the price needs to be at least doubled.

Given Japan's current blockade of the seas and the scarcity of medicine, selling it for $580,000 is quite reasonable.

However, such a large transaction can only be conducted in fiat currency in the country.

Ultimately, the two major merchant houses paid Li Mu 1.58 million legal tender, equivalent to 1.34 million silver dollars.

After receiving the money, Li Mu didn't sit idle. He immediately took a plane and toured several major distribution centers for goods in China. He spent all the money in his hand again. He bought up a small portion of the pig bristles that had been stockpiled and unsold in China for so long at an average discount of 20%.

As for the rest, they're too scattered to bother collecting.

With so many pig bristles in hand, Li Mu embarked on his journey to Singapore once again, staying at the same hotel. This time, because he had a larger supply, Li Mu contacted several large trading companies.

As the war intensified domestically and tensions rose in Europe, the market for pig bristles not only didn't decrease but actually increased. After selling them all, Li Mu had over 1.6 million US dollars in his hands.

Although he can't compare to tycoons like Rockefeller, whose net worth is now in the hundreds of millions of dollars, this net worth is definitely not small in China.

With funds reaching this scale, speculation becomes much more difficult and requires a considerable amount of time for preparation. Not only does acquiring exportable goods domestically take time, but procuring sufficient goods abroad also takes time, and selling those goods domestically also requires ample time.

Therefore, Li Mu decided to slow down the pace. Moreover, as the scale of transactions grew larger and larger, he could no longer manage on his own and had to establish a trading company.

This is actually quite convenient, as Singapore is a prosperous place for goods and logistics, with a large number of businesses and talents. Not to mention the various Chinese intellectuals from Southeast Asia, many people from China also come here to seek their fortune.

Through an intermediary, Li Mu rented a two-story building in the commercial street and established the "Far East Trading Company." He then began advertising for employees in newspapers.

As war raged in China, many people moved their families to Southeast Asia. Combined with Western adventurers and vagrants, the number of talented people in the region increased significantly.

After several rounds of screening, Li Mu recruited a man in his thirties named Su Ming to be the person in charge of Far East Trading Company.

With Su Ming's assistance, a Far East trading company with more than twenty employees was established. The company's main task was to help Li Mu procure supplies or assist him in selling the supplies he brought back from China.

Of course, this is the main task. After completing the main task, you can also take on some business on your own. For example, you can help domestic commercial banks export products or help them import certain products.

In short, the bank is currently just an empty shell with little actual assets.

When ordering goods, you can directly contact other trading companies and then you don't need to worry about anything else, as long as the goods enter the warehouse.