My hometown is far away in Moscow.

Chapter 270 Half a Box

"Okay, I've been so busy lately that I haven't had a chance to look for it. I'll hurry up and find it." Hu Yi patted the US dollars in his hand twice. "I have money, you don't need to pay for me."

"Alright, alright, stop nagging. You've been working really hard lately. This money is your bonus." Fu Jiahui gave him a half-smile and gestured with his chin. "Actually, it's not entirely a bonus. Now that you have your own stall, you'll definitely be getting your goods from me, right? I'm doing this to cultivate my own customers. Getting a box isn't cheap these days, so consider it a sponsorship for you."

"That makes a lot of sense." Hu Yi laughed and stuffed the money into his pocket. "I'll look for a place tomorrow and try to become your client as soon as possible!"

After finishing his work in the box the next day at noon, Hu Yi began looking for a suitable stall, and called Li Baoqing along with him.

Finding a suitable container in a large container market is like choosing a house you like in a city—it's not an easy task.

Fortunately, most of the stalls in the market are clustered together according to their business areas. Hu Yi mainly sells pants, so he naturally goes to the area where clothing shops are more concentrated. He called Li Baoqing over to ask him to help him find the specific location.

"You should have done this a long time ago. You've been dragging your feet, wasting so many money-making opportunities! And you've made Jia Hui worry about it for you!" Li Baoqing had made a lot of money in this autumn clothing market, and now he had rented a new box at the Astai warehouse. He was riding high, and his tone when instructing Hu Yi had become much more assertive.

"What are you saying? Renting a stall costs money, doesn't it?" Hu Yi said, glancing at the rows of boxes on both sides of the road as he walked. "Not everyone is as wealthy as you, Boss Li. I can only earn a few hundred thousand rubles a month at most, and I still have to pay rent. Don't I need to save up before I start?"

"Stop making excuses, you're just lazy. Selling loose goods is so profitable, once you set up a stall, why worry about a little money?" Li Baoqing looked up at the sky and sighed, "I'm just too busy with my own things, otherwise I would have set up my own stall long ago. It looks exciting to sell things in bulk, but you don't actually make that much money."

"Hey! Why is Boss Li suddenly so low-key?" Hu Yi chuckled, a cigarette dangling from his lips. "Since you're so keen on selling loose goods, why don't you come work for me? Considering our years of friendship, I'll grit my teeth and give you... two thousand rubles a month?"

"Get lost! Go to hell!" Li Baoqing punched Hu Yi twice, then squinted and pondered, "But you could take some goods from me to sell, to diversify your selection. Hey! I think you should just come to Astai, find a box near our boss's stall, that way we can see each other more often."

"No, no, your boss lives a bit far from New Sun, it's inconvenient. Besides, Aste's suitcases are too expensive, I can't afford to rent them."

"Well... the Seagull District is even further, so you definitely won't go there. The Black-haired District? Hmm... that doesn't seem ideal either."

"Nonsense, the Black Hair District is full of small commodities and Christmas goods, what would I do there? But the warehouses in the Black Hair District are cheaper, I can rent a box there to store goods later." Hu Yi had already made up his mind: "As for the stall, Old Sun is still the most suitable place."

The Old Sun District is quite large, with many merchants engaged in the clothing and footwear business, including a significant number of Chinese business owners. It borders the New Sun District to the north, Aste to the west, and the Black Hair District to the south, making it relatively convenient for Hu Yi.

Right now, Old Sun's stalls are in high demand, and the rent for good locations is unaffordable for Hu Yi. However, the roads here are not as straight as New Sun's, and some areas are not well-planned, inevitably leaving many small, fragmented spaces.

The small space couldn't hold the entire container, but the market management company didn't waste an inch of land. They adapted to local conditions, dividing and processing the container into suitable sizes to fill every nook and cranny of the area.

Hu Yi's target was these so-called small boxes. He and Li Baoqing walked around the old sun, looking and asking, and after two hours of wandering, they finally found a suitable place at the end of a street.

"I think this place is perfect. It's not too far from Jia Hui's boxes and the Black Hair District warehouse, which meets your requirements perfectly." Li Baoqing looked around and was quite satisfied. "Besides, there are a lot of Chinese people nearby, so we can look out for each other if anything happens."

"I think it's a good idea." Hu Yi also took a liking to this place at a glance. Although it was located at the end of the road and was somewhat remote, the market streets were like supermarket shelves, with several streets lined up in each area. You could walk to the end, turn a corner, and continue shopping on another street, so the customer flow was still guaranteed to be a certain level. Besides, he mainly did wholesale business, and most of his customers were regulars, so he didn't need to care too much about the location. The most important thing was that the prices were cheap.

Ordinary stalls and warehouses in the market use 20-foot containers that are about six meters long. The packages are stacked along the sides of the container, leaving a narrow aisle in the middle.

The fashion pants bag is about half a meter high. It can hold up to four bags in the box, but the top bag is inconvenient to access. So usually, there are only three bags in a stack. The whole box can hold about sixty bags.

The small box had been cut off, and its length was estimated to be less than four meters. It looked slightly smaller than Anna's stall in Lyublino, but it was more than enough to hold thirty or so packages. Moreover, there were other small boxes of the same size stacked on the second floor. For Hu Yi's purposes, it was sufficient for the time being.

A half-stall on the edge of such an area costs 80,000 rubles a month, which is roughly equivalent to 2,500 US dollars; while a stall on the other side of the street, located on a busy road, costs 10,000 US dollars a month, a huge difference.

Since he had his eye on it, he decided to act quickly and secure it. Hu Yi struck up a conversation with the stall manager and began haggling over the price.

The rental price was non-negotiable; what Hu Yi wanted to cut was an extra fee that had to be paid when renting the stall, which people in the market called the "hat." This name was quite intriguing, as the ten thousand US dollars that Fu Jia Hui gave Hu Yi was used to pay for this fee.

The so-called "hat" is, frankly speaking, a kickback given to the management. When the market was first renovated and expanded, in order to attract merchants to move in, the various management companies launched a series of preferential policies. At that time, there were plenty of stalls in the market. As long as merchants were willing to come, they could take any box they wanted and only needed to pay a low monthly rent.

Times have changed. The market is now much more vibrant than it used to be. Not only are rents skyrocketing every year, but renting a stall is no longer as easy. Some management companies have started selling boxes at fixed prices, while others, although nominally still not charging fees, are secretly demanding increasingly higher and higher prices for "hats" (boxes/stacks).

Of course, the kickbacks also vary depending on the location. For example, the popular stall on the other side, with a monthly rent of $10,000, would cost at least $50,000 or $60,000 for the hats. But the less desirable spot that Hu Yi had his eye on, the manager asked for $8,000 upfront.

Relying on his fluent Russian, Hu Yi chatted with the manager about all sorts of things, and with the principle of saving money wherever possible, he finally managed to get the small box for six thousand US dollars.

After paying and completing the formalities, Hu Yi stood in front of his stall for a long time. Looking at the simple metal box, which was about eight square meters in size, he smiled, his heart surging with emotion, like a homeowner who had just received the keys to a bare house, imagining a bright future.

"Congratulations, Lao Hu." Li Baoqing gave him a serious hug, "Great news! From now on, you're officially Boss Hu!"

"Thank you, Boss Li!" Hu Yi wanted to say something joking, but he couldn't quite control his emotions and stammered in a slightly trembling tone, "From now on... we brothers must help each other, share honor and disgrace, and work together to make a name for ourselves in Moscow!"

"Holy crap? You little brat...hehe, have you taken the wrong medicine? How can you say something like that...that..." Li Baoqing grinned and straightened his back. "Is that even a question? Our future isn't a dream! Forget about that now, hurry up and call your foreign girl over to familiarize yourself with the place!"

Hu Yi had his own stall sorted out, but he still had to work in Fu Jia Hui's box most of the time, leaving the affairs of Lao Tai Yang to Natasha.

Natasha was even more excited than Hu Yi about owning this half of the small box. Since the two had met, Natasha had been doing odd jobs, and now that she finally had a stable place to run her business, you can imagine how happy she was.

"This is great! This is wonderful!" Natasha walked around the box, wiping it carefully inside and out, and then climbed up the ladder to the second floor to clean it.

"Natasha, stop fussing," Hu Yi said with a laugh from below. "The boxes are for storing cargo bags; there's no need to make them so spotless."

"But I really love it here, just like I love our home." Natasha stood on the second floor, gazing at the rows of shipping containers around her, and happily wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "Anton, these boxes look so cold and impersonal. I'd like to decorate them to make them feel warmer. What do you think?"

"Of course, no problem. This is our box, you can do whatever you like with it." Hu Yi looked up and stretched out his arms to her: "Come on, we're not in a hurry to open, let's remodel it to your liking first."

Without further ado, Hu Yi and Natasha came up with a basic plan and then asked Yabalov to help with the work.

Yabalov's hometown had a relatively underdeveloped market economy, and the people there lived a life of self-sufficiency and hard work. He himself could do some simple carpentry work, and there were many skilled craftsmen among his fellow villagers and friends.

Hearing that Boss Anton needed help, the Bachas were all eager to help and worked hard without complaint. They first carefully covered the inside of the box with rustic varnished wooden boards to cover the wavy metal interior; then they added a thin layer of openwork carved ceiling to the top of the box, replaced the original ordinary light bulbs with exquisitely designed, color-changing small ceiling lights, and finally laid a thick carpet under their feet.

After the interior decoration was completed, although it made the already low container even shorter, it looked more than ten times more beautiful than before, drawing praise from onlookers nearby.

Hu Yi and Natasha were very satisfied, but Yabalov still felt that the contrast between the interior and exterior visual effects was too great and looked somewhat discordant. He whispered and discussed it with a few Bachas for a long time, then got some paint and brushes and wrote a line of large characters in bold, printed Russian on both sides of the outside of the box: "Anton and Natasha's Happy Hut".

(End of this chapter)