Xia Xiaolan didn’t pay much attention to Liu Fang. After all, they were blood relatives, and Liu Fang wasn’t as terrible as the Xia family members. Being materialistic was a common flaw, and Xia Xiaolan had seen plenty of people like Liu Fang. While she wasn’t purely evil, as long as she hadn’t completely exhausted Liu Yong and Liu Fen’s familial affection, their relationship would never truly break.
It was somewhat troublesome, but this was the real world, real life – it couldn’t always be filled with only truth, goodness, and beauty.
After consulting Liu Fen briefly, Xia Xiaolan brought up her recent trip to the capital.
She learned that before she left, Liu Yong had already taken on a second project. Gong Yang from Shangdu University’s Art Department had stayed in the capital to help. Both Li Fengmei and Liu Fen were pleased. Both projects involved renovating homes for acquaintances, so they probably wouldn’t earn much money, certainly not exceeding the clothing store’s profits for now.
How much money they could earn was one thing, but whether a man had a career was another matter entirely.
When career development goes well, a man becomes confident and spirited. If he’s idle all day, even with good economic conditions at home, it’s hard not to become lazy. Liu Yong had a history of this – previously, Li Fengmei had been sympathetic about his injury, but several months had passed, and it was time for him to do something productive.
However, once Liu Yong got busy, there was no one to look after Liu Zitao.
While they didn’t need to pick him up after school, the store closed at seven or eight every day – where would they put Liu Zitao during this time?
Xia Xiaolan was also pondering this issue. “Why don’t we hire someone else for the store?”
With “Blue Phoenix’s” current income, paying a hundred yuan salary for a shop assistant wasn’t much of a burden. Having an extra salesperson to attend to customers during busy times would also allow Li Fengmei and Liu Fen to take turns resting.
“Hire someone?”
“We’re going to employ others to watch the store?”
Since Xia Xiaolan and Liu Yong went to the capital, Li Fengmei and Liu Fen had felt short-handed, but they hadn’t considered hiring help. Wasn’t employing workers something capitalists did? They were just individual merchants running a small business… well, not exactly small – their three-unit store was definitely the largest private clothing shop in Shangdu.
Real small businesses were still setting up stalls and playing cat-and-mouse with city management officials.
“Now in the southern townships, those private factories commonly employ workers. From ’79 until now, I believe the reform and opening-up policy will only intensify, and the state won’t easily stop individual business policies. We’re just hiring someone to run the store now, but if the business expands in the future, we’ll hire even more people!”
Xia Xiaolan’s vision of the future left Li Fengmei and Liu Fen both longing and anxious.
Especially Liu Fen, who managed the store’s cash flow and accounts. They hadn’t distributed profits since after the New Year, though they’d been operating for over a month, and she felt the money in her hands was burning hot.
A “ten-thousand-yuan household” was considered wealthy, so how many such households’ worth did she have in her hands?
Making so much money, and selling clothes at not-so-cheap prices – would the state not intervene? Returning the money would be fine, but Liu Fen feared having too much money might lead to accusations of speculation and profiteering.
Xia Xiaolan didn’t mock her mother but patiently explained the policies to both Liu Fen and Li Fengmei.
“This amount isn’t much. Some people in the South have already gotten rich. Just take my wholesaler – they always keep tens of thousands in cash at home. And they’re not even considered the wealthiest. The money we’re making now is just a drop in the bucket compared to others.”
Xia Xiaolan wasn’t boasting. Chen Xiliang had more assets than her, and he wasn’t even the richest. As far as she knew, Kang Wei had quite a bit of money, and Zhou Cheng wasn’t poor either.
These two were just making money from the price differences in cigarettes from different regions. Those big bosses involved in smuggling must be very wealthy by now. Just look at those electronics product middlemen in Yangcheng – every one of them had bulging wallets!
Xia Xiaolan never considered herself superior; she was still far behind those who had truly gotten rich first.
But she didn’t undervalue herself either. Steady development was better than having an unstable foundation and falling halfway up. Take that radio deal – how satisfying it was to make money that way! If Xia Xiaolan had stayed in Pengcheng dealing in smuggled goods, doing several deals a month, she could have made much more money! But she feared capsizing, and worried about sinking deeper – first stepping into the grey area, then accidentally turning black.
As Xia Xiaolan described how those southern individual merchants started their factories with fellow townspeople, Li Fengmei and Liu Fen listened in a daze.
Compared to those people, hiring someone to help watch the store didn’t seem like such a big deal – they had been overreacting. Li Fengmei asked what kind of person they should hire. Xia Xiaolan didn’t expect someone beautiful and fashionable, as young girls like that wouldn’t stay long in the store.
“Someone honest and reliable, who speaks gently and has patience. We don’t expect them to bring in much additional business, but at least they shouldn’t be like those department store clerks who look down on customers and end up offending them.”
Department store clerks sold goods for the state, their wages weren’t really linked to sales volume, and they received steady income rain or shine. But Blue Phoenix’s shop assistant would be making money for Xia Xiaolan and Li Fengmei – if they drove away all the customers, it would be the owners who suffered the loss!
After preliminarily discussing the hiring matter, Liu Fen brought out the recent accounts.
“Xiaolan, there’s too much money in the accounts. Should we distribute it?”
“Let me see.”
Xia Xiaolan took the account book and saw the figure of 52,180 yuan – this was Blue Phoenix’s revenue since the New Year. In less than two months, they’d sold over fifty thousand, averaging over 1,000 yuan in daily revenue. When spring clothing first came out, it was only a few hundred, but after launching the “free stockings with purchases over 168 yuan” promotion, revenue went up. Then as the weather warmed up and people needed spring clothes, revenue remained quite stable. Besides the over fifty thousand already sold, the store still had some inventory from Xia Xiaolan’s last stock-up before going to the capital.
“Let’s distribute it. Keep 22,180 yuan in the account, and we’ll distribute 30,000 yuan as profits.”
With 60% of 30,000, Xia Xiaolan would get 18,000 yuan. She had made quick money once in Yangcheng, turning her family’s savings into over twenty thousand. She spent some on this trip to the capital, sending six sheep to Zhou Cheng’s work unit wasn’t cheap, and she bought some things from the capital. She had also bought bags and such for family members in Yangcheng and had previously earned 3,000 yuan following Bai Zhenzhu. Calculating her assets, she should have around 40,000 yuan.
Oh, the 40,000 wasn’t secure – she would soon need money to buy a washing machine for Hu Yongcai.
No wonder they say the more you earn, the more you spend. Just last summer when she was driven out of the Xia family, she was afraid of miscounting small bills while selling wild duck eggs in the county town.
Li Fengmei would get 12,000 yuan; before the New Year, her family had received 8,000 yuan. When her family earned money, they just lived better, with the 19-inch Panasonic color TV soon to be their biggest expense. In ’84, if a family’s monthly income was measured in “tens of thousands,” spending on daily luxurious meals was just a small change.
Fish was only 1 yuan per jin, pork 1.5 yuan, boneless lamb 1.8 yuan… with these prices for meat and fish, common vegetables were priced in “fen.” It wasn’t that prices were too cheap – relative to average income, prices weren’t cheap at all. It was that Xia Xiaolan and Li Fengmei’s families’ incomes were too high, far exceeding the average salary of their time.
Li Fengmei was nervous, not knowing how to spend the money they earned.
But Xia Xiaolan sighed, thinking such opportunities at the beginning of reform and opening-up wouldn’t be easy to come by again. Money was this easy to make now, but once reform and opening-up passed, quickly accumulating personal wealth would depend entirely on luck.
Xia Xiaolan showed no awareness of being a profiteer:
“Aunt, I think we can launch a second promotion. Let’s hang up the new poster Gong Yang drew earlier – this time we’ll give away wallets and belts.”