“These are for you to eat. I’m in the clothing business.”

Oh?

That was too much to eat.

Bai Zhenzhu was troubled.

However, that could be dealt with later – Xia Xiaolan and Liu Fen were guests, so Bai Zhenzhu needed to close her stand and take them home. Her fruit business was mediocre – that’s how produce selling worked. Once business slowed, fruits and vegetables would spoil after two days, creating a vicious cycle of declining sales.

Xia Xiaolan was puzzled. During her first visit to Yang City, Bai Zhenzhu had said business was good. How had it plummeted so drastically in less than a month?

Bai Zhenzhu seemed indifferent, “I used to sell at another location, but then a junior martial brother got married and had no means of living, so I gave that spot to the couple and moved elsewhere.”

She spoke casually, leaving Xia Xiaolan stunned.

How could someone be so generous and righteous?

There was more to the story. Bai Zhenzhu’s original spot was considered a prime location, naturally attracting many vendors who competed for it. They were all driven away by Bai Zhenzhu’s fighting skills. Though tough with outsiders, she was soft with her own people. When her junior martial brother wanted the spot, his wife’s fake tears and pitiful act easily swindled it away… It had been so difficult for Bai Zhenzhu as a woman to establish her business, yet this couple simply reaped the benefits.

Bai Zhenzhu didn’t think these details were worth mentioning. She brought the mother and daughter home to her spacious but bare house.

She lived with her grandmother, who was delighted to see visitors other than martial arts disciples, especially young women.

Liu Fen couldn’t speak Mandarin and had a heavy Yu’nan Province accent.

Though people could understand her when she spoke slowly, Grandmother Bai only spoke Yang City dialect. Xia Xiaolan could barely understand it, but Liu Fen couldn’t comprehend a word, communicating with Grandmother Bai through gestures.

Bai Zhenzhu spoke directly, asking Xia Xiaolan if she needed any help.

After two visits, while Xia Xiaolan wasn’t exactly familiar with Yang City, she knew the wholesale clothing business better than Bai Zhenzhu. She originally didn’t need help, but seeing Bai Zhenzhu’s declining fruit business gave her new ideas.

“Sister Bai, it won’t work if business stays this slow. Have you considered changing careers?”

Bai Zhenzhu had been considering this. As a self-employed worker, she felt no shame in it. But she had experience selling fruit – she knew where to source inventory and how to sell it. What else could she do if she changed careers?

Selling fruit was certainly profitable.

In the future, as people’s wallets grew thicker and they balanced between taste preferences and nutritional needs, fruit would become increasingly expensive, with some even habitually replacing regular meals with fruit. But in ’83, the fruit business was just mediocre, even in Yang City with its stronger economy than inland cities.

That was just the economic environment – selling food brought modest profits.

The profit Xia Xiaolan made from selling two pieces of clothing might exceed Bai Zhenzhu’s entire day of fruit sales.

And reselling women’s clothing wasn’t as profitable as reselling electronics.

When Xia Xiaolan asked if Bai Zhenzhu had considered changing careers, she nodded honestly:

“I’ve thought about opening a pork shop.”

A pork shop?

A pork stand wouldn’t worry about profits – people might skip fruit, but they couldn’t go long without meat and oil.

Bai Zhenzhu clearly had plans, and Xia Xiaolan being clever, shared them for feedback, “I could buy live pigs from the countryside, butcher them myself, and sell the meat. There’s some profit in each pig, and selling two per day would earn about the same as my previous fruit stand.”

Live pigs cost just a few maos per jin, with about 65% meat yield, but the selling price was fifty percent higher than the purchase price – the profit came from this margin. At current meat prices, if Bai Zhenzhu slaughtered one pig and sold all of it, she could earn about 20 yuan, or 40 yuan for two pigs.

Not everyone had Xia Xiaolan’s ambition. For Bai Zhenzhu in ’83, earning nearly a thousand yuan monthly would provide a good life in Yang City for her and her grandmother. But this income assumed she could secure, butcher, and sell two pigs every day!

That was impossible – sourcing and butchering took time. The daily 40 yuan income would be reduced by at least a third, if not half.

Xia Xiaolan quickly calculated the monthly profit would be between 600-800 yuan.

Though she hadn’t dealt with this in her previous life, knowledge was always useful. Since starting the oil residue business, she has researched the entire industry chain. She could write a business plan about large-scale pig farming or meat processing plants… but it wasn’t practical. The investment was large with slow returns – in that time, she could have flipped countless goods.

How impressive that Bai Zhenzhu could butcher pigs herself!

Xia Xiaolan marveled – what young woman would dare run a pork stand? Only someone as fierce as Bai Zhenzhu.

If Bai Zhenzhu was brave and capable enough to butcher pigs, what else might she be able to do?

“Sister Bai, have you considered finding opportunities in the Special Zone…”

“You mean Peng City Special Zone?”

Xia Xiaolan nodded softly.

Established as a city in 1979 and approved as an economic special zone in ’80, how fast had Peng City developed? In her previous life, the multinational company Xia Xiaolan worked for had its China headquarters there.

She knew Peng City well – how could Shang City compare for making money?

Even Beijing and Hu City couldn’t match Peng City’s economic development speed. With national policy support, factories of all kinds were set up in the Peng City Special Zone, and everything they produced could make money. Xia Xiaolan’s mouth watered thinking about those inexpensive electronics and appliances from the factories.

While Grandmother Bai and Liu Fen continued gesturing in the kitchen, Bai Zhenzhu thought for a while before asking Xia Xiaolan directly:

“What do you want me to do?”

Bai Zhenzhu wasn’t foolish – whoever tried to trick her would be the real fool. That junior martial brother who took her fruit stand would regret it eventually. She had given up the stand, but their relationship was now spent!

“Sister Bai, first you need to get a border pass.”

With Yang City urban household registration, though not easy, Bai Zhenzhu had ways to obtain a “border pass” for Peng City Special Zone. For Xia Xiaolan, a Yu’nan Province rural resident without formal employment, getting such a pass would be extremely difficult, requiring approvals from village, township, and county levels – much harder than getting a Hong Kong-Macau pass in the future!

She couldn’t follow the example of a certain real estate tycoon who, unable to get a border pass, sneaked into Peng City Special Zone through wire fences – though when desperate for success, Xia Xiaolan would have crawled through fences too. Now she could hope for Bai Zhenzhu’s help.

She couldn’t truly travel everywhere yet. To make money, Xia Xiaolan needed a proxy partner in Yang City.

Would Bai Zhenzhu be a qualified proxy?

Xia Xiaolan didn’t know – this was only their second meeting. She hoped her judgment wasn’t poor and that Bai Zhenzhu would prove clever.