The father and son held different views, but it was Dandan’s interruption that ended their discussion. The little child couldn’t get used to such traditional dishes and began getting restless during the meal. Liu Jun didn’t force the child and agreed to take Dandan to a restaurant. Dandan’s demands weren’t high—she boldly declared she wanted Da Niang Dumplings. So Liu Shitang personally saw his son and granddaughter off, even helping to carry Dandan’s bread-loaf-like down jacket and carefully wrapping it around Dandan before they took the elevator. Liu Jun laughed, “When I was little, Dad wasn’t this attentive.”

“I didn’t have time then, but I have plenty now.” Liu Shitang bent down to hold Dandan’s little hand as they rode the elevator, quite disapproving of his son’s casual attitude toward his granddaughter. Look at this—letting his granddaughter ride the elevator by herself while he busied himself answering the phone. Although Liu Shitang knew the elevator here was quite safe for children.

Liu Jun was taking a call from Qian Hongming, who told him that his newly purchased Bentley Arnage had arrived. He was driving it home now, about to exit the highway, and asked if Liu Jun was interested in meeting at the highway exit to try out his new car. Liu Jun gasped—a Bentley Arnage! Qian Hongming had bought a Bentley. How much wealth would one need to afford a Bentley? Liu Jun couldn’t help but be amazed. But no matter how much he loved cars, it couldn’t compare to his daughter’s lunch. He told Qian Hongming to give him the address in an hour.

Liu Shitang listened from the side, and after Liu Jun finished the call, he casually asked, “Who bought a Bentley?”

“Qian Hongming. Just picked it up.”

Liu Shitang was stunned. Watching his son strap his granddaughter into the safety seat and turn to say goodbye, he said nervously, “I’m afraid there’s something fishy. They’re very tight on money right now.”

“The money shortage was in October. The car order should have been placed earlier. Bentleys usually take half a year to arrive after ordering, or maybe… three months.”

“It’s also possible he transferred someone else’s order in less than a week. Buying a Bentley…”

“Dad, don’t be so nervous. Hongming bought a BMW M5 two years ago—with taxes, it cost over two million. Hey, how do you know they’re tight on money?”

Liu Shitang gave vague responses to get by, but Liu Jun again glimpsed signs of his father’s contact with Qian Hongying. Liu Jun said no more and took Dandan to eat dumplings. He was also puzzled—Qian Hongming had asked him for a loan in October, but now he was making payments and picking up cars. Had things become so comfortable? Perhaps this was just the characteristic of Qian Hongming’s line of work.

Dandan was already hungry and ate at Da Niang Dumplings like a little starving ghost. Liu Jun had already eaten his fill and sat to the side watching his daughter eat. When Dandan pushed her bowl away, saying she was full, he then started eating the remaining dumplings in the bowl to avoid waste. A family at the next table, eating dumplings, watched Liu Jun’s behavior with sympathy, saying that nowadays, no matter how poor people are, they won’t let their children suffer. This father let his daughter eat her fill while he endured hunger and watched from the side to save money. But who doesn’t know that nothing tastes better than dumplings? So when the child left a few dumplings, the father swallowed them whole—how pitiful.

Liu Jun had no idea he was being discussed this way. He took Dandan to see Qian Hongming’s new car. When they arrived at the hotel’s outdoor parking lot where Qian Hongming had parked, they found several of Qian Hongming’s friends had already gathered there with several nice cars, looking like a car show, which attracted passersby to take photos with their phones. Having Dandan with him was inconvenient, so after a quick look, he said goodbye. But soon, car enthusiasts kept calling or messaging Liu Jun on MSN, asking if the new Bentley owner was his friend and when they could invite the Bentley owner to gatherings. Liu Jun was experiencing for the first time the kind of influence one car could have. Car enthusiasts inevitably also asked what Qian Hongming did for a living. Liu Jun answered honestly: futures, financing, real estate, and foreign trade. Everyone sighed that these past two years had indeed been the best times for these industries, especially for someone like Qian Hongming, who spanned all these sectors, naturally extraordinary.

Qian Hongming’s Bentley came at just the right time, coinciding with the year-end. He drove this car to pick up and drop off Xiao Suihua from school, attend friend gatherings, and dine and sing with clients for business continuity, making frequent appearances on the city streets. Liu Jun and a group of car enthusiasts gathered for their customary New Year’s Eve dinner, and Qian Hongming also requested to join after hearing about it. Qian Hongming also invited Liu Jun to take his new car for a spin on the highway, but Liu Jun really couldn’t spare the time lately. The regions south of the Yangtze River were experiencing rare freezing rain that caused complete paralysis of both roads and railways in some areas, and the freezing rain zone seemed to be expanding. Both Tengfei and Tengda had raw materials stuck on roads that couldn’t be transported in, disrupting company production, and finished products stuck on roads that couldn’t be delivered to buyers on time. Normal work routines were completely disrupted, and Liu Jun had to stay at the company to constantly adjust factory work arrangements. Someone suggested taking early holidays so employees whose hometowns weren’t in this city could have ample time to return home. Liu Jun also saw on television the near-paralysis of Guangzhou Railway Station, saw netizen reports online about several highways being frozen shut, and saw announcements from local railway stations in newspapers. He asked his employees: With such difficult roads home, would they still go home this year? The answers to Liu Jun were almost all a resolute single word: Yes. Liu Jun couldn’t help but think of the salmon schools in British Columbia’s Adams River that return home desperately on schedule every year.

But while transportation north was still open, routes south and west were almost completely cut off. From television, he saw some regions where entire cities lost water and electricity, with lives falling into hardship. Liu Jun had the office search online for the most comprehensive information, printed it out, and posted it, advising some employees to postpone going home. But several employees initially could still make phone calls home, but with prolonged power outages at home, cell phones had nowhere to charge, and landline circuits were interrupted. The more employees worried about home, the less they could contact them, making them even more eager to return home, completely ignoring the massive traffic jams already reported officially along the routes. Liu Jun could only let them take long-distance buses home, only instructing them to bring small blankets and dry food, and water to make do during traffic jams.

Many employees ultimately chose not to go home. As a company, they naturally had to make some humane holiday arrangements for their employees during the Spring Festival holiday. Moreover, the local area was also experiencing freezing rain followed by heavy snow. Almost every engineer would involuntarily look up at the workshop’s large-span steel structure roof during heavy snowfalls, worried that the roof steel frame designed for the local normal climate couldn’t withstand the weight of accumulated snow and freezing rain. During normal working hours, the hot air from workshop equipment would melt the snow accumulation on the steel roof, but what about during the long holiday? Everyone finally had to resort to the most ancient method, arranging for employees who couldn’t go home during the long holiday to set up several diesel barrels in the most spacious parts of the workshop, burning coal to heat the air in the workshop and prevent snow from accumulating on the roof.

This pre-Spring Festival period had fewer north-south New Year visits but added many emergency relief measures. Liu Jun was still incredibly busy. This was the fate of every factory owner.

Only Liu Shitang was most leisurely, sitting in his warm house every day, watching the snow fall outside his window, congratulating himself on how wise it was to exit the stock market. This year’s rare weather had hurt precisely the country’s most economically developed regions. After so many days of transportation paralysis, the economic losses were immeasurable—how could this not affect the stock market? Therefore, Liu Shitang estimated the stock market would continue falling after the Spring Festival. Although he didn’t know where the stock index would fall, he wouldn’t put his limited liquid funds back into the stock market that was now in a downward channel. It was better to wholeheartedly enjoy his later years. Liu Shitang’s Spring Festival plans were quite rich: inviting his son and daughter-in-law to spend Spring Festival at his new home with central air conditioning, hosting his in-laws couple Yi Ba Dao, at his new home, and entertaining old and new friends at his new home—he was still quite busy.

But only someone like Liu Shitang could spend leisurely days during the freezing rain disaster. Cui Bingbing’s father was incredibly busy during this unprecedented freezing rain disaster, with Yi Ba Dao frequently taking action. Even busier were young people making a living. When the first post-Spring Festival college graduate job fair opened, the flood of college students entering showed that although this year’s college graduate job fair faced freezing weather and difficult travel, the number of applicants was only increasing, not decreasing. Clearly, everyone understood how difficult employment would be this year.

On the other side, the recruitment market for migrant workers also started early. Due to snow and wind obstruction, many outsiders were stranded locally. Before the Spring Festival holiday even ended, they had surrounded employment agencies in the industrial zone, packed like sardines, as if the migrant worker shortage that broke out in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta at the end of last year had come to an end. Groups of three to five young, strong people often came to Tengfei and Tengda’s entrance asking if they were hiring, but unfortunately, Liu Jun needed people with basic professional knowledge. But even Liu Jun, famous for cultivating talent, chose to wait and see under the new Labor Contract Law. At this year’s post-Spring Festival college graduate job fair, he only set up a booth but didn’t sign any contracts. Because no one knew what the supposedly upcoming detailed regulations of the Labor Contract Law would stipulate, everyone preferred to be cautious. After all, there was no shortage of experienced hands in the market. Under the new law, the greater risk of training blank-slate college students was better left to other well-funded companies.

Soon, Cui Bingbing obtained an expected piece of news from her former Industrial and Commercial Bank colleagues: Qian Hongming’s 20-million-yuan letter of credit application submitted right after the holiday was stuck in the approval process and probably couldn’t be issued under this year’s tight financial environment. The country said it would compress this year’s CPI to an almost impossible 4.8%, so besides window guidance to tighten bank loans, there was very limited other work that could be done. Cui Bingbing said Qian Hongming’s refusal of letters of credit was also expected. Banks were still clear about what people like Qian Hongming were doing with these letters of credit. When credit tightened, they were naturally the first to be blocked. Cui Bingbing also estimated that Liu Jun’s difficulty in getting bank acceptance bills would also increase significantly, and banks might require factories to provide more procedural documentation.

Liu Jun thought of Qian Hongming’s newly licensed, brand-new Bentley. Logically, someone who could afford this car shouldn’t be too affected by a 20-million-yuan letter of credit not being issued. But he still preferred caution and consulted his expert wife: “Would 20 million crush Hongming?”

“No.” Cui Bingbing was very clear. “Qian Hongming does robbing Peter to pay Paul private financing work anyway. If banks won’t lend 20 million, as long as he’s willing to pay high interest, he can always borrow from the market. He has connections, and there’s plenty of private money.”

Liu Jun asked strangely, “Why can’t I borrow private money? Why doesn’t all that private money come to me? I was even rated as an outstanding scientific research and innovation enterprise by the city last year.”

But Cui Bingbing just gave him a sidelong glance without answering. Because Liu Jun had known the answer years ago, asking repeatedly was just a psychological imbalance. “However, where there’s one, there’s two. I’m worried Qian Hongming will face more loan rejections next. If another 20 million comes from the east and 30 million from the west, he’ll be in trouble. Hey, does Jiali still have pocket money to deposit with you after the holiday?”

“Yes, she just gave me fifty thousand, supposedly including Xiao Suihua’s New Year money. Don’t worry about this—no matter how hard things get for Hongming, he won’t let his wife and daughter suffer.”

“I didn’t say he’d let Jiali suffer. I’m just reminding you that if you stop receiving monthly pocket money someday, it means Hongming has problems.”

“Don’t be a crow’s mouth. I feel like I have more problems than Hongming. I’m still living fine, and what does one 20-million loan rejection matter to Hongming?”

After the Spring Festival, Liu Jun encountered contract cancellations. Three F-1 units that had almost been shipped were temporarily sealed because foreign representatives came to negotiate terminating cooperation, willing to pay compensation according to contract terms, the amount being the advance payment. This was Liu Jun’s first foreign cancellation, so he naturally pressed the foreign representatives for details. The foreign representatives said their company’s financial situation had suffered severe setbacks, and they couldn’t maintain expansion, so they had to resolutely stop expansion and preserve strength. But they couldn’t explain specific reasons. Liu Jun could only inform Luo Qing to find ways to sell the three cancelled F-1 units custom-made for foreign merchants domestically. Everyone knew that selling such custom-made equipment relied on: first, opportunity—it was hard to find domestic companies that happened to need F-1 units with these specific parameters; second, price. Losses were inevitable and could be foreseen to be significant.

Since the first warning bell had rung, Liu Jun wouldn’t think this contract cancellation was just a coincidence. He had also seen from foreign economic publications the financial crisis storm blowing from America and the tightening of financial leverage. But even big players like Soros predicted that with oil, food, and other commodity prices all soaring, plus strong support from the robust growth of the BRIC countries and other oil-producing nations, the crisis probably wouldn’t spread and couldn’t cause a global recession. Of course, places like Europe and America couldn’t avoid it—look, the Federal Reserve made an emergency 75-basis-point rate cut. These past few years have only seen bank rate hikes, hikes, hikes, trying to offset the crazy rising CPI. The Fed’s sudden rate cut couldn’t be taken lightly by anyone. Therefore, Liu Jun personally contacted all companies that had signed F-1 product contracts. Fortunately, after discussions and inquiries, everything was fine for now. But several of Tengfei’s long-term European and American suppliers had already reported financial difficulties.

However, Liu Jun also believed Soros’s words that a strongly developing China would be hard to shake. He still very much doubted how the annual 4.8% CPI target set at the year’s economic work conference could be achieved. He and Luo Qing agreed to focus this year’s market on developing domestic and other BRIC countries’ markets.

Except for cleaning staff, all other positions at Tengfei and Tengda were exclusively male, so International Women’s Day on March 8th had never been within Tengfei’s scope of attention. Only Liang Sishen, the non-staff female at the R&D center, wasn’t bound by Tengfei’s constraints and worked as usual on March 8th. But before she arrived, several bouquets were already waiting at the gate. Liu Jun suddenly realized and quickly had a flower shop send a bouquet of roses to Cui Bingbing, earning praise from her, who said she would make him the most delicious steak that evening. Therefore, when Liu Jun saw Qian Hongming show up unannounced, his first words were that he belonged to his wife tonight and couldn’t go out for “three accompaniments.”

But Qian Hongming, despite hearing the joke, still had a furrowed brow and asked Liu Jun how good his relationship was with so-and-so. When Liu Jun heard the name, wasn’t this exactly the president of the bank where he had his basic account? Of course, the relationship was good, though Cui Bingbing’s relationship with him was even better. “But you don’t get loans there.”

Qian Hongming leaned across Liu Jun’s desk, supporting his chin with both hands, and sighed. “It’s not me getting the loan, but one of my clients borrowed money from me to repay loans. Originally, they could roll over the loan in ten-plus days, and I could get my money back, but this time the bank blocked it. I want to invite the president to dinner, with you attending to help me speak. A’San… should I invite him, or will you mention it for me? Let me invite him.”