Lin Yuchan entered the Western-style house and pulled out a business card for “British United Real Estate Company” from behind the counter.
“When Mr. Rong transferred the Western-style house to me, he said this place, including the building and land, cost him 2,100 silver dollars. You told me that if I wanted to sell, you’d offer three thousand.”
Su Minguan followed her inside. “Mm, so?”
“Last week, someone was selling real estate stocks to me, and I casually asked about the current estimated value of the Western-style house at No. 7 Saigon Road…”
Su Minguan lowered his eyelashes, glanced at her sideways, while bowing his hands from a distance to greet several employees including Chang Baoluo, Aunt Hong, and Aunt Zhou.
“Mm?”
Seeing that he truly wouldn’t shed tears until he saw the coffin, Lin Yuchan ground her teeth and said in a low voice: “That clerk told me that if I wasn’t in a hurry to sell and slowly looked for buyers on the market, I could sell for at least 6,500 dollars.”
Su Minguan smiled gently at her, not blushing in the slightest.
“But at that time, I only had three thousand in ready cash.”
With one sentence, he had tricked out that Miss Lin had known absolutely nothing about the real estate market at that time.
Now, she had finally thought to find professionals for an appraisal—that was some small progress.
His smile deepened as he skillfully made himself some tea.
Boya Company had few staff, with each person doing the work of several. They hadn’t bought any servant girls or boys either, so sometimes the manager had to personally serve tea and water—Su Minguan didn’t want to add to their troubles.
Lin Yuchan pursued him relentlessly: “What if I had agreed back then?”
Su Minguan looked at her with slight amusement: “Rong Hong would have stopped you.”
Well, she was speechless.
However, she had indeed had accurate intuition, knowing that Shanghai’s small Western-style houses had prices but no market, so she hadn’t easily fallen into Su Minguan’s trap.
Thinking of it this way, she felt slightly less angry.
The employees had also become familiar with Su Minguan and knew he was a master of gongfu tea. Seeing him hand Lin Yuchan a cup of tea, they all gathered around to legitimately slack off and mooch a cup too.
Chang Baoluo curiously joined the idle chat: “I have an uncle-in-law who works as a clerk. In his spare time, he also speculates in land with people, but I don’t know exactly how it’s done. He should have made quite a lot of money—every time we visit his house, we hear him bragging… He even tried to get me to invest money, but I was too timid and didn’t agree.”
Lin Yuchan laughed: “So you invested in Boya instead, right? Ah, I’m flattered.”
Nian Gu also chimed in: “Last time when I went out to transport goods, I encountered a couple arguing on the street. One said that with land prices so high now, if they sold their house, they could buy dozens of mu of farmland in the countryside. The other wouldn’t let them sell—they fought so fiercely. At the time, I was thinking, why sell a perfectly good house? Now that I think about it, trading one city house for dozens of mu of land—wouldn’t that be a good deal? I’d sell too.”
Lin Yuchan laughed: “Great, daydreaming and watching the excitement when you should be working. Next time, you’re not allowed to.”
At the same time, she thought this was the pregnancy effect again.
Ever since she’d started paying attention to real estate, she’d realized that people around her were actually all talking about it.
Several female workers were more conservative and shook their heads, feeling it was unreliable.
“Without evidence or proof, if you buy that house but don’t live in it, who knows it’s yours? If someone forcibly occupies it one day, the lawsuit will drag on for three to five years.”
Everyone looked at Su Minguan in unison, recognizing him as the most efficient money-making machine among them.
Su Minguan laughed helplessly: “Why are you all looking at me? I might have considered those kinds of certificates three to five years ago, but now I wouldn’t touch them at all. Those newly established real estate credit companies are all fly-by-night operations following the trend—who knows when they’ll disappear, leaving you unable to find anyone to sue.”
He calmly made tea, then half-jokingly said: “Miss Lin, if you want to invest in land, why not lend money to me instead. I just spotted a piece of empty land where we could build warehouses…”
Lin Yuchan suddenly remembered a widely circulated saying from the modern financial world: When even the old men in the park are discussing what to buy to make money, that thing has reached its peak popularity.
That string of customer names in the salesperson’s notebook—servants, clerks, small bosses, wealthy wives—already showed that real estate speculation had trickled down to the most amateur civilian groups.
How much longer could it stay hot?
No wonder Su Minguan was cautious.
In comparison, high-level scammers in the internet age didn’t even need to open physical stores—with just a crudely made website or app, they could attract victims to invest and transfer money. Modern people’s vigilance still needs improvement; they should learn from their ancestors.
But then again… Wang Quan had made real money from this and was using it as capital to suppress her. Lin Yuchan was so angry!
Su Minguan smiled slightly and stopped mentioning this topic. He suddenly stood up and looked outside, patting Lin Yuchan’s shoulder to signal her to follow him out.
“They’re here!”
A figure flashed at the courtyard gate, and a porter carrying a box came in.
Su Minguan took the box and tipped the porter a dime.
Lin Yuchan initially thought it was Su Minguan’s travel luggage, but looking more closely, the appearance of the leather case was very familiar.
Wasn’t this Smith’s suitcase!
Su Minguan carried the case to the office, smiling as he explained: “That fellow got addicted to taking things without permission. Not only did he steal scriptures and pry off wall bricks, but along the way, he collected quite a few antique odds and ends—common people’s family heirlooms and such, all packed in this big suitcase. But without a female slave to help him carry the case, and having paid the fine and being penniless, he couldn’t afford porters or buy boat tickets, so he had to sell those things cheap on the spot…”
Lin Yuchan was shocked, then furious: “He was secretly collecting other cultural artifacts? How did I not notice?”
Su Minguan smiled and gestured for her to stay calm, closing the door.
Then he opened the leather case. Lin Yuchan was startled to see Smith’s ill-gotten odds and ends:
Smith had intentionally collected antiques in China to take back to America for auction profits, but he wasn’t a professional archaeologist, so he looked for things that fit Western aesthetic impressions—Buddha statues, prayer beads, even erotic paintings… Most were “contemporary” items with little current value.
But Lin Yuchan also discovered that the case contained seemingly very old stone inscription rubbings, ancient copper coins corroded beyond recognition, and fragile, crumbling ancient paintings that seemed very old…
Modern Westerners coming to China, facing an ancient empire with thousands of years of history, were like poor men entering a treasure mountain—everything looked tempting.
Just like those Westerners visiting Egypt, Persia, India, and Iraq. In their eyes, these countries might have been glorious once, but were now war-torn and bound to collapse eventually. The locals were ignorant and short-sighted, wasting this fertile land. Those ancestral things left in their hands were pearls covered in dust—only by bringing them back to the West, whether to decorate homes or enrich museums, could their value be fully realized and cultural heritage be saved.
Many Westerners coming to China, regardless of their professions, mostly took back odds and ends like Smith when returning home, unable to distinguish good from bad. They knew most things could only hang in their homes as decorations, but if they could pick up one or two thousand-year-old artifacts, this overseas journey would completely pay for itself.
Of course, during travel, the damage rate of these fragile cultural artifacts was also very high. This wasn’t within the foreigners’ consideration.
Lin Yuchan didn’t dare touch anything randomly, excitedly saying: “Let’s keep them for now, find an expert to authenticate them later… then quietly dig a pit in the back yard and bury them…”
She thought Jinshan Temple had buried treasures, and now the Western-style house would bury treasures too. In the future, there might be more opportunities to intercept more antiques… Should she leave a treasure hunting manual for future generations…
After a few seconds of wild thoughts, seeing Su Minguan’s expression, she returned to reality and laughed awkwardly: “How much did this case of things cost?”
He had bought the things. With her eagerness to protect cultural artifacts, she couldn’t treat this case as her property.
Su Minguan couldn’t help but laugh. He hadn’t seen that the little girl was quite protective. Despite her usual politeness and kindness toward foreigners, she calculated quite clearly when to be generous and when to be stingy.
He smiled: “I haven’t finished. Smith was shouted at by everyone in Hankou—where would he have the chance to set up a stall? He couldn’t sell those things, so he had to abandon them at the dock. I picked them up. Free. Miss Lin just needs to pay shipping costs—I want to eat Western food for lunch.”
Lin Yuchan tilted her head. On the office window glass, a handsome and cunning face was reflected.
She wouldn’t be easily fooled. After thinking, she pushed against his chest in a Christmas-style wall slam, pressing him into the corner in a very threatening and domineering posture.
“Don’t lie to me anymore. How much did it cost? I’ll buy it at the original price, I won’t take advantage of you.”
He could lie to others all he wanted, but don’t pretend with her.
Su Minguan lowered his eyes, looking at the little claw tugging at his collar, the corners of his eyes curving as he softly instructed: “You can use a bit more force.”
Her ears turned burning red, and she released him as if scalded, flashing images of some scenes in the ship cabin that weren’t suitable for children.
“Confess honestly,” she put her hands on her hips, “or you’ll go hungry.”
“Fine.” Su Minguan was slightly ashamed, smiled, and corrected himself: “I didn’t pick it up. I… I brought a few people and very ‘amicably’ asked for it. Smith gave it quite readily.”
Lin Yuchan bit her lips tightly, but couldn’t hold back the smile gradually blooming on her face.
“Then I won’t be polite, hehe…”
She suddenly turned her head. Someone was standing in the corner, smiling at them!
“Fr-Freeman…”
She was instantly embarrassed. Why was Christmas here?
Christmas would board the ship in a couple of days. Lin Yuchan had let her sightsee in Shanghai so as not to waste a rare Far East journey. But she was eager to return home and had no heart for wandering around. Every day, she just repeatedly pondered future escape routes and occasionally helped with cleaning. When Lin Yuchan came in, she was picking up paper scraps under the desk.
Born as a house slave, Christmas was cautious in everything. When the master needed her, she had to serve properly; when not needed, she had to minimize her presence as much as possible, thus cultivating excellent stealth skills.
She wore Chinese women’s black clothing, and with her dark face, the dark brown cabinet provided perfect camouflage. If it weren’t for the eight white teeth in her smile, exposing her, Lin Yuchan might not have spotted her so quickly.
Fortunately, Christmas wasn’t bound by traditional Chinese moral concepts and had long considered Su and Lin a couple. She found this scene quite normal and even thought, shouldn’t there be a kiss now?
Su Minguan also felt slightly embarrassed, belatedly realizing that his posture when Lin Yuchan had pressed him against the wall earlier wasn’t very dignified.
But fortunately, Christmas would leave in a couple of days and wouldn’t spread his image around.
He openly greeted Christmas, exchanged pleasantries, and informed her of the results of Smith’s lawsuit.
Christmas ran back to the attic and sang for twenty minutes.
Seeing that noon was approaching, Lin Yuchan went to a Western restaurant on Tianjin Road and generously treated Boss Su to a meal, counting it as payment for the “shipping costs” of that case of treasures.