Lin Yuchan slowly nodded. Different industries truly were worlds apart. While Boya operated normally, the business association operated normally, and though the economy was depressed, the entire foreign trade export industry seemed relatively peaceful—yet in the shadows, unknown to her, the Chinese shipping industry was already in the depths of tempestuous waters.

She remained silent, waiting for Su Minguan to organize his thoughts himself.

“Shanghai’s Chinese shipping had already been half bought out and merged through their carrot-and-stick tactics,” Su Minguan told her. “Combined with the sharp drop in land prices and foreign merchants lowering prices, half of the remaining shipping companies collapsed again, either going bankrupt or changing industries. Now, only nine companies remain in all of Shanghai. We’ve secretly met several times and agreed not to follow their price cuts, as that would be suicide.”

Foreign trading houses weren’t afraid of price wars. They had abundant capital, could easily secure loans from foreign banks, and some also dealt in opium, with the enormous profits fully able to subsidize shipping losses.

Their purpose was clear: to drag Chinese shipping companies to death and completely monopolize China’s maritime transport initiative.

When violent coercion like Jin Nengheng’s methods didn’t work, they turned to more “civilized” ways to achieve their goals.

“Yixing has already cut most freight routes to treaty ports, only operating non-treaty ports where foreigners’ hands can’t yet reach,” Su Minguan said. “Though the profits are quite meager. Don’t laugh at me, but I’ve already given most of my workers time off, had them change names and identities to work as temporary contract laborers on foreign steamships, at least extracting some wool from them…”

Pfft, Lin Yuchan couldn’t help covering her mouth and laughing.

Su Minguan looked up, “Miss Lin, my apologies. When you asked about the current value of your one-twenty-fifth Yixing share, the answer may disappoint you.”

Lin Yuchan straightened her face again, silently walking to his side and picking up that small lead strip with her fingertips, placing it within his reach.

Su Minguan took the opportunity to nuzzle her fingers with his face. A faint fragrance floated to his nose—the moist scent of rain mixed with the fresh cotton cloth fragrance from the girl’s body, clearing his mind.

Su Minguan placed the broken mainspring over the flame, gauging the temperature, removed it from the fire, moved his fingers slightly to quickly drill holes at the contact point, then swiftly inserted and secured the lead strip.

“Thank you.”

He waited for the metal to cool, switched to a small file, and slowly filed the contact surface smooth.

The broken mainspring was reconnected. Su Minguan methodically counted the parts on the table, cleaned and oiled them, and, relying on memory, reassembled them piece by piece. Finally, he fastened the clock cover, tightened the screws, and slowly wound the mainspring.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Su Minguan removed his eyepiece and said proudly, “See, saved twenty taels.”

Even though foreign merchants had him by the throat, and his colleagues and subordinates were probably in a panic by now, he still showed nothing on his face, as if those accumulating losses couldn’t hurt him at all.

But Lin Yuchan knew this was just to boost morale. Just as during Boya Company’s most difficult moments when everyone wanted to sell and cut losses, she as the boss had to maintain her composure mentally.

To be fair, Su Minguan’s cold remarks just now were quite gentle compared to the cold mockery, sarcasm, and even harsh words she’d heard from other shareholders.

Lin Yuchan remembered the “business is business” clause they had both agreed to in their “contract renewal,” and adjusted her mindset accordingly.

She was now facing her shareholder and opponent, and one who was at a career low point and in an extremely bad mood—she couldn’t expect him to become saintly and give her psychological comfort instead.

She lightly tapped the table with her hand.

“I won’t breach the contract,” she said, “but…”

“I sincerely suggest you breach it.” Su Minguan wiped the clock, saying earnestly, “At current foreign company shipping rates, the more contracts you sign with them, the more money they lose. Breaching would be helping me.”

Lin Yuchan remained silent.

What did it matter if foreign companies lost a few coins? Was breaching helping him? If Yixing didn’t take orders and handed over market share, what difference was there from closing down?

He just wouldn’t directly say “this is for your good,” insisting on finding a seemingly selfish reason to avoid making her earlier anger pointless.

This man was just asking for a beating.

She asked: “Have you nine shipping companies discussed any strategies?”

“Wait for the foreign companies to become unable to sustain losses, have internal conflicts, and gradually adjust shipping rates back to normal levels,” Su Minguan said. “Whoever can hold out until then will have a way to survive.”

It sounded nice, but amounted to “lying flat and taking the beating.”

But… besides this stupid method, what else could they do?

Lin Yuchan couldn’t think of anything.

“Boss Su, if you want to take a gamble,” she finally said, “the business association has intelligence that this year’s tea harvest is abundant, but foreign merchants’ purchasing volume is even larger, so tea prices will still rise slightly. I have the gimmick of being ‘the first Chinese merchant with machine-processed tea’—if successful, profits will be considerable. This year’s Boya dividends can’t help you overcome difficulties, but at minimum could pay your workers’ wages.”

Su Minguan remained relentless: “What if you lose money?”

“If you sense things going wrong, feel free to withdraw your shares,” Lin Yuchan said righteously. “However, Boya’s cash flow is also tight now, so it might be delayed until year-end or even next year before we can cash out the silver. I’ll have to trouble Boss Su to wait.”

Su Minguan glared at her fiercely and sighed.

“A’Mei, I taught you to be roguish, not to use it on me.”

Lin Yuchan smiled: “Just getting used to it.”

He had thrown her a fastball. She had no choice but to return the courtesy and hit back even harder.

Su Minguan looked at that familiar cunning smile, gritted his teeth slightly, and was helpless.

Business was business—this wasn’t revenge for his earlier attitude. This was just her way of survival.

So what if she was being roguish? Among all the unscrupulous merchants he’d dealt with, she was still quite honorable. Some people still hadn’t settled accounts from two years ago.

During difficult times, only by swallowing one’s pride could one live more comfortably.

He gracefully accepted defeat, pulled over the “Boya Company Business Change Notification,” and signed his name to the sound of the clock’s ticking.

Inside the Hongkou Banner Iron Works, mechanical sounds roared deafeningly, with smoke and gunpowder odors permeating the office, coal ash settling on all the furniture.

Lin Yuchan signed the bank draft, thanked the comprador, and as she turned around, cologne mixed with the smoky smell, as the foreign boss of the ironworks, Mr. Cole, personally saw her off.

“Mr. Su’s business partners are indeed reliable people, even young ladies.” Mr. Cole bowed awkwardly in Chinese style, saying with relief, “Thank you for your trust.”

By foreign merchant standards, Mr. Cole’s attitude toward Chinese people was excessively friendly. Lin Yuchan rarely encountered such a rare species and quickly stood up to be polite.

No choice—Mr. Cole was missing a screw, coming to China with grand ambitions to open a factory, but unfortunately lacking political sensitivity. First, he confusedly accepted Su Minguan’s steamship dismantling order, helping this jinxed star turn his fortunes around, only to be ostracized by Anglo-American peers for several months. Then, tempted by silver, he agreed to cooperate with the Shanghai Foreign Artillery Bureau, manufacturing military components for the Qing government. This was perfect—he became a “tyranny accomplice,” earning Qing silver while no one wanted to play with him anymore.

Mr. Cole wanted to retire, sell his factory, and return to America for his golden years. But competitors were driving down prices, and negotiations fell through. He thought of simply selling to the Qing court to serve as their industrial production base, but unexpectedly, the Qing government also wouldn’t accommodate him, saying they lacked the budget.

Mr. Cole didn’t understand—wasn’t the Chinese government pursuing some “Westernization Movement”? Weren’t they desperately hoping to introduce Western technology? Even private merchants knew to get steamships—wasn’t the Chinese government envious of his machinery? A mere 100,000 taels—couldn’t they afford it?

He just didn’t understand. Those actively pursuing Westernization in the court and those drawing salaries and making decisions locally weren’t the same group at all. The silver that Westernization advocates painstakingly extracted from the Old Buddha’s hands was mostly lost in up-and-down communications, ending up in unknown pockets. No local official was willing to spend time on unprofitable matters.

So his factory could only maintain a lukewarm existence. To the extent that now, when a small Chinese female merchant wanted to use his gun-and-cannon-making machinery to build a steam tea-processing machine for herself, Mr. Cole looked at his bank account and decisively decided to take the order.

Fortunately, the blueprints were ready-made, and he didn’t need to hire technical personnel—just started construction directly.

“Completion within one month, otherwise daily penalty fees, Miss can rest assured,” Mr. Cole clutched the bank draft, smiling like a flower, “I’m just waiting for Miss Lin’s final payment.”

Lin Yuchan smiled: “No problem.”

After great difficulty, she had finally convinced all shareholders, and employees had also expressed willingness to try new things. In a month, a brand-new, gleaming steam engine would be in hand!

Then tea production would increase at least tenfold! All using Defeng Company’s secret recipe technology! Bright prospects ahead!

As the financial crisis swept away fallen leaves, half the foreign trade merchants went bankrupt from real estate speculation and fled back to their hometowns, while her production line would be continuously operating… just thinking about that scene was exciting.

Lin Yuchan carefully stored the contract, celebrated with employees for an entire afternoon, then ran to the Yixing Business Association to handle another matter.

The exclusive custom English school for Mrs. Gao Dewen was now taking initial shape.

Venue, tables, chairs, blackboards, and chalk were all ready-made. Textbooks were obtained from Shanghai Guangfangyan Institute’s rejects—most of the original English textbooks were compiled by Rong Hong, and Lin Yuchan had deep connections with customs, so with slight maneuvering, she bought several books that were defective prints with binding flaws, left unattended in storage.

As for teachers, Lin Yuchan combed through her network and ultimately invited two: Miss Compton and her close friend, Miss Lake. Their fathers—one a newspaper editor, the other a trading house employee—had both joined the land speculation craze and lost substantial money. While not completely ruined, both ladies’ living standards had been significantly reduced. After the discussion, they decided to work together for extra income.

In Western social conventions, unmarried ladies working outside wasn’t respectable, but it depended on circumstances. For people like them to become female teachers teaching female students was still socially acceptable.

With their families needing money, the elders also agreed.

Miss Lake had come to China as a child and learned some simple Wu dialect from her amah, just enough to communicate with students.

Miss Compton had other considerations: she wanted to be a career woman, but her father had already begun arranging for her to return to England for matchmaking. She was determined to save money for independence—contributing to newspapers wasn’t enough, so she practically commanded Lin Yuchan to reserve a female teacher position for her, and absolutely couldn’t delay salary payments.

“Dear Miss,” Lin Yuchan reasoned with her, “even working as a female teacher for ten years wouldn’t save enough money to run away from home.”

Miss Compton answered very philosophically: “That’s still better than saving nothing at all!”

…Fine. Foreign teachers were rare, and having someone willing to come was a blessing for Lin Yuchan.

Fortunately, this foreign teaching didn’t require much technical content—starting from the alphabet, patience was sufficient.

The school was small-scale and didn’t need administrative staff. Lin Yuchan became the “Director,” equivalent to a general affairs supervisor handling various logistics. Gao Dewen, being the financial backer, was invited to be supervisor and name the new school.

Gao Dewen was initially embarrassed: “Dewen Academy… isn’t that inappropriate?”

After all, she wasn’t someone who sought fame and recognition. Moreover, broadcasting a woman’s private name everywhere—even for someone like Gao Dewen from a family that didn’t emphasize propriety—felt very awkward.

Lin Yuchan thought about it and agreed: “Right, it could cause misunderstandings.”

Although Germany hadn’t unified yet and was unknown in Qing territory, in a few years, Shanghai would probably see large numbers of German merchants, German trading houses, and German consulates… Having a “Dewen Academy” here teaching English would be false advertising.

Moreover, according to traditional Jiangnan customs, elementary schools were called “mengxue,” middle schools “zhongzhai,” and only universities were called “shuyuan.” Although Shanghai people weren’t so strict, “shuyuan” was too high-profile and easily attracted unwanted attention.

Gao Dewen made the decision: “Take both our names—call it ‘Yude Girls’ School.'”

Lin Yuchan hastily declined: “Don’t put me first.”

“Deyu doesn’t sound good.”

The heroine was determined, so Lin Yuchan had to listen to the financial backer and smile silently.

Yude Girls’ School… sounded like it taught female virtues.

Perfect—this name was proper and safe.

So they spent ten taels to have a scholar write a plaque.

On the founding day, five or six people came to celebrate. Of Gao Dewen’s 500-tael budget, over 100 was spent, mostly on teachers’ salaries. Lin Yuchan set up special accounts for the remainder and firmly refused to misappropriate funds.

Yude Girls’ School’s first class had eight students. Besides Gao Dewen, there were two young concubines, both local women married to foreigners. Mrs. Fei’s husband was busy with business, and to capture her husband’s heart, she decided to self-study English for better communication. Mrs. Sha’s husband had already returned to England, taking their children to receive an education there. Mrs. Sha feared that when mother and children reunited, they would instead become strangers, so she was determined to study English and Western culture to bridge the cultural gap with her children in advance.

One week after classes began, five more students joined—Missionary Miss Oldes had been continuing her evangelistic work and over the years had rescued many women from nearby villages. Five of them were bright and clever, and Miss Oldes wanted to take them as disciples to evangelize together. Miss Oldes only had one interpreter, and previously had to relay everything through the interpreter bit by bit, which was very inconvenient. Hearing Lin Yuchan talk about “Yude Girls’ School,” she simply sent all five female disciples as a package to learn basic English communication.

Miss Oldes had helped Lin Yuchan greatly in the past, so Lin Yuchan immediately agreed. Gao Dewen also stated that the academy was non-profit, so these students only paid basic fees for writing materials.

There was no curriculum schedule—two, three, or four classes per week, all arranged through verbal agreements, because both teachers and students were busy. The two English ladies had busy social schedules and had to squeeze in teaching time. Every time Gao Dewen left her residence, her excuses were playing mahjong with ladies, shopping, visiting temples, etc.

Course content was also very casual—sometimes English, sometimes ladylike behavior training, sometimes reading the Bible, sometimes even dessert baking… all based on student suggestions and the two foreign teachers’ free expression.

Among these students, Gao Dewen had the highest status and was best at making decisions, so she naturally became the student leader, managing the others obediently without needing foreign teachers to maintain discipline.

Thus, during some days and evenings, accompanied by summer heat and flower fragrance, female voices reciting English could be heard from time to time in the business association.

Not only were fellow merchants curious, but neighbors were also puzzled—what was this about?

Learning that it was an English girls’ school, many people shook their heads, thinking it was nonsense.

These eight female students, the youngest twenty years old, the oldest over forty, had all passed the optimal age for studying. The highest cultural level among them could only recognize about a hundred Chinese characters, enough to read government notices and write IOUs. Their backgrounds were all humble—some spoke crude slang upon opening their mouths, worlds away from “scholarly families.”

For people like them, who had never read sage texts and knew nothing of propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame, to want to learn foreign languages, read foreign books, and become talented women?

Some had more sordid thoughts: women learning foreign languages must be preparing to serve foreigners. This academy had problems.

However, with the precedent of the previous assault on the business association resulting in arrests, neighbors didn’t dare meddle, fearing trouble. Moreover, hearing there was a foreign official’s wife among the students, they dared not discuss loudly and went out of their way to avoid the area.

The authorities naturally couldn’t be bothered to intervene—if scholars were running schools teaching the Four Books and Five Classics, they might symbolically examine qualifications to prevent misleading students and affecting national talent recruitment. But what could a few women learn together?

Currently, there were some women’s groups in society gathering to study weaving, embroidery, and even gynecological medicine—these were harmless social activities that wouldn’t catch official attention as long as no moral scandals occurred.

As for learning progress… Lin Yuchan took time to attend a class and found it wasn’t as pessimistic as she’d imagined. After all, learning the alphabet was much easier than learning Chinese characters for beginners. Pencils were also easier to handle than brushes. Moreover, students weren’t forced to attend by family pressure—they all had full subjective initiative.

After two weeks, most female students could crookedly trace out English words. When homework was left to dry on tables, business association members were amazed.

Someone learned tuition was low and awkwardly approached President Lin Yuchan: “My son is eleven years old and has a good foundation in poetry and literature—could he attend a few trial classes?”

Lin Yuchan was troubled for a few seconds and politely declined: “These female students are semi-illiterate, taking half a day to learn one letter. Your son has a good foundation and doesn’t need to waste time at a girls’ academy.”

She had discussed with Gao Dewen that the academy would insist on accepting only female students to avoid gossip.

Even small boys declined. They had plenty of other options.

She recommended Yinghua Academy to this fellow merchant to become classmates with Zheng Guanying.

A month later, when Lin Yuchan visited Yude Girls’ School again and heard several students singing “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John” in halting English with Miss Compton, she was completely moved.

This was an academy she had participated in founding!

Having done homework to the point of nausea in school, she had finally become someone who “could inspect classrooms at any time,” and students even bowed to her—truly a reversal of fortune, with a sense of returning home in glory.

Although at the current scale, it was just a family tutoring class. But in the future…

She painted blueprints in her mind. In the future, missionaries would establish many schools in China. While enlightening citizens, they would inevitably instill some inappropriate religious, colonial, and defeatist thoughts.

Her Yude Girls’ School was proper Chinese-run education that might, shortly, support a small corner of the educational world’s ceiling, preventing China’s private Western education from being completely monopolized by foreigners…

Maybe later they could offer more subjects and invite other experts…

For instance, medical sciences—due to gender differences, many women could only seek female doctors when ill, but currently many self-proclaimed female doctors were actually mostly shamans. Truly knowledgeable female Western medicine practitioners were extremely rare, delaying many lives. Perhaps she could invite Western medicine experts to train some basic female doctors and nurses… couldn’t let churches monopolize these fields…

These nearly fantastical scenarios were unthinkable when Lin Yuchan first arrived in the Qing. At that time, although she knew this society was riddled with problems and any step would land in a pit, she dared not openly contemplate any national salvation strategies, fearing too much thinking would keep her awake and delay the next day’s hard work, fearing it would give her even a trace of unrealistic ambition and ruin her livelihood.

But now… at least, it seemed, she was qualified to think about it.

She wouldn’t suffer society’s harsh punishment for daydreaming a bit without achievements.

She happily entered the classroom, greeted Miss Compton, and looked at everyone’s written homework.

The five Christian farm women requested a Biblical study, so Miss Compton had them copy saints’ names. The other ladies wanted to integrate into Western culture, so they were now struggling to trace English cursive letters, practicing their signatures.

“Dewen hasn’t come for several sessions,” Miss Compton complained to Lin Yuchan during a break in teaching, “and hasn’t submitted homework either. I originally thought she was very diligent.”

“Perhaps she’s been held up again,” Lin Yuchan said. “Being a Chinese official’s wife is very busy—social activities are no less than you English ladies.”

After learning some basic English, Gao Dewen’s confidence had increased dramatically. Knowing she had no maternal family backing, she intentionally made herself more assertive in subsequent life, which subdued many bullying foreigners who thought Ma Qingchen’s Chinese wife was truly formidable.

She didn’t know what her husband thought…

Lin Yuchan didn’t care. As long as Gao Dewen wasn’t feeling stifled, that was enough.

Miss Compton let students study independently while she procrastinated, holding a cup of tea, stirring sugar with a small silver spoon while sidling up to Lin Yuchan to whisper: “Hey Luna, have you and your Chinese sweetheart made any new progress lately?”

Lin Yuchan: “…”

Teacher benefits didn’t include personal gossip!