What did it mean that the dance hall had been raided?
This dance hall – Liu Tian Quan had greased all the right palms.
Making money was a secondary goal; the place mainly existed to give those who followed him from Hong Kong somewhere to stay. Of course, once the dance hall opened, business was unexpectedly good, exceeding Liu Tian Quan’s expectations. Since it could both make money and help him maintain connections, Liu Tian Quan valued the dance hall highly.
Because he maintained the image of a respectable Hong Kong businessman in Peng Cheng, Liu Tian Quan wasn’t publicly involved in running the dance hall. To outsiders, he was just a regular customer who visited for business networking.
Nan Yang Dance Hall wouldn’t flourish for long anyway – Liu Tian Quan was already renovating the Xiang Mi Hu Nightclub. Once that opened, it would inevitably attract all of Peng Cheng’s high-end consumers. Places like Nan Yang Dance Hall would only draw poor people who neither spent much nor helped Liu Tian Quan’s networking – when the time came, he planned to transfer all the better hostesses from Nan Yang to the Xiang Mi Hu Nightclub!
Liu Tian Quan was mentally prepared, but the Xiang Mi Hu Nightclub hadn’t opened yet. All his people were still at Nan Yang Dance Hall, and now they’d been caught in one sweep. Liu Tian Quan instantly became anxious.
“How many of our people were taken?”
This question was difficult to answer. The messenger stammered – basically, everyone had been taken.
The inspection came too suddenly, and the establishment wasn’t clean. They were caught red-handed.
The arrested hostesses weren’t a big problem – with enough pay, there would always be work-shy women willing to enter the profession.
However several of Liu Tian Quan’s trusted men from Hong Kong were arrested.
These people held positions in Tian Chen – if they revealed anything, it would be enough to cause Liu Tian Quan trouble. He suddenly remembered the man with the scar on his eyelid saying “Even a mighty dragon can’t overcome a local snake,” warning him not to casually bully a small business owner.
Liu Tian Quan felt regretful – it was just tens of thousands, the cost of one of his sister’s handbags. Since he’d been found out, he should have just returned it cleanly.
Why did he have to try to prove a point?
Liu Tian Quan squeezed his fat hands. As a Hong Kong businessman, he’d received many privileges in Peng Cheng.
Moreover, being far from the other Du family branches, Liu Tian Quan had operated without restraint and gotten too cocky… except after Tang Hong En took office and he started hitting walls, his first two years had been smooth sailing. People easily become arrogant in good times. Liu Tian Quan had just been thinking Xiao Lan was nothing special, planning to open two building material stores right next to An Jia Building Materials to test Mayor Tang’s bottom line.
If Mayor Tang showed no reaction, Liu Tian Quan would expand the stores aggressively and squeeze An Jia Building Materials out of business.
Now it seemed Mayor Tang had more than just reacted.
He’d overreacted completely!
Liu Tian Quan’s expression kept changing – was it worth all this over just tens of thousands?
…
Xiao Lan returned to campus life.
After being away from the dorm for two weekend days, it felt a bit unfamiliar upon return. She hadn’t expected to live like a frequent flyer in ’84, being in the south of the country in the afternoon and back north by evening. When she distributed the snacks she’d brought back to her dormmates, Su Jing was suspicious:
“Did your uncle visit you again?”
“Mm, you all said you liked the dried shrimp, now everyone can eat their fill.”
Xiao Lan brushed it off vaguely.
Nobody in the dorm knew she’d gone to Peng Cheng for the weekend, flying there and back – it would seem quite extravagant to mention, and she didn’t want to draw attention.
Yang Yong Hong returned with two thermoses, “Xiao Lan, I got you some hot water too.”
Yang Yong Hong was too kind. Xiao Lan expressed her gratitude, but Yang Yong Hong told her to stop fussing:
“When I came back, I saw many people gathered at the notice board. Heard they posted the list of those who passed the English competition preliminaries, but carrying the water, I couldn’t squeeze through to look.”
Everyone in the dorm knew Xiao Lan had entered the English competition on Professor Lin’s recommendation.
Lu Yan, also passionate about English, carried her tape recorder everywhere. She had registered herself.
With the preliminary results posted, she and Xiao Lan were the most curious.
The girls from Room 307 went downstairs arm in arm. Sure enough, a large crowd surrounded the notice board.
Xiao Lan didn’t think her English was invincible, but she had worked hard in her previous life. Given that university students’ English levels were generally low in the 80s, although the competition questions were harder than the college entrance exam, Xiao Lan had felt good while taking it. Squeezing to the front, she indeed saw her name listed among those who passed.
Lu Yan’s name wasn’t there.
Lu Yan felt disappointed – carrying around vocabulary books daily still hadn’t been enough.
She quickly cheered up and congratulated Xiao Lan:
“Xiao Lan, congratulations! Very few first-years passed.”
Indeed, few freshmen had passed – among those Xiao Lan knew were Ji Jiang Yuan and Liu Hua Zheng.
Surprisingly, Liu Hua Zheng wasn’t just good at singing and dancing – her English was decent too.
Ji Jiang Yuan went without saying – he’d grown up in America since childhood. For over ten years, English had been his second mother tongue. If he couldn’t pass the preliminaries, the Ministry of Education’s English competition would have been quite something.
The morning after Xiao Lan passed the preliminaries, Professor Lin called her over.
“You certainly didn’t disappoint me. Now we need to get busy!”
After the preliminaries came December’s second round. Finally, university students from around the country who passed the second round would gather in Beijing for the finals.
The second round wouldn’t be held separately at each school, but organized uniformly by each province’s education department.
The format wasn’t limited to written tests – listening and speaking carried significant weight. Professor Lin wanted to help Xiao Lan cram these aspects, including preparing for the English speech required in the finals.
At noon, Xiao Lan called Peng Cheng to check on things. Liu Yong’s voice sounded relieved:
“Liu Tian Quan sent people to return all the materials himself, even the 40,000 yuan deposit. The only loss was half a month’s workers’ wages. Isn’t that strange?”
It was indeed strange. Xiao Lan felt something must have happened.
Liu Yong lowered his voice on the phone:
“Last night, Nan Yang Dance Hall was shut down. The police arrested many people.”
That explained it.
Someone like Liu Tian Quan wouldn’t easily back down.
“Stay out of it. Just be careful of Liu Tian Quan’s revenge later. Don’t worry about the rest.”
…
The Nan Yang Dance Hall raid was just Liu Tian Quan’s first blow.
The second blow came when his business in Fujian Province ran into problems.
Several consecutive shipments were caught red-handed, and these goods didn’t all belong to Liu Tian Quan – they belonged to Cheng Rong Group. Liu Tian Quan was so angry he nearly had a heart attack. His brother-in-law Du Cheng Rong demanded he return to Hong Kong immediately!