“Who are you looking for?”
Su Mei looked puzzled. She didn’t know this mother and daughter.
“Hello, Big Sister!”
Jiang Yan bowed slightly. “Do you have a room for rent? My daughter and I have nowhere to go. We only need a room where we can shelter from the wind and rain.”
“Oh, I see…”
Su Mei hesitated. There were so many homes in the complex—why had this mother and daughter come specifically to hers?
Just then, Jiang Yan tilted her head and glanced inside.
“Is your television broken? I work at the city television factory. I know a little about repairs. Would you like me to take a look?”
“You work at the television factory?”
The city television factory was close to shutting down, and Su Mei had heard that many of its workers had been laid off.
She looked Jiang Yan up and down, unconvinced.
“All right. Take a look.”
“Sure!”
Jiang Yan asked her daughter to wait by the door. She set down her luggage, took off her shoes, and only then started toward the room.
“Hey, why are you taking your shoes off?”
“So I don’t track dirt onto your floor. I can tell you’re someone who likes to keep things clean!”
At that, Su Mei’s gaze warmed to her.
Su Mei really was a neat freak!
As Jiang Yan spoke, she walked over to the television and fiddled with it a little. The picture really did become clear.
“Hey, you really can fix it!”
Su Mei looked from the television to Jiang Yan.
“I have to say, I like you. You seem like someone I can trust at first sight!”
She was clean, capable, and looked kind. She must be a good person.
Su Mei beckoned to Wang Xiaoya outside.
“Come on in, dear. And shut the door behind you!”
Then she went to the shoe cabinet by the door and brought out two pairs of slippers.
“I do have a room you can rent, though I don’t have to rent it out. It’s my son’s room, but he’s been assigned a dormitory, so it’s easier for him to live there while he’s working.”
She sighed.
“Sigh… He used to come home every ten days or half a month. But now he’s always saying he’s busy over there, and I only see him a few times a year. I hear he’s about to be transferred to Jingbei. I’m afraid I’ll see him even less after that!”
Jiang Yan already knew all this.
Once Su Mei’s son went to Jingbei, she would be taken there too. Then this apartment would be sold to Jiang Yan for twenty thousand yuan.
By the time the area was demolished, the apartment would be worth a million.
As she talked, Su Mei led Jiang Yan to see the room.
When she pushed the door open, the room was nearly bare: a bed, a desk and chairs, and a few photographs on the wall showing Su Mei’s son as a little boy.
“Is this your son? He’s so handsome!”
Jiang Yan praised him offhandedly, making Su Mei laugh with delight.
“Of course! No one in his class was as good-looking as he was. And he was top of the class in both conduct and academics—whatever he did, he was always among the best!”
Her son was Su Mei’s pride and joy; once she started talking about him, she couldn’t stop.
“Oh, look at me!”
With a sigh, Su Mei began tidying up, taking the photographs down from the wall one by one.
“You can rent the room, but you’ll have to follow my rules…”
Jiang Yan already knew Su Mei’s rules: no coming home late, no making a racket, and no bringing guests over…
Su Mei was a neat freak and meticulous. As it happened, Jiang Yan was the same.
“About the rent…”
It was a business arrangement, so they had to discuss money. But Su Mei had never rented out a room before and had no idea what a fair price would be.
“How about twenty yuan a month?”
Jiang Yan suggested it herself. In her previous life, Su Mei had pitied them and charged only five yuan in rent, just a token amount.
But in the end, even that five yuan went toward snacks that ended up in Jiang Yan’s children’s bellies.
Twenty yuan was a fair price, since they would also be using the kitchen and bathroom.
“Twenty yuan?”
Su Mei looked at Jiang Yan, then at her luggage—all worn-out clothes, bedding, and books. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
“You’ve just been laid off, and your child is so young. You have so many expenses—you don’t need to stretch yourself just to save face.”
She thought it over, then said, “Just pay the monthly water and electricity bills. We can talk about rent when you’re better off.”
She never spent all her pension each month and didn’t care about that little bit of money. She might as well do a good deed.
“Thank you.”
Jiang Yan didn’t protest. She knew Su Mei was genuinely kind. Money didn’t matter to her; what she wanted was company.
After quickly tidying the room and reminding her daughter of some of Su Mei’s rules, Jiang Yan set out to look for work.
Since being laid off, she had been without an income. Even the money for groceries and cooking had to come from Wang Xuezhong, day by day.
If she didn’t find work today, they wouldn’t have anything to eat tomorrow.
In her previous life, she had worked as a waitress, stood behind a counter, and worked as a nanny. She had even tried running a business, but she started too late and wasn’t suited to it, so it had ultimately failed.
She had no experience of success, but plenty of experience with failure.
Jiangcheng had a small commodity wholesale market known as “Number One Street Under Heaven.”
These days, you could say it was paved with gold.
The market was enormous, divided into several sections, and it also housed all kinds of small factories and workshops.
Because it was so big, its streets and alleys were a maze. Small merchants coming to buy stock for the first time often had trouble finding the wholesale stalls.
And so a new kind of business had sprung up: charging people to show them the way!
In her previous life, Jiang Yan had worked as a “carrying pole” in the market.
A “carrying pole” was a laborer.
Back then, she had left her marriage with nothing, and her two children urgently needed money for school fees. Jobs that paid at the end of the month were no use to her; she couldn’t wait that long.
Carrying goods brought in money quickly. She could earn five or ten yuan for each trip, a decent income.
Some people were strong and lucky enough to make one or two hundred yuan a day.
That was comparable to a factory manager’s monthly salary!
The work was simple, but exhausting. People dying suddenly from overwork was nothing unusual.
It was money earned at the cost of your life!
For her son and daughter’s school fees and living expenses, Jiang Yan gritted her teeth and shouldered the burden alone, using her own thin shoulders.
She had gained success, and a body full of aches and pains. Of course, she had also come to know the entire market like the back of her hand.
She owned very little, but she had one advantage: a good memory. The kind of photographic memory like that of “Little Sa,” the famous CCTV host.
At an intersection in the wholesale market, she set up a sign in front of herself:
Directions: 20 cents.
Guiding you there: 2 yuan.
Maps: 1 yuan each.
Charging people to show them the way was the job best suited to her at the moment.
It wouldn’t hurt her body, and it required no start-up money.
There were twenty-two days left before her daughter’s school fees were due.
In those twenty-two days, she needed to earn fifty yuan for school fees and miscellaneous expenses, plus fifteen yuan for the first month’s meals—that was sixty-five yuan in total.
And on top of that, they needed money for their daily expenses. That meant she had to earn at least six yuan a day.
Six yuan might not sound like much, but eighty percent of the country couldn’t earn that much.
In the countryside especially, many families made less than five hundred yuan in a whole year.
Could she really make a living by giving directions?
Jiang Yan picked up her drawing pen and studied the market, both familiar and strange to her. She would take it one step at a time and first establish herself there.
This was a market, but it was also its own world. If she wanted to set up a stall here, she had to pay her respects to the local power brokers first.
Otherwise, in a place where every inch was worth its weight in gold, why should she be allowed to make money here?
On the paper, she began sketching—not a map to sell, but a portrait of a man.
A man’s portrait!
The wholesale market had three major factions. Before official management was fully in place, these factions were the kings of the market.
If they didn’t allow someone to do business, that person wouldn’t last here!
One of the “big brothers” was Xu Kai.
Of the three, he was the youngest. He would also be the only one to go legitimate and become wealthy.
The spot where Jiang Yan had set up was in Xu Kai’s territory. And the portrait she was drawing now was Xu Kai’s.
Whether she could establish herself here depended on how well she drew it.
Fortunately, she hadn’t lost the skill she’d learned in her previous life. The portrait looked exactly like the one in her memory.
Just as she was about to finish, Xu Kai’s underlings arrived, right on cue.