Chapter 32: Chapter 31: Great Ambitions
"Your second uncle won’t even let you in the house now?"
"Yeah. He says I’m always after his yellow croaker."
"Just the yellow croaker?"
Xu Huo eyed him suspiciously, looking him up and down.
Wang Chao nodded earnestly. "Yes, just the yellow croaker!"
"And as for why the salted fish wouldn’t sell... that had nothing to do with me."
"After all, I didn’t mess with that old man, the fish-drying rack wasn’t mine, and I’m not single... and I’m definitely not a bachelor my uncle’s age!"
"Makes sense."
Xu Huo nodded in agreement.
’The three strongest bonds in a man’s life.’
’Gone whoring together, carried a gun together, and peeked through a window together.’
’Well, it wasn’t exactly peeking through a window, but it was close enough.’ He couldn’t help but feel a pang of sentimentality.
’Twice in a row. The first time, he just wanted to grab a bite to eat and got dragged into it.’
’The second time? Good lord, someone died right on his doorstep...’
"So, what’s the plan with your older uncle?"
Xu Huo asked casually.
"My older uncle works in radio."
Wang Chao began, then thought for a moment and added, "You know, the kind of channel you can get on a radio. The ones that have a late-night show where the host shoots the breeze or tells ghost stories."
"You can do that kind of work?"
Li Jianye looked surprised, sizing him up.
That kind of job was usually for people in broadcasting. Without a few years of interning, it was pretty much impossible to host a whole show by yourself.
A layman could only hope to do odd jobs. You might make it to management if you have other skills, but not management in the broadcast booth.
"Hey, Captain Li, you’re forgetting who you’re talking to!"
Wang Chao puffed out his chest and said proudly.
"I’ve been trailing after my uncle since I was a kid. I got my broadcasting certificate and all that ready a long time ago."
Back then, academic qualifications weren’t scrutinized too strictly.
Students were highly valued, and university graduates even more so. A high school diploma was considered impressive and could land you a decent job.
Go back another ten or twenty years, and even a diploma from a Vocational School guaranteed you a job placement!
That’s why positions that would later have stringent requirements had lower standards back then, largely because the overall quality of the workforce was lower.
"Besides, that station is desperately short-staffed right now!"
Wang Chao thought for a moment and added,
"They’ve launched several new channels and are hurting for people. It’s a great opportunity. If I go, I might be hosting my own channel in just a couple of days!"
"Once I’ve saved up some capital, I’ll just quit. With that experience under my belt, I’ll check out how the internet is developing."
He grew more excited as he spoke.
"Hey, radio is just audio. It’s too one-dimensional. That’s why I’ve been keeping an eye on how computers are developing."
"Computers are getting smaller and smaller. Who knows, maybe in the future they’ll shrink down to the size of a mobile phone!"
"If I could make a ’radio station’ with video, a website I host myself, that people could watch anytime, anywhere on their phones..."
Full of ambition, Chao Zi painted a magnificent picture of the future for them.
"That’s the spirit!" Li Jianye nodded.
Xu Huo looked at him with newfound respect. "When you get started, be sure to let me know. I’ll find you some investors."
Wang Chao looked a little embarrassed.
"We’ll see when the time comes. But I have a good feeling it’ll go smoothly."
"It’s a radio station, not some outdoor job. I’ll be inside, with lots of people around, and I won’t be going out. Nothing can go wrong this time!"
The first time, he’d come looking for work, only to get caught up in some drama at a crossroads and hauled in for a statement, causing him to miss his interview.
Then he’d decided to go stay with his second uncle, but who would’ve thought a dead woman would turn up...
This time... his third try...
’In such a safe environment, nothing could possibly go wrong!’
"I’m off then! I’m going to find my uncle and try to start tomorrow!"
Wang Chao said, waving.
His "uncles" weren’t blood relatives. They were only five or six years older than him and had basically grown up together, so their relationship felt more like one between brothers. There was none of the usual pressure one feels from an elder.
In a flash, he grabbed his bonus money, hailed a cab outside, and sped off toward his interview.
"Heh, what a kid."
Li Jianye chuckled, shaking his head. The guy was such a character he was becoming a familiar face at the station. Officers on duty probably saw him and subconsciously thought he was a colleague.
"It’s getting late, I should get going too. I need to buy a car in the next couple of days."
Xu Huo glanced at the time. It was already two-thirty in the afternoon.
He gathered up the envelope and headed out. Li Jianye didn’t try to stop him, just waved him off.
He needed to buy a car.
Getting around without a car was a huge hassle. And taking the bus in those days? It was a literal crush.
Jeez, even a brand-new bus was just a boxy-looking thing.
Run it for a few days, and the crowds would practically squeeze it into the shape of a brioche.
Plus, you had to pay with cash, and sometimes you’d get your money stolen by pickpockets.
That’s why he had long since made a plan to buy a car.
’Counting the fifty thousand I saved from that cheating spouse case, plus the twenty thousand from last time and the hundred thousand from this time... that’s 170,000 in total.’
Catching cheating spouses was profitable, but it was also time-consuming and draining. The good thing was that expenses were usually covered by the client.
Xu Huo wasn’t the type to play both sides, otherwise that figure could easily have been three or four times higher.
As for the car...
Cars were pretty expensive back in ’03.
In an era when the average monthly salary was a thousand yuan, cars sold for hundreds of thousands.
An Audi A6—the one with the four-ring logo—could go for four hundred thousand.
The car with that three-pronged logo could sell for over a million!
And yes, that was a million in the currency of the time, not the equivalent of a million from the year ’23 in his past life.
Xu Huo’s standards for a car weren’t particularly high.
He had his eye on a family sedan. It had air conditioning and decent space—good enough to get by. The price was around seventy-eight thousand.
He hadn’t contacted a salesperson beforehand, though.
But that wasn’t a big deal. Xu Huo didn’t have a regular job, and with the police department still paying him over a thousand a month, time was the one thing he had in spades.
...
「September 27th.」
About half a month passed. Jiangsan City was calm and quiet, and for a moment, the peacefulness was almost relaxing.
Xu Huo had been in constant contact with the salesperson; the car he wanted was out of stock and had to be ordered.
Buying a car was more of a hassle back then.
Of course, the hassle was part of the experience. After all, if a car costing tens of thousands could be bought instantly, the average person would feel something was off, that the price was too high for something so readily available.
On the other hand, if you were told you had to wait a few days or even a couple of weeks, it gave the purchase a strange sense of reliability.
It was like the old sayings: "You get what you pay for," and "Nothing worth having comes easy."
It wasn’t until the afternoon of the 27th that he finally took a taxi out to the suburbs of Jiangsan City.
This was Sishui County, a small town within Jiangsan City’s borders. It wasn’t too far from Jiangdong District, but it wasn’t exactly close, either.
Even with the taxi driver flooring it, the trip took a full two hours.
As for Sishui County...
It was a small place.
A small county town, its development was middling—better off than the rural villages, but not on the same level as Jiangdong District. Still, back in ’03, life here was pretty comfortable.
The environment was quite nice, though. With capable city planners, it might have a chance to really develop.
If it didn’t take off during this period, it would probably never get the chance, destined to become one of those small towns whose resources and talent get drained away by more developed regions.
CREAK~
The door opened.
...
...
「Evening. 9:30 PM.」
"Have a great drive, sir!"
Inside the dealership, the salesman waved, a genuine smile on his face as he watched Xu Huo drive away.
Salesmen like him lived on commission.
Selling a single car was a nice payday.
Xu Huo paid no mind to the salesman’s mood. It only took him a moment to get a feel for the new vehicle before he was driving off toward Jiangdong District.
He had a driver’s license; he and a few friends from school had gotten theirs together years ago.
It was easy to get any kind of license back then, and the driver’s license was no exception. There weren’t nearly as many regulations as there had been in his past life.
In the car, Xu Huo said aloud, "Hmm, car’s taken care of. Now I just need a house."
But the thought of a house made him fall into a pensive silence.
By ’03, the Eastern Country had already gone through its first major wave of real estate speculation, and prices had reached terrifying heights.
How much, you ask?
Eleven thousand!
That’s right. In an era when the average monthly salary was a thousand yuan, and a regular worker might only make six or seven hundred, a single square meter of housing was being sold for eleven thousand!
Proportionally, that was even crazier than the market at the end of his previous life!
My God, one square meter wasn’t even big enough for a toilet, but you’d have to work for at least twenty months—almost two years—to afford it.
And a hundred-square-meter apartment? That would mean working for two hundred years...
You wouldn’t have enough even if you started working from the womb!
’Then again, that’s for a place in the heart of a Tier-1 city. A regular apartment isn’t outrageously expensive right now.’
Shaking his head, Xu Huo pushed the thought aside.
A house wasn’t an urgent need. His current small apartment was big enough for one person.
Xu Huo glanced at the time.
It was now 10:00 PM, and he was nearing the edge of Sishui County.
A little farther ahead was the border of Jiangdong District.
There was hardly anyone around at this hour, a far cry from his previous life, where you’d see cars on the road even in the dead of night.
The streetlights grew sparse and then disappeared altogether, plunging the road into a darkness so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Xu Huo had no choice but to switch on his lights.
He drove on in silence, advancing quietly through the night.
Until...
a sound suddenly broke the silence.