Foreword
In Spring 2019, I visited my good friend Xiaohui in Nigeria. At Xiao Hui’s restaurant in Lagos, I bumped into her old friend, Turnip Liu – the chairman of a milk beverage manufacturing company in Nigeria. Later on, Turnip told me about her experiences as a self-employed woman selling clothes in her hometown of Xuzhou in the 80s, an international trader in Yakutsk in the Russian Far East in the 90s, and a factory in Lagos in the millennium. The story of this Chinese businesswoman was gradually restored during my many contacts and interviews. As a middle-aged person, the chairman of the board, who is dressed in a low-profile yet sophisticated manner, with a slim figure and still has long hair, has had such a tumultuous experience that is indeed difficult to replicate today.
1
Turnip, a post-60s native, grew up with her father in the North Sea Fleet in Qingdao, while her mother stayed in her hometown of Xuzhou with her sister and brother. She still remembers when the army compound used to show open-air movies on weekends, and her classmates loved to get close to her so that she could take them into the compound to watch the movies.
After graduating from high school, Turnip joined a machine shop in Xuzhou and became a painter, specializing in painting bicycles. At that time, the company required a 12-hour shift with two consecutive days off, a rhythm of work that Turnip liked because she had plenty of personal time.
After more than a decade of intellectual confinement, society was filled with a thirst for knowledge and technology, and free classes were held in cities, factories and mines. As a child, Turnip likes to draw and do crafts, so she joined the tailoring class. She did her homework quickly and well, and spent the rest of her time helping her two-year-old classmate, Bao Li.
In the spring of 1987, a costume design competition was held for the opening of Xuzhou’s new department store, the Gupeng Building. When she was encouraged by Bao Li, Turnip submitted a draft.
“The prize was 800 yuan, equivalent to half a year’s salary.” The prize money was 800 yuan, equivalent to half a year’s salary.” Turnip is still very proud of the award, which changed the trajectory of her life.
After winning the award, Xu Yang, an individual clothing vendor, took a liking to her work and wanted to work with her. Xu Yang has two counters in the Erfu Street Garment Market, specializing in women’s clothing, and gets her goods from Shanghai. She wanted to sell all the garments designed and made by her, which she readily agreed to do.
After that, on her day off, she locked herself up at home and made clothes, shipping five or six pieces a day, adding 2 to 5 yuan for her work in addition to the fabric money, and then selling them all to Xu Yang. The Japanese women’s clothing designed by Turnip was very popular and demand exceeded supply. It wasn’t until later that Turnip discovered that Xu Yang’s selling price was three to four times her supply price that she decided to simply rent a counter herself. The problem was who to find to guard the counter?
At that time, the “commodity economy” had just started, and those who had access to it were all heading for the “iron rice bowls” of the state-run units, and only those who couldn’t get into the system “had difficulties” would go into self-employment. The first thing you need to do is to get a job in a state-run machinery factory. She recommended her sister Nan Bao, who was two years older than her. Bao Nan, who was two years older than Liu Qi, was a returned youth and worked in the kiosk of a taxi company – a “large collective” enterprise that allowed for leave without pay to run a business.
The two of them hit it off immediately, and Turnip financed the counter at the clothing market on Erfu Street, while Nan Bao was responsible for guarding the counter. After a few months, the two of them did earn a lot, but Liu Qi was almost exhausted – after all, one’s energy is limited, and one can’t lose the work of making clothes and spraying paint in a hurry. After all, one’s energy is limited, and one can’t lose the paint job. When compared to Xu Yang’s store, it’s faster to run to Shanghai to get the goods and sell them.
So, Turnip also started to take the train to Shanghai on her day off to get the goods, and then took the train back overnight.
With the vision of a “fashion designer”, the goods she bought were immediately appreciated by customers, and soon all her peers in the market followed her style. Many people wanted to get close to her so they could pick up the goods together, but Turnip was like a loner.
At that time, Turnip was already thinking about another problem – since she could sell a few pieces of design and production for a good price, “why not design it herself and set up a factory to make a real clothing brand?” — a dream that still haunts her to this day.
The garment business got better and better, and Turnip and Bao Nan rented a 5-counter store. Every morning, the roller shutters of the store were opened and customers came in in droves. Sometimes they could earn $5,000 to $6,000 a month, and it didn’t take long for Turnip to become a “millionaire”, which was a rarity at the time.
After the 1990s, competition between stores became increasingly fierce, and Turnip had to go to manufacturers further afield, such as Shishi in Fujian and Dongguan in Guangdong, where a round trip took at least a week. At that time, the amount she earned in a day in the store was already higher than her monthly salary in the factory.
Every time she went to Shishi to buy goods, Turnip was very impressed – the small workshops there had become a market and integrated into a huge garment city. Xuzhou, on the other hand, didn’t have this condition – she needed to continue to save up start-up capital to have her own brand of clothing.
In early 1992, Turnip befriended Qiu, who was doing wholesale clothing in Harbin, and advised her to do wholesale instead: “You can make a lot of money in wholesale, but if you do retail, you’ll just end up with a bunch of goods.”
Turnip actually considered it. At that time, the story of Mou Zhin’s empty-handed “reverse aircraft” had been spread in the streets of the country – he used dozens of truckloads of canned goods, hot water bottles, clothing, etc., and went to Russia to pour back four Tu 154 airliners, sold to Southwest Airlines.
In those days, everyone felt that they might seize a certain opportunity and become rich overnight, everyone was asking around for information about the up and down of materials like steel, all wanting to be a part of the process of selling materials for huge profits, “one billion people nine hundred million down, and one hundred million in search of”, indeed.
In the summer, Qiu revealed a message to Turnip: the underground wholesale goods market at Harbin Railway Station is now for rent, with an annual rent of 3,000 yuan for a counter, and this must be the largest wholesale market for clothing and daily necessities in Harbin in the future.
After Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour speech, Shanghai and Shenzhen stock market speculation, 100,000 troops going south to break into Hainan, and reports of multinational companies increasing their investment in China, she thought she had to get out of Xuzhou and participate in this trend of breaking into the world.
The first thing you need to do is to go to Harbin and rent a couple of counters to do the reverse, wholesale, this may be a rare opportunity to earn we will come back to the garment factory to do the brand. If it doesn’t work, then we can come back and do retail.”
Bao Nan said, “Listen to you, anyway, I follow you to do.”
2
In order to grab a good store, the two hastily ended the business of Xuzhou, with unsold goods flew to Harbin. Rent two counters, the first Xuzhou goods out to sell.
However, three months have passed, the expected hot market did not appear. Even the goods they brought from Xuzhou did not sell out. The northeasterners’ preference for clothing is completely different from that of the southerners, and Turnip’s keen sense of women’s clothing has completely failed here.
The money was only coming in and out. There were a few companies doing border trade in Suifenhe that wanted to buy the goods, but they needed “credit” – they could only pay when they had taken the goods and sold them. At first, she refused, saying that the risk was too great. But after two months, she had to give the goods to the company in Suifenhe on credit.
After the New Year of 1993, the market still did not show any signs of boom, and Bao Nan began to complain about Liuyi. Thinking that he couldn’t just sit there and wait for death to happen, Turnip asked Bao Nan to stay and see what would happen, and to quit the stall and take the train to Suifenhe to ask for money, then go back to Xuzhou and start all over again.
At that time, Suifenhe was still just a frontier town of a few tens of thousands of people. After stepping out of the train station and walking through the muddy streets, Liu Qi passed by a row of low cottages and suddenly saw a brand new 5-story building standing in the middle of the town, with people and traffic crowding and clamoring in front of it.
When Turnip walked into the market, he saw a dense crowd of Russian and Central Asian merchants crowding in front of the stores to choose goods, holding goods in their hands, bargaining with the shopkeepers, and passing calculators from one hand to the other. Many stores are full of goods, shopkeepers can only stand to the goods to merchants yell.
The hot scene was so shocking that Turnip didn’t even look for a store on credit, so he went straight to the market management office and immediately paid $19,000 to book a counter space, then called Nan Bao to Suifenhe and started a wholesale border trade business.
In the beginning, the two people saw what goods were selling well, and followed into what – jeans, toys, curtains, shoes, hats, cups, lamps, etc. Turnip learned quickly, high perception, always in the market quickly find better and cheaper sources of goods to sell to customers.
Although business was booming, the problem of credit was still slow to be solved. The bigger the business, the more goods on credit. They were both excited and frightened, and finally had to chase the traders and companies on credit all the way along the trade routes in the Russian Far East, starting from Suifenhe, through Ussuriysk (Shuangchengzi), then through Neryungri (Neryungri, formerly known as Neringrad), and finally landing in Yakutsk.
In the early summer of 1994, the temperature in Yakutsk was still below 0 degrees, and standing in the cold Lenin Square, Turnip and Bao Nan only felt the cold bones. Facing the unfamiliar surroundings, the only thing that could bring some warmth to Yanagi was the familiar Lenin statue in front of her – Lenin was standing, waving his big hand, inspiring people to move forward and forward again in the cold wind – such a sight made Yanagi feel as if she was The most important thing was to get the “Order of Lenin” issued by the big brothers.
The open-air market where Turnip and Bao Nan were going was in a vacant lot by the Lena River. The two of them pulled a small trolley full of goods, laid the woven bags flat on the hard dirt ground at the entrance of the open-air market, and poured the goods on top – jeans, shoes, hats, bags and Barbie dolls. In a short time, a middle-aged Russian man wearing glasses approached, pointed to the Barbie doll and asked how much it cost.
“10,000 (old rubles).” (At the exchange rate at the time, that’s about 27 yuan)
The middle-aged man muttered and walked away.
“Come back back, 8 thousand.”
After hearing this, the middle-aged man happily folded back and bought 8 Barbie dolls in one breath. Turnip received the 64,000 rubles and squeezed it in his hand, his heart was unusually solid, no longer as frightened as he was with the credit voucher. In less than an hour, the goods were all sold out. In a few days, they earned tens of thousands of yuan.
There was a local Russian boy who made more money than they did. He’s a veteran who drove for the government during the Soviet era and now rents a laundromat to do business. He comes to turnip to get cheap jeans, goes home and throws them into a pot with bleach, mixes them with crushed bricks, boils them for a few hours, adds stripes, stains and patterns to them, dries them and puts the “Western Cowboy” brand on them, making them look just like Valenki’s jeans, and doubling the price.
This summer, Turnip kept returning to Suifenhe to enter the Barbie dolls, before passing through customs into compressed packages, from Ussuriysk to take the 3000 km train to Neriuengeli, and then transfer the car back to Yakutsk, 800 km away, to bring these Barbie dolls to the open-air market. Barbie was so popular in the market until after Christmas that the whole market called her a “human trafficker” – a “human trafficker” who specialized in selling Barbie dolls.
This face-to-face buying and selling process soon gave Turnip a sense of what the Russians liked and needed, and her keen business sense returned. She soon became the “Queen of Glasses” and “Queen of Wallpaper.” …… One of the beer glasses with handles that she had sold was on fire in this market for a whole year.
However, it was not easy to get these things shipped. The glasses were shipped wholesale from Ussuriysk, a round trip of more than 3,000 kilometers between the two places, and conditions were often constant along the way.
One time, when he was returning to Yakutsk with two carloads of glasses, the road to Neriuengeli was filled with snow and the flood drains were covered. The drivers of the two cars were Russian brothers, the older brother drove in front and the younger brother followed behind.
The car was driving on a lonely Siberian highway, and after turning a sharp curve in the mountains, the brother suddenly pulled over and stopped the car. The driver told her that the car behind her had lost him and that he had to wait.
After more than 20 minutes passed, the driver of a truck told them that the car behind them had overturned. The two men quickly turned the car around and drove back, and saw his brother’s car on its side on the side of the road. The rear wheels fell into the snow-covered drainage ditch, the body is seriously tilted but not overturned. The two brothers a discussion, only to unload the goods, it is possible to tow the car out.
“Then let’s move it!” Turnip took off his leather jacket and followed the two brothers to move the goods to the snow, box by box. The box contained 32 cups, more than 10 kilograms. It was too much effort for Turnip, who weighed less than 90 pounds, to move. But once it was dark, there were black bears and wolves in the area. If the car was not pulled out and the fire died, even if it was not bitten to death by the beasts, it would not survive the long night at -40 degrees.
After the goods were unloaded, the brother drove his brother’s car and slowly pulled it out, and found that the car could still be driven, so we quickly reloaded the goods onto the car and sent it to the warehouse in Yakutsk that night.
3
At that time, the Russian economy was in “shock therapy” and there was an extreme shortage of daily necessities, people had rubles in their hands, but they could not buy the necessities of life, and the shelves of shopping malls were often empty. In order to buy a good underwear bra, women could queue up for 2 kilometers. The “international bargainers” like Turnip are making money and bringing them much needed goods.
After more than two years of working in the open-air market, Turnip rented a 1,000-square-foot warehouse in the northern suburbs of Yakutsk and transformed it into a warehouse-style building materials supermarket named “Ancheng”.
Turnip said, “Minister Zhang was a big help in the completion of Ancheng Supermarket. “Minister Zhang was the head of the Foreign Liaison Department of Anshan Iron and Steel Group, and after he bought out of Anshan Iron and Steel in 1992, he went to the Far East of Russia to work as an “international buyer. Since Suifenhe, his company has been the largest credit customer of Liu Qi. He introduced the owner of the property, the father of a local official, to the owner, and together they transformed the owner’s former timber warehouse into the “Ancheng Building Materials Supermarket”. He gave the old father 5% of the shares, with dividends at the end of the year, and brought in Minister Zhang and a friend of his as minority shareholders. Relying on their connections, Liu Qi also opened up many government and corporate markets.
At that time, “Ancheng’s” main best sellers were metal locks, glass cups, wallpaper, wall sconces, chandeliers, and so on. Wall sconces that cost more than $10 domestically could sometimes be sold for more than $100 at “Ancheng”.
When business finally got underway, Nan Bao, who was the most powerful assistant to Turnip, stayed at “Ancheng” to look after the store. He is responsible for purchasing and transporting goods between Suifenhe in Heilongjiang and Ussuriysk and Yakutsk in Russia.
After a friend introduced her to her, she found a faster supplier in Ussuriysk and made a deal on the phone, but as is her custom, she insisted on meeting and inspecting before paying for the goods. At that time there was no direct flight from Yakutsk to Ussuriysk, so Turnip had to fly to Khabarovsk (Buri) first and then take a train to Ussuriysk. Unfortunately, her flight was late that day and she couldn’t catch the last train to Ussuriysk.
When she left the airport, some of her Yakuts (a Russian minority, mainly located in the Sakha Republic, the largest administrative region in Russia, with Yakutsk as its capital) planned to stay in a local hostel for one night and then take the train to Ussuriysk at dawn. As you know, not long ago, on this road to Ussuriysk, there was a robbery and murder – two Korean “black taxi” drivers killed five Chinese traders who were going to Ussuriysk to buy goods, and the murderers have not yet been caught! –No one would dare to take a cab to Ussuriysk at this late hour.
Turnip was the only woman in the group, so they left the passenger seat for her. Turnip was really reluctant, she was afraid that staying overnight would delay the shipment for two or three days for nothing.
The slogan “Time is money, efficiency is life”, which came out of Shenzhen in the late 80s, always resonated with Turnip. Her style of doing things is “immediately, immediately, today’s work is done today”. Besides, it’s not safe to travel at night, but with so much money on you, is it safe to stay in a hostel?
Turnip took a look at the cab driver and thought he was a good-looking “Ermaozi” (the common name for Chinese people of Russian descent in Russia in the 1990s, calling Russians “Da Maozi” or “Maozi” and Yakutians “Yakudun”), so she asked him if he was going to Ussuriysk now.
The driver said he could go, but he had to go home first to tell his wife.
The driver said he could go, but he had to go home to his wife first. She turned to her friends and asked if anyone was going with her, but they all shook their heads. After a moment of silence, Turnip asked the driver to show her his license and driver’s license. She took a pen and a note from her handbag, copied down the information on it, and turned around to hand it to a friend, telling them that if they didn’t hear from her in a few days, they should give the note to someone from “An Cheng”.
After the friend got out of the car, Turnip switched to the back seat and lay across the back seat with her head resting on the handbag containing the money, and fell asleep intermittently. The driver drove steadily and quickly, five hours to Ussuriysk. When night fell the next day, and the goods were almost finished, Turnip saw the Yakuts coming out of the train station. After dinner, he had to return to Yakutsk with the truck, another 3,000 kilometers and 4 days and 3 nights of driving.
In the summer of 1998, the business of “Ansung” was getting better and better, and its fame was getting bigger and bigger, so that even cab drivers in Yakutsk knew where it was.
Whenever she had time, Turnip would go around the supermarket alone. She was able to quickly detect the customers’ preferences for the products and adjust her purchasing plan in advance. She is also glad that she gave up Harbin and came to Russia – the abundant supply of goods in the country makes it easy for her to find the right goods at the right price.
In a mall full of shelves, Turnip was thinking about how to negotiate with the landlord to expand the supermarket on the left side and get more varieties of goods to sell.
However, what she didn’t know was that a huge disaster was looming.
4
On the morning of August 17, 1998, before Turnip got out of bed, her financial manager and high school friend Liu Dong knocked on her door and said, “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over, the ruble has lost 50% of its value overnight.
“How could this happen?!” Turnip didn’t understand at all how such a big change happened after one night’s sleep – previously, Yeltsin’s government had repeatedly assured the people that the ruble wasn’t going to devalue, and everyone believed it.
And that was not the end of the story. 20 days later, the dollar went from 6.5 to 22 (by this time, the new ruble was introduced on January 1, 1998, with 1 new ruble for 1,000 old rubles, but both old and new rubles were available until 2002). Russia was in a state of chaos and confusion, and the Anzai supermarket lost its customers overnight.
Turnip couldn’t believe the sudden disaster, she still held on to the hope that the economy would soon get better.
She spent the entire month of October in Ussuriysk, Suifenhe and Harbin, looking for something more affordable. She did find a lot of things, but after returning to “Ancheng” for a few rounds, she found that it was all in vain and the market had not improved at all.
One day, Liu Dong told her in a hurry, “Nan Bao has run away with Falet. She said she’s not coming back.”
“Ah? How did that happen again?” Turnip instantly had a feeling of being abandoned, “We clearly agreed to fight together.”
This year was the 6th year that Turnip and Bao Nan had come out of Xuzhou together. In these years, the two of them have been living and eating together. It was true that they didn’t have much time to get in touch with people outside, much less to fall in love, but Bao Nan was so infatuated with Falet that Turnip still couldn’t figure it out.
He has been living in Neriuengeli for decades and drives a “black cab” to pick up and drop off Chinese merchants in Yakutsk and Neriuengeli. After they became familiar with him, he found an excuse to drive him around Yakutsk and slowly she fell in love with him, who already had a family.
About a year ago, Fawlett’s daughter found out about their relationship, and Fawlett’s wife became very angry and had a big fight with Fawlett at home, and called Bao Nan and Yan to “negotiate” with him.
The woman, who had never even been in love, should not have been a third party, “If you really want to get married, you should go back to Xuzhou.
After the “negotiation”, Liu Qi picked up a dazed Bao Nan from her home in Fawlty. On the way, Bao Nan just kept her head down and didn’t say a word as she followed Liu Qi towards the train station. Turnip suggested that she go back to Xuzhou to recuperate and forget about it, and slipped her a sum of money: “You should first get your clothes up in Xuzhou to give us a foundation for our future brand clothes.”
When the 1998 Spring Festival holiday came, Nan’s business didn’t work out, and the money was almost lost. The company’s business was not doing well and was losing money.
“Did Fawlty’s wife say anything?” Turnip asked Liu Dong.
“No, Falet has divorced, is net, Bao Nan sister said.” Liu Dong told Liu Qi that Bao Nan had also talked to him, saying that he was “almost 40, and if he didn’t get married, he wouldn’t even be able to give birth to a child”.
The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
5
After nearly 10 years of working hard, Turnip has always been used to being alone, especially when it comes to purchasing.
She is a low-key, vigilant person who never talks to strangers, always has long hair and a pair of large round-framed glasses, and her thin figure makes outsiders treat her like a student. The advantage of this was that she inadvertently avoided many dangers. She once said, “Ninety percent of Chinese people in Yakutsk have either been arrested and put in jail or robbed, and I have never once encountered such an incident.
In 1998, before Christmas, the stock of An Cheng wallpaper was finally sold out. Once again, Turnip was on her own and decided to go to Ussuriysk to make a purchase. The wallpaper she chose this time was distributed by a father and son from Harbin. The first floor is a store and the second floor is a dormitory. In addition to the father and son’s home and staff dormitory, there are two separately decorated guest rooms to receive buyers.
Turnip chose the goods, contacted the truck driver, and prepared to fly back to Yakutsk the next day after loading the goods and sending them to the truck. That day, she had just returned from the wholesale market when the owner’s son came running over and called out, “Mr. Liu, Mr. Liu, your friend is looking for you, just that car.”
When she saw the front door of the SUV pointed out by the young man opened, a big man of 1.8 meters with sunglasses and an inch head came out, shook the leather coat draped on his body, stepped on the big black leather boots and walked towards her. When Turnip looked at the situation, she understood that she had run into the legendary gangster.
“Are you Turnip?” The big man asked as he approached, with a northeastern accent.
“I don’t know you.”
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time.” The big man said fiercely, “Come to the market management office tomorrow at 9 a.m. for a moment.”
“Where is the management office?” Turnip pretended to be confused.
“Just come to the market and ask. Remember, 9:00.” The big man turned around and went back to his car. The car drove away with a trail of white smoke.
In the early 1990s, some Chinese traders rented an empty lot in cooperation with the Ussuriysk government and slowly formed a wholesale and sales market for Chinese goods. At that time, the Russian tax system was in disarray, and the government only levied a flat tax on the market managers, who then shared the fees with the vendors. This gave the market managers a lot of room to maneuver and gave the triads an opportunity to infiltrate.
After the devaluation of the ruble, the triad activities became more rampant. She heard that not long ago a Chinese trader in Yakutsk took away his goods without paying the triads protection money and was chased to Yakutsk, where he broke his leg and paid 3,000 RMB for protection.
The next morning, Turnip arrived at the market management office on the 2nd floor of the Chinese wholesale market on time. When she pushed the door in, she saw a smoke-filled room with six bare-chested boys with green dragons on their arms smoking cigarettes and playing poker around the fire. Turnip asked as if nothing was wrong: “Where is your leader?”
The young man beside her glanced up at her and pointed to the room inside with his cigarette-clutching hand. Turnip walked over and pushed the door open, and saw the big man from yesterday sitting at his desk.
Turnip asked, “What do you want from me?”
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time.” The big man jumped down from the desk, walked to the sofa and sat down, waved his hand and pointed at Turnip’s face and asked, “How many goods have you pulled from us? You’ve never paid us an administrative fee!”
“No, I haven’t pulled any goods from here.”
“No? Then how did you get your goods inside (Yakutsk)?”
“I got the goods from Harbin, and they shipped them there, and I don’t know how they got them in.”
In fact, when the big man went to her yesterday, he asked the boss if she had loaded the goods in the past two days, and the boss said no. Because Turnip’s arrangement was indeed to load the goods today. The big man didn’t catch anything, so he said to Turnip harshly: “Now I’m telling you, I didn’t know before, and seeing that you’re a woman, I’ll write it off. From today on, you have to pay an administrative fee for every grain of rice you pull away from Ussuriysk, remember!”
“Then it’s okay I’ll go?”
“You go.”
Turnip came out of the market and immediately rushed back to the supplier. After watching the truck finish loading and driving out, she immediately asked the boss’s son to drive her to the airport and flew back to Yakutsk, and never went to Ussuriysk again.
Shortly after New Year’s 1999, Turnip went to Moscow on business, and soon after she got off the plane, she received the news that Minister Zhang had been robbed – the previous afternoon, he had gone to the bank to exchange more than 10,000 US dollars, and had just returned to the dormitory building when he was followed into the room by five or six masked, burly men with guns to their backs. They were all wearing camouflage uniforms, stirrups military leather boots, holding silenced pistols. Liu Dong and Minister Zhang’s wife, who returned from work behind, were also held hostage in Minister Zhang’s room.
The robbers entered the door with ether towels to cover the mouth of Minister Zhang, who immediately closed his breath and pretended to faint on the ground, secretly watching the group conducted a systematic search of the room, all the money, including yuan, rubles, dollars, all snatched away. The passports were also checked one by one and then neatly yarded on the floor.
When he heard what happened to Minister Zhang, he was even more shocked by the threat of the triads. In the past in Yakutsk, it was rare for Russians to rob Chinese people. Even if there were murders, they were all committed by Chinese circles who wanted to kill people. Now, even the “special forces” are masked out to rob Chinese businessmen, “this place really can not stay any longer”.
But leaving Russia, where can I go?
6
Minister Zhang was robbed by the Russian special forces, and for a long time, he was in a state of panic.
In the past few years in Yakutsk, the large supermarket “Ancheng” was like her child, but she knew that for a long time, she would not only fail to earn money in this “chaotic place”, but also fail to ensure her personal safety.
Next year is the millennium. Turnip hopes that she can make a new start.
Minister Zhang suggests that Turnip emigrate to Canada because “it’s the easiest developed country to emigrate to”, but Turnip dismisses the idea, thinking that she doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know what she can do there. What’s more, it was “as cold as Yakutsk”.
In January, it snowed heavily in Yakutsk, a small city only 400 kilometers from the Arctic Circle, where it is dark in the summer and dark most of the time in the winter. This rhythm was hard for Turnip, and with the difficulty of eating green vegetables, she had been suffering from constant stomach problems for several years, and had severe pains in winter.
She suddenly remembered the two Wenzhou boys she met on the plane some time ago, they were doing glasses business in Moscow, and while chatting, they said they were going to Lagos some time later. Seeing that Turnip was impressed, one of the boys, Zhu, was very enthusiastic and asked for Turnip’s information, saying that he would help her apply for an invitation and we could go there together.
The thought of a hot Africa made Turnip’s stomach feel much better.
On Minister Zhang’s side, the immigration agent’s proposal came out – first fake marriage with a Russian technical elite who wanted to immigrate to Canada, and use the other party’s technical background to obtain technical immigration status. After the immigration is successful, the marriage is then dissolved locally. Turnip then had to provide all the expenses for the two to immigrate, which was expected to be more than $20,000.
“Fake marriage?” Turnip didn’t expect to have to use this trick, “What if you can’t get a divorce?”
“I’ve checked it out, no problem, they’ve made hundreds of orders.”
Minister Zhang told Turnip that all she had to do was to pay a deposit of $7,000 and wait for the notice, and once the agency found the “husband” she would be sent to Moscow for the marriage, “The agency will take care of everything else. The agency will take care of everything else. After you get your immigration visa, you will pay the rest of the money”.
Two weeks later, Turnip was notified and went to the immigration agency near Red Square in Moscow. In a small meeting room, Turnip shook hands with the Russian “husband” and finished the marriage registration. The agent told her that she needed to stay in Moscow for a few more days, just in case.
Turnip stayed in a Chinese-run youth hostel, also near Red Square, recommended by her friend Dong Ni, whom she met in Suifenhe. Dong Ni works as an administrator in the Russian branch of a Chinese company and is based in Moscow. As the Chinese New Year was approaching, this afternoon, Dong Ni invited Liu Qi to their company’s Spring Festival dinner.
As soon as they arrived and took their seats, a tall, thin Russian guy smiled at them. Dong Ni introduced Sasha, a Belarusian electrical engineer from the company, to Yan. Throughout the night, Sasha sat beside Turnip and Dong Ni and asked questions.
After the party, Dong Ni drove her back to the hostel and asked her how she felt about Sasha on the way.
“Very gentlemanly. Your boyfriend?”
“Haha, my kid is almost ready to hit the sauce, and he’s the one who wants to chase you. Just before he came out, he pulled me aside and pleaded with me to help pass the word, saying he didn’t dare to approach you directly for fear you’d reject it all at once.”
Turnip thought Sasha was too young by the looks of his face, but Dong Ni said, “2 years older than you.”
“But I’m going to escape from here soon.”
“Maybe you’ll be chained again?” Dong Ni laughed.
The next day, Dong Ni took a plane back home for New Year’s Eve. It was snowing again, and the colorful mushroom heads of St. Vasily’s Cathedral on Red Square looked like they were covered with icing. In the evening, the snow was still falling. Turnip suddenly saw Sasha outside the hostel in the heavy snow, holding a handful of red roses. Turnip hurriedly turned around and went downstairs. When he saw Turnip pushing out the door and walking quickly towards him, Sasha’s frozen face smiled.
The first thing that happened was that Sasha asked Dong Ni about the hotel where Turnip was staying and came straight here after work, waiting outside for a while.
In the following week, Sasha took a leave of absence from work and came to pick up Turnip early in the morning every day for a trip to Moscow, arranging the trip properly. Turnip also felt a rare sense of relaxation, not having to think about the exchange rate, how well the goods were selling, or the salaries of the employees, and just followed Sasha around.
In the courtyard of the Central Armed Forces Museum, Turnip finally saw the most famous tanks of World War II, the T34 and the Katyusha howitzer, which were often talked about by their older brothers in the barracks compound when they were children. The image of Rita, Genia, and Vaskov from “Here Comes the Silent Dawn” that I read when I was young came back to me. For the first time in so many years, Turnip felt that she had completely surrendered her heart.
But the meeting was short, and Turnip had to fly back to Yakutsk, and since then a bitter long-distance relationship had begun.
7
After the previous encounter with the gang in Ussuriysk, this year Turnip took a detour to Moscow, whether to Suifenhe or Harbin, which gave her and Sasha a “reasonable excuse” for frequent dating. As their relationship deepened over the year, Sasha began to mention marriage to her. Turnip understood that she couldn’t delay any longer, but she was still hesitant, “Should I just stay in Russia and live with Sasha?”
However, the Russian economy was getting worse, and Turnip was looking for opportunities. She even thought of Beijing’s Xiushui Street for a while – she had been there once a few years ago and was extremely impressed with it, especially the high-fashion, A-goods business of European and American designer clothes, bags, jewelry and watches that foreigners were so keen on.
At the end of the year, Turnip decided to go to Xiushui Street once more.
After walking back and forth several times in the open-air market, which is less than 10 meters wide and more than 500 meters long, Turnip was excited to see the 418 tin-roofed stores divided into two columns, crowded together one by one, with foreign buyers carrying large plastic bags full of goods and bargaining with shopkeepers using calculators. Figuring that it would be difficult to rent a store, she tried to ask the shopkeeper if anyone wanted to transfer.
Unexpectedly, several shopkeepers complained to her, saying that last month there were reports that Xiushui Street would be demolished and a new Xiushui building would be built to “retreat into the hall”, but the store space would have to be re-bid, without taking care of their original tenants, “the fame of Xiushui Street, but we have more than ten years to build out. The. This is a robbery, we must sue them.”
This made Turnip’s heart cool down, knowing that such a dispute might prevent the building from opening for a long time. Even if the construction started smoothly, it would take at least 2 years to build such a tall building, right? The distant water could not quench the thirst of the near. However, the scene in front of her reminded her of the time when she and Bao Nan were working together in the Xuzhou garment market. Turnip found a phone booth and called Bao Nan, sharing her feelings on Xiushui Street and asking if she could come back to Beijing to work with her.
She told her that she and Farit had bought a piece of land outside of Yakutsk and had just built a new house, and that her own store had just taken off.
“Pregnant? That’s great. How many months?”
“Three months.”
I didn’t realize how fast time had passed, but Bao Nan had her own child. Standing alone in the winter streets of Beijing, Turnip could not help but sigh a bit, and could not help but make her own plans.
This time back in Yakutsk, Minister Zhang said that the immigration agent had called again to urge her to meet the visa officer, and that everything else was done.
“Ah? I forgot to tell you, I’m not going to Canada, I’m getting married to Sasha.”
“Then the $7,000 is gone?”
“Forget it. I’ve just decided to go back home with him for the wedding next June. If the agency needs me to follow up, just talk to me, I’ll cooperate.”
“Looks like you are going to put down roots here.” Minister Zhang smiled. Turnip also smiled bitterly, unable to find anything to say in response. She and Minister Zhang had talked many times, and both of them were not too optimistic that the Russian economy would recover in the short term, but life still had to go on.
It was at this point that Xiao Zhu suddenly called. It had been more than a year, and Turnip had forgotten about Lagos, so it took her a while to remember who Xiao Zhu was on the other end of the line. Zhu told her that she had brought back the invitation and that the market in Lagos was good, even better than in Russia a few years ago.
“Really?” Upon hearing this, Turnip couldn’t help but ask, “So when are you going again?”
“I guess it will be until the end of next year, we have to get rid of the stock in Moscow first.”
Turnip couldn’t wait that long and decided to go on her own, calculating the timing – she had to take Sasha back to Xuzhou to see her father in the Chinese New Year, and then she had to prepare for the wedding in June – she only had the chance to go there during the period before the Chinese New Year.
So, on the second day of the millennium, after saying goodbye to Sasha in Moscow, Turnip flew to Lagos on her own.
8
At the Lagos airport, it took a long time to wait for Sun Guoping, the owner of Dragon City, who was late due to traffic jams.
“There are two floors in Dragon City, the second floor is a guest room, which costs 38 USD a day for food and lodging, and the ground floor is a store for wholesale Chinese goods, and business is very busy.
When Turnip arrived, he saw a Wenzhou shoe store, where black vendors were crowded together, holding up their US dollars to grab goods. The shopkeeper was so busy and sweaty that his black-framed glasses were squeezed out of shape. Later, they had to post a notice at the door: “(Buy shoes) less than 100 boxes will not be sold.”
Such a scene made Turnip’s blood boil. She hurriedly asked Sun Guoping to mark out the main areas and exits of the famous Idumota market on a map, called a taxi and went to the largest wholesale market in the area.
As soon as I entered the market, I lost my way – it was like a maze, with stores on the main and side roads, and temporary vendors with umbrellas on the side of the road. There were hardware locks, chairs, fabrics, batteries, lamps and other household items, most of which were Chinese brand goods, such as Tiger Head batteries and Titan candles. The shopkeepers were all standing at the entrance, yelling about their business from time to time, and when they saw people coming, they would reach out and pull them in.
Until it was almost dark, Turnip hadn’t finished shopping. When I came back, I found out that this wholesale market is not only for the local market, but also for the whole Nigeria and even West Africa, especially the surrounding countries such as Cameroon, Benin, Gabon and Ghana. There are more than 17 million people in Lagos, 190 million people in Nigeria, and more than 200 million people in neighboring countries.
But after 10 days on the streets of Lagos, Turnip gradually became anxious – she had not found her entry point in such a promising market – she had brought a few packs of stockings from Russia to test the waters, but realized that people here did not wear stockings at all. The habits of the locals and their consumption habits were very different from those in the Russian Far East.
The local people’s habits and consumption habits are very different from those in the Far East.
He sighed that he might have to return empty-handed this time, “I don’t know what I can do here.
“I’ll tell you a trick, it’s profitable.” The company’s owner, Zhang, helped a Hong Kong businessman set up an oxygen plant here some time ago. “A bottle of oxygen sells for US$10, but it only sells for $10 at home. There are so many construction sites that need oxygen (for gas cutting) everywhere.”
But he insisted on writing Zhang’s contact information in Tianjin on a sticky note and gave it to her, saying that Zhang’s boss in Hong Kong had gone back to do “big business” and had closed the factory.
The company’s business is now in the process of closing down. But it was too late now. She closed her eyes, and the alternating scenes of snowy Yakutsk and steaming Lagos kept her calm for a long time.
She took out the note written by Master Liang and read it again and again, thinking that this was the only way to go.
As soon as she arrived in Beijing, Zhang immediately contacted her and arranged to meet her in Tianjin the next day.
On that day, Zhang brought over Master Liu and Master Wang, who had previously worked together in the Lagos oxygen plant, and assured him, “You only need to invest $100,000, and the rest will be wrapped up in our three brothers, and the oxygen will be ready in three months.”
Turnip mused that if it went well, it wouldn’t delay her marriage to Sasha. As long as the factory produces products and starts making money, she can convince Sasha to go over with her, and with Sasha’s ability to help her manage the factory is no problem at all. “However, you also contribute some money, meaning that there is a restraint. Otherwise, if you guys are not happy and come back, what can I do?”
After everyone negotiated, Old Zhang contributed 50,000, and Master Liu and Master Wang each contributed 10,000. Turnip Liu saw that everyone had talked clearly about the cooperation agreement and the division of labor for the project, so he decided right away, “Everyone will split up, but the oxygen must be out before May.” Turnip sent Lao Zhang and the others away and rushed back to Beijing immediately.
Sasha had to fly to Beijing the next day to go back to Xuzhou with her to meet her family. Turnip booked a room at the Beijing Hotel facing Chang’an Street, where she could look out over Tiananmen Square from the balcony. Turnip was happy at the thought that Sasha might like it too. She just didn’t know how to ask about Lagos.
That day, Turnip arrived early at the arrival hall of the capital airport and stood behind the exit railings. I didn’t expect Sasha to shed tears as soon as they met, “I thought I’d never see you again ……”
Turnip then remembered that it was Sasha’s first time to fly, so she reassured him, “You’ll get used to it after a few more times, it’s okay.”
“No, no, no, it’s too dangerous. Let’s try not to fly in the future.”
“How can I do business without flying?”
“You don’t need to do business! I’ll support you, I have a job.”
Turnip’s heart tightened, and she thought she’d better not tell him about the factory, and find an opportunity to talk about it later.
9
After the Chinese New Year, Liu returned to Yakutsk and resold “Ancheng” to Minister Zhang and several other shareholders, then flew to Lagos and rented an office building and a factory with Zhang, and completed the procedures for investing in the factory. Mr. Zhang was responsible for the construction of the factory, Mr. Liu was responsible for recruiting workers, and Mr. Wang was engaged in training. One month later, the used oxygen equipment and 1078 oxygen cylinders purchased from China also arrived. In less than two weeks, the equipment was installed and commissioned.
Turnip thought he could produce oxygen ahead of schedule, but the power supply in Lagos was extremely unstable, with power outages almost every day, sometimes more than 30 times a day. The oxygen generator had to be pressurized to 140 kg/cm2 (kilograms for short) or more before oxygen could be produced. With such a power supply, the oxygen simply does not come out.
And they bought a second-hand generator in the local completely can not take the oxygen machine, the old Zhang to find a repairman, the other party promised to fix within two weeks, but the repair did not see a month to improve. When the service fee was paid only the final payment, the repairman disappeared. This unforeseen circumstance made the original ample time schedule, suddenly nervous. The other party took a look at the contract and said that it was a private job taken by the repairman himself and the company did not recognize it without the signature of their manager. The company did not recognize the contract without the manager’s signature.
However, as soon as the new repairman started work, the repairman who had run away from the factory came to the factory with a fat police officer, saying that the factory had embezzled the money from his contract. The officer asked Turnip to go to the police station to assist in the investigation. Turnip was furious when he heard this, “How can there be such a backwards person?!”
The interpreter, Wang, had been in Lagos for 3 years and was supposed to work with a Chinese company to build a railroad from Lagos to Ibadan, but the project was delayed again and again by the Nigerian side, so he had to jump ship and come to Liu Qi. Seeing this, he told Turnip that the fat police officer should have been bribed. In the end, it was only through the introduction of a female police officer who met the local female police chief, who arranged for another officer to take over the case, that the unjustified prosecution was dismissed.
It was the beginning of May, and Sasha had called several times to urge Turnip to go back and prepare for the wedding. Zhang also suggested that it would be better to buy another generator instead of the one that had been used for the wedding, “otherwise we’ll be dragged to death by it. But Turnip could no longer afford to buy a generator. The $160,000 he had brought on the trip was about to be spent. She had to ask Minister Zhang for help – they had not given her more than 100,000 US dollars after the previous transfer of “An Cheng”. Although Minister Zhang was having a hard time in Russia, she really had no choice.
Hearing of Turnip’s dilemma, Minister Zhang told Turnip that he had opened a Coca-Cola bottling plant with a friend in Yaoundé, Cameroon a few years ago, and that the friend could get some cash out, but that Turnip had to go to Yaoundé in person to get the money.
“What a lifesaver, I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Be safe, don’t stay long, especially at night when there are many robbers, be careful to avoid those motorcycle guys. I have arranged for a friend to pick you up at the airport.”
Minister Zhang’s friend came up with $50,000, and Turnip was inwardly grateful. Her friend also reminded her again and again that Cameroon customs only allowed $5,000 in cash to be carried with her, and that if she was caught, she would not only have to confiscate the cash but also go to jail. Turnip tied the cash to her thighs with a bag, covered it with a skirt and walked straight to the airport.
At that time, there was no security at the airports in Cameroon or Nigeria, and security facilities and procedures were only introduced after the 9/11 terrorist attacks the following year.
Back in Lagos, Liu Qi bought a new generator and Zhang and his team worked through the night for several days to install and debug it. When he saw Master Liu and his black apprentice filling up bottles of oxygen cylinders, Liu’s heart hung in the air.
Once the news came out, a long line of trucks came to buy oxygen in front of the factory.
Turnip was late in going back, and Sasha’s phone calls were getting more and more urgent. Sasha said that his parents had even booked the church for the wedding, but Turnip was nowhere to be seen. He thought that he would be away for at least a month after the oxygen was released. Turnip tentatively asked Sasha if he could postpone the wedding for a month.
Sasha exploded at the sound of this, yelling at the other end of the phone and asking her if she wanted to get married or not. This is the first time in their long relationship that Sasha has been angry with her, and Turnip understands. At night, Turnip lies in bed and has trouble sleeping – she has to get married first and push back the honeymoon. It would be better if we could convince Sasha to come here for the honeymoon. It’s always a pleasure to have him come here and see for himself. The factory is making money ……
I fell asleep in a trance thinking about this.
10
“Boom!”
One night, a loud noise suddenly woke up the sleeping Turnip, and in the haze several dark shadows rushed in. She was about to get angry: the workers here are really lawless, how come they are fighting in my room? It was only when she put on her glasses that she was startled. Seven or eight people in the darkness were holding shiny machetes and shouting at her: “Money!
She knew that the robbers in Lagos were the same as those in Russia – they only robbed for money, they didn’t usually kill people. Turnip got up and put her coat on, and the leader of the robbers came in. He was wearing the overalls from the mine, and the helmet light was sweeping around on his head, and he had a pistol in his hand, not knowing if it was real or not.
Soon, the three brothers, Wang and Zhang, who lived in the dormitory next to the robbers, and Xiao Zhou, the cashier, were all gathered in the house of the robbers. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the market. When they arrived, the leader of the kidnappers pointed a gun at Liu Qi’s head and asked her to take out all the money. The robbers took everyone over.
That afternoon, Turnip had just gone to change $1,000 in naira (Nigeria’s circulating currency). She pointed her finger at the filing cabinet containing the money, and the two robbers pulled open the door, saw a large stack of naira, and excitedly plowed it into the bag in their hands, then continued to rummage through the cabinet to see if there were other valuable things to look at, passports, papers, pencils, etc. fell all over the place.
The leader pointed his gun at Turnip again and asked where the safe was. He told Wang to tell them that he didn’t have a safe, but only the office of the landlord of the factory upstairs – in fact, the office was unused and the landlord never came.
The robbers whooped and hollered and went upstairs, and half an hour later, nothing more was heard. The company is still standing stiffly facing the wall as the robbers requested, no one dared to move, and Zhou was still sitting paralyzed in the corner. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the market. After a few minutes, Old Wang came back and whispered to Turnip that the robbers should have withdrawn.
“Turn on the lights.” Turn on the lights,” Turnip said.
The first thing you need to do is to get rid of the problem. The company also confessed that he was not the director of the oxygen plant in Hong Kong, and he was only doing the job that Master Liu is doing now, and he did not expect to suffer so much during this time.
The company has been grateful to Zhang, and she knows that without his support, the plant could not have been built.
He said that he was exhausted and that he was not going to earn any more money, and that he only wanted to return the capital he had invested. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. I don’t have the money now, but I’ll pay you back when I earn it.”
Everyone dispersed in disgust, leaving Turnip alone in the office, full of thoughts that the heart of her small team was now scattered, and if she left, the factory would definitely never be opened again.
Once she left, she would not only lose the factory, but also this hot land full of opportunities. And once she went back, she would no longer have the financial resources to make a break for it, and could only accompany Sasha in his countryside in Belarus, living a humdrum life ……
From the bottom of her heart, Turnip didn’t want to give up.
The next morning, Sasha called again to urge her. Knowing that her Russian was not good enough to explain to Sasha what she had experienced yesterday and what she was thinking, and that Sasha’s Chinese was not good enough to understand such a complicated description of the situation, she simply said, “This marriage is not going to work in the short term, so either you come here and help me or break up now.”
After a few moments of silence, Sasha finally growled, “You, you liar! You ……”
When Old Zhang and the others saw that Turnip was not even getting married, they also wanted to work up this factory, so they stopped talking and stayed with gritted teeth, only Xiao Zhou dragged his suitcase back to his country.
Two months later, the factory finally stabilized, and business was booming, with workers working around the clock. Even so, the factory capacity still can not catch up with the demand for goods, pulling oxygen cylinders often have to wait in a long line at the door.
11
One day, Liu Qi was sitting in his office, looking at the production and sales reports, and was secretly happy: if things continue like this, in less than six months, all the investment will be recovered, and maybe we can open a few more oxygen plants. The interpreter, Wang, walks in with a smart black guy behind him, whom Turnip knows as the assistant to the landlord of the plant. He came to invite Turnip to the landlord’s house for a chat.
He had known the landlord for nearly three years and had introduced him to Turnip before. “This man is very shrewd, he studied in England for many years, he is very familiar with the elite level of Lagos, he is very powerful in the political and business world, he not only has three or four factory properties in Ikeja, the whole Lagos International Airport cleaning service is contracted by him.” Old Wang secretly told Turnip that although the landlord had never been to the factory, a number of people in this factory were his eyes and ears, especially the janitors.
“Okay, let’s go to this ‘Hongmen Banquet’.”
Once inside the compound, Turnip saw more than 20 limousines parked neatly. Old Wang said that all these cars belonged to the landlord, who liked to play with cars. The assistant introduced Turnip and Lao Wang into an oversized living room. The landowner was dressed in a traditional Yoruba dress, in his early 40s, with a well-kept figure and no fat on his face.
The landlord gestured for Turnip to eat the grapes and pineapple on the coffee table, then said that he had been very busy some time ago and hadn’t helped Turnip much, and expressed his admiration when he heard that she had handled a series of problems such as lawsuits, strikes and robberies on her own, “If I had known about it and could have helped a little, I should have been able to avoid less detours.”
After listening to Old Wang’s translation, Turnip just laughed politely twice. The landlord then went on to say that he had many friends in politics, the military and the business world, who would often come to the house for salons and receptions, and that he would welcome Turnip to come often in the future as well, “If you want to make your business bigger in Lagos, you must rely on the help of these friends.”
For many years, from Xuzhou to Yakutsk, Turnip has been a wandering figure, doing his own business in the shadows, so much so that even the gangsters in Ussuriysk couldn’t get a grip on him. The landlord said that he would like to have a meeting with the landlord, but he did not understand that the factory was not the same thing as the previous business.
So when the landlord said he wanted to cooperate with her, she refused – she had already come from the dead, and now that things were just getting better, there was no need to cooperate – and more importantly, Turnip hated such calculating people, and like the gangster in Ussuriysk, she wanted to avoid them.
“You can’t control your workers, they steal and sell your oxygen at night.” The landlord saw that Turnip refused and cleared his throat to show his Trump card.
“No way!” Turnip thought that the evening shift was all led by Master Liu and Master Wang’s big apprentices. The two masters loved their apprentices like sons, not only did they teach them all the techniques, they usually thought of them when they had anything good to eat, with the two of them around, it was impossible for the foreman to do this kind of supervisory theft.
“You go back and count your oxygen cylinders, is not lost 22.”
After saying goodbye to the landlord, he went straight back to the factory and called Zhang to count the oxygen cylinders one by one, and there were exactly 22 missing. She always felt that she was treating these workers well, but why would this happen? After thinking about it, she had to ask the police chief for help.
After the last case of the maintenance master’s prosecution, Turnip was impressed by the woman’s integrity and decisiveness, and it was only with the help of the woman’s chief that the problem was solved. Ikeja is the main industrial area of Lagos and the capital of Lagos State, with many business owners and wealthy people. Moreover, unlike other police officers, the female chief never hinted at “my family has a problem with the air conditioner recently” or “my elders are having a birthday” to solicit bribes. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers.
After listening to Turnip’s complaints, the female director smiled and said to Turnip, “It seems that you really don’t know much about the workers here.” After that, she gave Turnip two tips – first, to emphasize discipline to all the workers in the factory, to build severe punishments, to hold the “whip”, to establish authority rather than affinity; second, the most important incentive workers need is tips, not gifts.
The next day, the female director sent someone to secretly take away the gatekeeper for interrogation, who honestly gave a list of workers who stole cylinders and sold oxygen. Then a busload of policemen was sent to the factory and arrested the thieves one by one according to the list. In the whole factory, only one black production manager, Mande, was not involved. For this reason, the factory stopped production for several days and all re-recruited workers for training before starting production. Since then, the workers were so afraid of Turnip that no one stole anything anymore.
The landlord was still not satisfied, and began to secretly pry into the supply channels of the factory equipment and the contacts of the production technicians through the cooperation of the gatekeeper. As the owner of the plant, he could always find various reasons, such as the oxygen plant dug a cool pool on the ground without his consent, which required a fine, etc. The most deadly thing was that he soon caught Turnip in the act of “tax evasion”.
The “tax evasion” that Turnip suffered was very embarrassing. She was unfamiliar with the Nigerian tax filing process and hired a local accountant to handle the tax filing. The landlord discovered that there was no record of the tax payment for Turnip’s factory in the national tax system – that is, the factory had never paid any tax at all – and that the accountant had taken the tax money for himself.
The landlord told Turnip that there was only one way out, and that was to close the factory and find another place, “otherwise the tax authorities will know about it and impose heavy fines and blacklist you, and it will be a problem to open another factory in the future”.
Turnip angrily approached the accountant to confront him, who quickly admitted all this and even told him without fear that although he would be put in jail, he could soon pay to get himself out, “but not you, then your tax evasion will be exposed and the tax office will definitely fine you 300 million naira (about 6 million RMB). “
Turnip was eventually forced to close the hard-earned factory.
12
After more than a month of careful selection, the interpreter, Wang, recommended a factory of Lebanese origin in central Ikeja, off the main road. Turnip and Zhang followed Wang to see the site. As soon as Zhang saw the location of the factory next to the busy main road, he said it was good because not only was the traffic smooth, but there would be no more robbers.
The factory is indeed very spacious, divided into two parts, with a large iron gate in the middle, so that it is also convenient for future expansion. She had been thinking of expanding another production line, and this factory was just what she wanted. Of course, having suffered from the local landlord, Turnip also hoped that renting a Lebanese factory would be better, but the reality was not as she had hoped.
It had been more than two months since Turnip’s factory moved in, but the big, fat Lebanese man, who seemed to have a big heart, never delivered the other half of the factory to Turnip, saying “Tomorrow” every time he asked. After another month, the old man rented out the other part of the factory to a Chinese man who had just arrived in Lagos to work on panel furniture. Turnip couldn’t be angry anymore, so he got up early in the morning and locked the door of the furniture factory with a big lock he had bought.
When the Chinese owner of the furniture factory found out about the trouble, he immediately took the old Lebanese man to court. The old Lebanese man and Turnip accused each other in court, and Turnip had to approach the female director again for help.
This time, however, the director told Turnip that it was a very clear and simple matter, but there was a big problem behind it – “The old Lebanese man has a nephew named Fathi who is very influential here and is the head of the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce. I have to be afraid of him.” The director didn’t dare to deal with the matter rashly and told Turnip to wait while she went to talk to Fathi. A week later, the director regrettably told Turnip that Fatty did not want to get involved and that the director could not help.
This time, Turnip was really a bit helpless. Looking around, there was not even a single Chinese compatriot who could help – in 2002, it was almost difficult to see Chinese people on the streets of Lagos, and a large number of Chinese people went to Lagos to do business after the China-Africa Forum Beijing Summit in 2006.
The old man in Lebanon never gave her back that part of the plant, and a year later, Turnip had to find another place to open an additional plant.
Although the oxygen plant was profitable, Turnip was always in fear.
With the growing understanding of the oxygen production process, the initial ignorance and fearlessness soon disappeared. Turnip felt that there was a time bomb hanging over his head. At that time, there had been two explosions at the old man’s factory in Lebanon. One was an explosion while filling a cylinder, which exploded like a cannonball into the blast wall of the filling room, pushing the 30cm thick concrete blast wall back by more than a meter; the other explosion knocked a hole bigger than the head out of the blast wall, but thankfully no one was hurt either time.
After the accident, Liu Qi also consulted domestic experts, experts said, oxygen is not dangerous, the danger is mainly in the filling: one is the oxygen cylinder mixed with hydrogen or stained with oil; the other is the filling speed is too fast, causing electrostatic fires and explosions. “Even in the case of more standardized management in the country, there have been accidents where people have been killed by explosions due to management negligence.” This makes the heart of Liuyi even more to the throat.
Although Master Liu and Master Wang checked each cylinder very carefully, there was no way to check whether the cylinder had been mixed with hydrogen or whether there was grease in it, so they had to pray for “God’s blessing”.
During the daytime, under the strict supervision of the two masters, the workers follow the operation procedures; during the night shift, the workers do what they can to save their time. They do not seem to take life seriously, more than 100 kilograms of pressure filling line, workers often directly from the filling of the cylinder, directly into the empty bottle, two explosions are such an operation generated by electrostatic sparks detonated.
When the customer gave him a tip, he pressurized the cylinder to fill more. The maximum pressure of the cylinder was 145 kg, but some workers dared to raise it to 160 kg. How to educate, how to emphasize the dangers are indifferent, “perhaps they think that such a danger is far less than the chances of death due to malaria, AIDS, police ‘manslaughter’ it.
And so, misfortune still happened.
One summer night in 2004, Turnip was still sitting in her office working overtime when a sudden “boom” shook the whole house, followed by the sound of crying from the factory below.
“It’s over! Don’t let anyone die!” Turnip hurriedly ran downstairs and saw a black worker covering his left knee with both hands, howling in pain, and a pool of blood on the ground under his leg. The worker had only hurt his leg and his life was not in danger.
A few days later, Wang came back and told her that the leg had to be amputated, not only the lower leg, but also the thigh, which was not controlled by the hospital. After two more days, Wang came back from the hospital and walked into the office, exhausted and depressed. He was so exhausted and depressed that he asked him if there was something wrong with the surgery.
“The operation was a success, but it was so cruel! They actually didn’t use anesthesia!”
Turnip was stunned to hear that.
“Sawing thighs without anesthesia?”
“They used the traditional method and got a chaperone to scream.”
“Accompanying scream?”
Old Wang explained that this is a local native method, in order to distract the patient’s pain and attention, the hospital paid people to accompany the patient’s number screaming, accompanied by screaming to scream more real and more painful, as if more violent than the patient’s pain, which really works for patients. And the old Wang, who was guarding the side, is equivalent to suffer doubly painful torture. “Too cruel, too cruel.” Old Wang kept chanting.
Turnip listened to the back chill, what if one day blowing up people? “If someone dies, even if you make more money, you won’t feel comfortable.”
The Chinese woman who broke into the foreign business world
This time, the oxygen plant can no longer be opened, but what can you do if you don’t do oxygen?
13
When she returned to China during the Spring Festival in 2005, she met Lili, a classmate in the beverage research and development industry, and overheard her talking about the idea of “switching to another business”. Lili recommended to her the production line and production process of milk beverage products, “This is very mature in China, we have done a lot of projects for companies like Loblaws and Baiyi”.
Nigerians are very fond of fruity milk drinks and can be seen walking around the streets drinking them. After hearing Lili’s story, Turnip immediately urged her to visit the research and production site in Xiaolan, and was pleasantly surprised to see it. Turnip then invited Lili and her colleague to go to Nigeria for research. After a few days of looking around, Lili and her colleagues suggested that Turnip should switch to the milk beverage industry as soon as possible.
A month later, Lili sent a “general contracting” proposal to Turnip – her company would package the technology, equipment and installation. Turnip was excited to see the proposal, and based on Lili’s quote, she estimated that the entire project would cost nearly a million dollars. After several optimizations by Lili and the project team’s engineers, the final negotiated contract price had a shortfall of about $500,000 – not a small amount, so Turnip had to put the project on hold and let the oxygen plant open for a while longer to earn enough money before starting it.
At the end of the year, the interpreter, Wang, told Turnip that the old Lebanese man who owned the plant was sick and had to go back to Beirut for an operation, which was very dangerous, “He thought he might not be able to come back and thought he was ashamed of you, so he wanted to shake hands with you before he returned home and asked if you would take him for an authentic Chinese meal.
Turnip was very straightforward and drove the old man to the Oriental Hotel in Lagos, where the best local Chinese food is served. The chubby old man sat in the back row excitedly, talking about Old Wang’s past. In the middle of his story, the old man’s nephew, Fathi, called to say he wanted to say goodbye to him on his return to China and invited him to a dinner at his home.
“I am going to have Chinese food with two Chinese friends, if you invite them too, then I will come over. Otherwise, I’ll join them both.” The old man replied.
“Then ask them both to come together.” Fatty said over the phone. Turnip also wanted to meet this Fatty, who had previously been influential in the mouth of the female director, so he turned around and drove to Fatty’s residence.
On the way, the old man told his nephew’s story: Fathi was the marketing director of the largest paper mill in Nigeria, and the owner of the mill, who was also Lebanese, trusted Fathi and treated him like a son. Fathi was well respected in Lebanese circles, he did a lot of practical work for everyone and was influential in Lagos politics and business, “but if I hadn’t pulled Fathi out of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), he would have died there”.
He said Fathi was a hot-blooded young man at the time, “a cadre of the Catholic Maronite Phalangists, with more than a dozen gunshot wounds,” and the last one was cut by a bomb shrapnel in his left rib, which caused dozens of stitches, “My sister was outside the emergency room for three days and nights without closing her eyes, and when Fathi woke up, she immediately fainted in the emergency room The first time I saw her, she fainted in the emergency room. When Fathi recovered, my sister asked me to bring him to Lagos”.
The old man directed Turnip around the corner and finally stopped in front of a 3-story villa. The old man said this villa was rented by the owner of the paper mill for several top managers to live in, and Fatty alone lived on the 1st floor.
After entering the door, there were already three or two people chatting, the old man did not see Fatty, shouted. A big bald man with a tiger’s back walked quickly from the room and hugged the old man with a smile on his face. After releasing his arms, the old man guided him to Turnip and said to him, “This is the capable and very profitable Chinese lady boss I always told you about, Miss Turnip.”
Fathi came forward and smiled as he shook hands with Turnip and exchanged pleasantries. Turnip shook Fati’s big, hot, thick, strong hand, looked into his sharp eyes, and kept thinking where she had seen this man before. During the after-dinner coffee break, Fatty also stared at Turnip for a while, saying that he looked familiar. In the end, it dawned on both of them – it turned out that there was only one street between their companies, so they must have met on the road, or else they would have had a sense of déjà vu.
14
From then on, Fatty would often go to Turnip’s office to sit and talk, and when Turnip passed by Fatty’s office building, he would also stop by for a cup of coffee.
In the evening after a rainstorm, Fati was about to leave her office when she called him and said she wanted to hear his opinion on something. Turnip said that she was struggling with whether to start the milk beverage project right away and was afraid that if she delayed it any longer, she would miss the opportunity. Fatty put away his smile and said to Turnip, “You’re asking the right person.”
It turned out that Fati’s good friend Fela had just opened a milk beverage factory the year before and was doing very well, “I’ll invite him over for a dinner and you two can meet and talk.” Not long ago, Fathi had helped Fela go to Ghana to collect a debt that he couldn’t get back for years. Afterwards, Fela wanted to give half of the money owed to Fathi, but Fathi refused, “To help my brother in the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce, we never talk about money.”
Turnip thought, “No wonder Fathi has such a high prestige in their circle.
Lebanon is less than 2/3 of the size of Beijing, but is located at the throat of three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, and is a natural re-export trade treasure. It has long been a place of military struggle between the empires of the East and the West, and a place where the civilizations of the East and the West mingle and Christianity and Islam intertwine. It is the country with the largest number of denominations in the Middle East and the only Arab country with a predominantly Christian religion. Since its independence from the French Mandate after World War II, it has experienced a period of rapid development, and in the 1960s Beirut, the capital, became the “Little Paris of the Middle East”. It did not last long, but in mid-1975 a civil war broke out that lasted more than a decade and involved various political factions.
Because of the history of being contested by outside forces, it was common for the highly adaptable Lebanese to emigrate. At the time Turnip met Fathi, there were more than 12 million Lebanese expatriates living abroad, three times the size of the native population. The Lebanese diaspora is so united and connected that every year more than a billion dollars in remittances flow back to Lebanon.
The Lebanese have about 250,000 people in Africa, and after hundreds of years of investment, they have monopolized the main economic sectors of many countries in West Africa. Their chambers of commerce are so united that government officials in the countries they reside in have to be scrupulous, and they are very influential in trade throughout West Africa. Turnip heard from Fathi that once the weekend came, the Lebanese in Lagos would invite each other to get together to exchange information and help each other out. So, it allowed Lebanese businessmen to often form a local monopoly in the Lagos business field.
That weekend evening, in the courtyard of Fathi’s house, Turnip grilled squid skewers while listening to the advice given by Fela. Fela felt that the Nigerian economy had been growing steadily over the past few years and that “there was a good future for fruit-flavored milk drinks, and he hoped that more people would come together to make the market work. Fela suggested that Turnip join as soon as possible and he would share a lot of information about the potential market and customers with her.
He looked up at Fatty and then at Turnip, and then said: He has been feeling his way for more than a year, for the factory, the most crucial thing is to find a good milk source, and this French supplier he is working with now is very good. The French supplier he is working with now is very good. He will guarantee for Turnip, so he can settle the account for 2 months instead of monthly, so the pressure on the initial liquidity will be much smaller. Turnip’s heart warmed – this Fatty’s buddy was real in.
“One more suggestion -” he then said to Turnip, “the water quality here is not good, the cost of buying pure water is too high, it is better to add a pure water device, so that while selling milk drinks can also sell pure water, the market is bigger. “
Turnip gently touched Fati’s armpit with the arm holding the saucer and thanked him, “You’re so helpful, buddy.”
The next day, Turnip returned to the office and faxed Lili that the project was ready to start.
15
Turnip started working on selling the oxygen plant in Ibadan. The oxygen plant was dangerous, but the profits were there, and once the news came out, a buyer was quickly found. The negotiations went smoothly at first, but when it came to the final payment method, Turnip was alerted.
The buyer said that the deposit would be paid in cash and the payment would be made in a 3-month promissory note – there was no problem with the 3-month exchange time. She had just heard from a friend that a Nigerian businessman had colluded with bank employees to defraud a Chinese company of millions of dollars in goods by forging bank guarantee letters. What’s more, they even forged government documents to commit commercial fraud, shortly before a Brazilian bank was defrauded of $250 million in bank funds by a Nigerian using the Internet.
Turnip’s lawyer said that the buyer’s promissory note was in order and that the bank sponsoring it was reputable. But after being scammed by a licensed accountant last time, Turnip doesn’t dare to take the lawyer’s word for it this time. The only one who can be trusted by Turnip now is Fatty, and Turnip asks him to help.
It wasn’t a difficult task for Fathi, he just used his existing connections and quickly sold the Ibadan factory.
After this, Turnip became even more certain that her next business deal “must be with Fathi. She began to “brainwash” Fathi: “Don’t just work for the boss, have your own business, otherwise when can you buy a house for your wife in Beirut?” Finally, she came up with a plan: Fathi would contribute $300,000, which would also cover the shortfall for the milk and beverage factory, and then give him 20 percent of the shares.
Fati said he could only afford $200,000, but Turnip thought that Fati’s network was an “intangible asset” and agreed to take 20% of the company.
Lili worked on the design, procurement and manufacturing of the project in Xiaolan, while the engineers followed the equipment into the site to guide the installation and commissioning on schedule. Fathi subcontracted the construction to the Lebanese contractor, which not only controlled the cost, but also ensured the installation schedule. With Fathi’s efficient coordination of the surrounding relationships, the project no longer stumbled as it did in the early stages of the oxygen plant. More importantly, Fatih gave them full support in market development and raw material supply in the early stages of production, so that they could get through the difficult time of trial production smoothly.
Like an energetic bull, Fathi led the entire infrastructure team forward, not only rationalizing the plant’s worker management, but also calling on all his resources to develop the market, with Turnip following behind him to put every detail into place. Zhang, who stayed on as the production manager of the milk beverage factory, often complained to Turnip, “Why does Fathi only have 20% and you listen to him on everything?”
“It’s so hard for people from the same country to work together, let alone when he and I are working together across borders. If we don’t listen to him, we’ll be torn apart, what if we collapse? You all go back to your country?” Turnip was now well aware that there were many things she couldn’t handle when opening a factory here.
With Fatty’s help and Lili’s technical and equipment support, the development of Turnip’s milk and beverage factory went smoothly. More than a decade later, the factory has become one of the largest beverage producers in Nigeria, expanding its business territory to Beirut, Lisbon, etc.
16
“In 2017 I bought land in Abuja (Nigeria’s capital) to build a new garden-style factory, which went into production last year and will be ready to move into in the second half of the year.” Turnip continued.
We had been talking all morning at the Hwa Han restaurant, and Turnip had no trace of weariness, her eyes soulful and evocative. The other side, Nan Bao, was calm and quiet, hardly interrupting. In fact, Nan Bao was also coming to Africa for the first time, only ten days or so earlier than me. Business in Yakutsk is not doing well these days, so Turnip invited her to come and see if she could get a break here.
“Is Fathi coming over full time now?” I asked.
“The paper mill still won’t let him go, and now he’s running both ways. He’s making all his money from my side, though, and he’s buying up houses in Beirut and here.” Turnip’s cell phone on the desktop vibrated, she picked it up and said, “Speak of the devil, speak of the devil, he’s calling.”
This time Nan Bao finally spoke up and said with a smile, “There really is a sense ha.” I asked if Nan had seen this “god” and she said she hadn’t met him yet – Fathi had gone back to Lebanon a few days ago.
Turnip put the phone down and said to us both, “Fathi suggested we go see our new house this afternoon. The builder is a Lebanese buddy of his, and the house is due to be delivered in two months, so let’s go see if it still needs work.”
Turnip’s newly purchased home is in the “4 BOURDILLON” building, located on the waterfront of Ikoyi Island, and is currently the most luxurious residential building with sea views in Lagos, designed by the famous architect BOURDILLON. The reason for the number “4” in front of it is that it consists of four buildings in a square, each with the same structure, all with one floor and one unit. Turnip and Fatty bought a floor in the same building, becoming upstairs and downstairs neighbors.
Ikoyi Island is a wealthy area of Lagos, so after lunch at the Hwa Han restaurant, we got into Turnip’s Mercedes SUV and drove south to the island.
Although Nigeria is the number one oil resource country in Africa, industrialization has not been done, more than half of the population lives below the absolute poverty line, there is a huge gap between rich and poor, and 70% of the 190 million population is young, which puts a lot of pressure on the employment and social security of the whole country.
This pressure is visible everywhere – outside car windows, banks, stores, hotels, factories and other buildings lining the roads are separated into individual yards by physical walls of varying heights. These fences make the already untidy streets look like a block of unfinished construction sites. Policemen with automatic rifles guard the entrances to banks, supermarkets and factory compounds, and even the vendors selling phone cards under umbrellas are guarded by armed policemen. This made me feel as if a robbery could happen here at any time.
Next to the street, each yard has a high black plastic water storage bucket, and diesel generators of various shapes placed on the corners – during the time of several power outages each day, living water supply and electricity are left to their own devices.
I sat in the passenger seat, and Bao Nan, who was sitting alone in the back row looking out at the street scene, suddenly asked me, “How do you feel about Lagos?”
“There is a raw energy of Guangzhou in the late 90s.”
“It’s so dirty, look at the roadside drains, they’re all black stagnant water with plastic bottles floating all over them. There are potholes and raised dust everywhere. The tap water is too dirty to drink when it’s boiled, you have to buy pure water.”
Turnip said to me, “She just came from Yakutsk, she hasn’t gotten used to it yet. It’s a beautiful rural landscape in the summer.”
I smiled and nodded my head. By this time the car was on the sea-crossing bridge, an 11.8-kilometer bridge built in the 1970s – the golden age of Nigerian oil that nearly made Nigeria a model for Third World development.
Every exit of the bridge was jammed with traffic, often for half an hour. In the stalled traffic, groups of young boys and girls with pineapples, mandarin oranges, pure water, snacks and dried fruits on top of large round enamel trays approached, selling to the drivers and passengers in each car. Sometimes just after the price is negotiated, the road opens and the car has to follow the traffic, the vendor has to drag the plastic slippers “clap, clap” desperately to catch up with the moving vehicles to close the deal – although often only 100 naira (about 2 yuan) (about $2).
As you enter Ikoyi Island, you will see villas, yacht clubs and five-star hotels, and the landscape is a far cry from the streetscape you just saw. However, each villa is still divided by large iron gates and high walls, and is still equipped with its own generator, high water tower and huge satellite dish.
“Look, guys, just that lone tall building in front.” Turnip greeted me and Bao Nan as we looked ahead. By the time we changed into our safety gear and entered the site, Fathi had already put on his helmet and reflective undershirt and was waiting in the prototype room with the Lebanese manager on site. Turnip went up to introduce Fathi to them one by one, and Fathi shook Bao Nan’s hand and said, “I’ve heard a lot of stories about you guys from Turnip for a long time, and today I finally met the real person.”
The image of Fathi in front of me was similar to the description Turnip had given me, except that his neat goatee was white – after all, it had been more than ten years since Turnip’s story.
The Lebanese manager was in the model room explaining to Turnip and Bao Nan the configuration of the room’s facilities. Turnip takes Bao Nan to see the kitchen she likes, saying that the kitchen’s gas stove, range hood, and dishwasher will be delivered in the configuration of this model room by then. Turnip turned on the tap and told Bao Nan that these were all imported from Italy, but Bao Nan didn’t seem to care much, maybe she preferred the log house kitchen outside of Yakutsk.
The total area of the rooms was over 600 square feet, and Turnip and Fathi, as the first purchasers, had a discount to sell the rooms at $3000 per square meter. Fathi and the Lebanese manager took us into Turnip’s house on the 11th floor. Only some of the storage cabinets were left in the house.
Turnip and Fathi followed the manager to confirm the details one by one. I was most interested in the 80-square-foot open-air balcony off the living room, fenced in with wavy, clear tempered glass, and a little alarmingly close to the edge. There was an unobstructed view across the Victoria Island waterfront to the Civic Building and City Center, the new downtown of Lagos – with rows of yachts moored in front of it and occasional speeding yachts cutting a wave of white water across the sea. Looking down at the messy street below, it was all covered up by the lush trees on both sides of the street. I asked Nan Bao next to me, “Looking down like this, isn’t it also very idyllic?”
Bao Nan looked down carefully and did not answer me.
17
The next morning, Turnip and Bao Nan drove to my place to pick me up and take me to the factory – because the night before, when Fatty heard that I was a photographer, he asked Turnip to show me around the factory and “by the way” let me take a picture of the factory’s new drink bottles for advertising. I asked Turnip what he wanted, and Turnip said that Fati would let me do whatever I wanted.
The factory is less than two kilometers from where I live, and after a few turns, I arrived – a yard with no signs on the main highway, a large, airtight iron door, inside. This is very similar to those private furniture factories outside Dongguan and Shenzhen off more than a decade ago, from the outside, it is impossible to imagine that the inside is a factory with one or two thousand workers and an annual output value of several hundred million.
“The new factory will be built soon and moved in a few months, this is a rented factory.” Turnip explained to me.
The big iron gate was open and two large 40-foot flatbed trucks were blocking the entrance, loaded with pure water and several milk drinks produced by the factory. One of them was supposed to be loaded and ready to go, but it had broken down and a couple of black guys were fixing it.
I walked to the entrance of the workshop to stroll a little, the workshop is densely covered with pipes, black workers under a single incandescent lamp, each busy, this image reminds me of the German painter Mentzel’s “rolling mill”. I was tempted to photograph such a vivid, vibrant work scene, but I didn’t take out my camera because it might involve trade secrets, so I’ll wait until I ask Fathi.
The office is in the same building as the production plant. Compared to the production plant, the office area is much brighter and more modern, with Turnip’s chairman’s office to the left of the lobby, and Fatty’s factory director’s office along the passage next to the chairman’s office.
The interior decoration of both of them is the same, with one wall painted in bright red. Turnip’s office was full of things in every corner. On the desktop, besides the computer, there were all kinds of documents, large and small, and the coffee table next to the door was full of tea, tea sets and all kinds of dried fruits. The coffee table next to the entrance was filled with tea, tea sets and dried fruits. When the two offices were compared, it seemed that Fathi was more like the chairman of the board, while Turnip had become the factory director.
On the wall of Fathi’s office was an oil portrait of him, while on the wall of Turnip’s office was a Chinese map of the world, 1 meter wide and covered with a plastic film. Standing in front of this world map, I followed Turnip’s experience and looked for Xuzhou, Harbin and Yakutsk on the map, but Suifen River and Ussuriysk and Neriuengeli were not identified on this world map.
I took out my phone and opened the map and checked it against to find this famous Far East trade route from Suifen River, through Ussuriysk to Neriuengeli, and then to Yakutsk, which is equivalent to the distance from Guangzhou to Lhasa by car, the route that Turnip had escorted the car through at that time. And later, and halfway across the world, from Yakutsk flew to Lagos …… see I have been standing in front of the map to find, Turnip walked through to say that she is often confused about the geographical location, with this map can make her feel some.
“Every now and then it will evoke the past, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, especially the Far East trade route, I’ve always wanted to go back and walk around, but I didn’t make it after several appointments. When my new factory is finished, I’ll go back next summer to retrace my steps. Mr. Li, you also go with us, can be more stories.”
18
At this time, a tall, thin girl came in. Turnip introduced her as Xiao Ke, a girl she had met seven or eight years ago when she rented the house Turnip had rented and handed it over. Later, the two opened a company that sold airline tickets and also did travel business incidentally. Turnip had often shared with her Fatty’s great skills in management and market development, but Ko had never met Fatty, and this time she was going back to her home country for a vacation, so she came to visit Turnip and wanted to meet Fatty even more.
Turnip pulled us down in front of the coffee table and skillfully made me lotus tea. Turnip asked about Ko’s 1-year-old son, who showed her a picture, and the two talked about their children’s education, and the conversation opened up. Although Turnip doesn’t have much experience in educating children, she grew up watching the Fati family’s 3 children, and she had a lot of experience talking about parenting.
Turnip said that although Fati was not around the children, she was very strict and careful in supervising them, and the children loved to call him and ask him any questions they had. Once, when she was about to go to bed, she received a phone call from Fati, who scolded her, saying that she would never leave Dodo with her again and that she was deliberately spoiling her son.
After thinking back for a while, she thought it might be because a few days ago when she took 3-year-old Duo to the supermarket in Beirut, Duo liked this and that when he saw the toys, so Turnip bought him 3 of them in one go, and Duo was very happy. Turnip bought a house in Beirut next to Fati’s mother-in-law’s house. In the evening, when Duo’s mother called him home, Duo only took one toy, and Turnip wondered about it.
That afternoon, Duo followed his mom to the supermarket and saw some fun new toys and asked her to buy them, but she said he could only buy 1 piece at a time. Toto got upset and said, “Then why did Turnip buy me 3 pieces?” As a result, when his mom told Fatty about this, Fatty immediately called and scolded Turnip in a big way.
“Sometimes, spoiling a child is subconscious.” Turnip went on to talk about an incident when Toto was six years old: she had bought him a set of Lego puzzles and he was playing with them when his mother called him home for dinner. Turnip thought about it and said, “It’s okay, let’s take it back first and tell mom that Auntie Turnip brought it from China as a gift. After Duo walked to the stairway, he dawdled for half a day and finally said to Turnip, “Turnip, I still don’t want to go and lie.”
“I was so moved by what I heard that I almost had tears in my eyes… look how well the boy is educated!” Turnip paused for a moment and added, “My nephew’s daughter, Jia Rui, who is also over two years old now, is spoiled by her parents and doesn’t even say hello when they meet, so spoiled that she has no rules at all.”
In the past two years, Turnip had brought her sister’s son, Ding Ding, over to be in charge of purchasing, and Ding Ding had brought his wife and daughter, Jia Rui, over to live with him in the factory.
After I drank a few cups of lotus tea, I took pictures of the new packaging bottle ad next to it.
“How long will it take to get back home this time?” Turnip asked Ko.
“About 3 months, this time it’s a longer trip. The flight is tomorrow.”
“I’m also going to make a trip to Iraq in a while.”
“Iraq?”
“Yes, Fati’s wife’s brother Kudi is working there and doing well. He’s a manager this year and makes over $10,000 a month.”
“That’s pretty good.”
“The young man is very good, especially passionate about his work, mentioning the work is very bright, completely unlike our Ding Ding. Look at Ding Ding, he’s in such good condition, but he’s always saying he’s tired and stressed.” Turnip picked up the boiling glass kettle and showered around the lotus tea in the small teapot, then said to Ko, “Fati asked me to get my visa to Iraq when Bao Nan and I go to Abuja tomorrow, and go to Kudi’s to see if there is a Coca-Cola company there that has been idle for several years, so let’s see if we can get it going next this time.”
“Wow, you’re great.” Xiao Ke counted on his fingers and said, “Last time it was Beirut, then Lisbon, and now the Middle East!”
“Yeah, it’s been a bit of a big move these past few years, haha.” Turnip paused for a moment, “But sometimes it feels ……”
“More opportunities, can’t stop?”
“No, no, sometimes it just feels like it, how can I put this?” Turnip gently picked up the small teapot and poured tea into Xiao Ke’s cup, then looked up and asked, “What do you think I’m doing making so many properties to do? In the future, who will take over?”
Bao Nan walked in and looked for her information with Turnip, she was going to start preparing to book her tickets and go back to Yakutsk after going to Abuja with Turnip.
“You’re going back so soon?” I asked.
“It’s been a long time since I came out, I rarely come out alone, I’m usually with them (husband and son).” Bao Nan responded.
“Look at that, look at that, smug. Her son is almost 20.” Turnip teased.
Speaking of her son, Bao Nan was rarely happy.
When I got back from Turnip’s factory, I went to the Chinese and Korean restaurant and met my friend Xiaohui, who had been busy with family matters for the last few days, and talking about Turnip, she said, “I admire her.
Postscript
After 2 months in Africa, I returned to Guangzhou and on WeChat, I talked to Turnip about Bao Nan’s final decision. She said that Bao Nan didn’t feel anything for Abuja either, “She’d rather stay in Yakutsk, hey, no way.”
A few months later, I saw a photo sent by Turnip on WeChat – a group of them had gone to the Warren Buffett shareholder meeting in Omaha, USA, to take pictures with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I saw that there was always a young woman beside her who looked and acted like her, and the two of them even dressed like a mother-daughter set. I asked her on WeChat who she was.
“My niece! My sister’s daughter, who is studying music in Washington, I dragged her in for this ‘Buffett Tour’.”
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