Chapter 7

Do not underestimate the appeal of a pair of trendy leather shoes to the average person.

In less than two hours, Li Shanshan had not only sold out her entire stock of shoes but also secured over a dozen orders.

The machinery plant Li Shanshan had chosen was a heavy industrial facility. It was exceptionally profitable and would not go under even decades later; instead, it would develop into one of the premier large-scale groups in Fengcheng. With one or two thousand workers—not counting their families—one could easily imagine what a massive flow of potential customers this represented!

The entire village of Xiaoli had a population of only a little over two thousand.

These were all potential clients!

Moreover, the workers of the machinery plant and their families lived in a concentrated area, and news traveled very quickly among them. Li Shanshan set up her stall every afternoon, and at her peak, she sold 123 pairs of shoes in a single day!

She had a sharp eye. In addition to the two best-selling styles of leather shoes, she also carried other designs. These single-layer leather shoes, made of genuine leather inside and out, were identical in quality to those sold at the department store, yet her prices were much lower, and she even included free socks and insoles.

Well, the socks didn't sell particularly well, so she just used them as freebies, and she had also brought in a batch of insoles.

In just a few short days, she had earned tens of thousands.

Every time she packed up her stall, she would hurry off. Relying on her height and long legs, she would move with lightning speed to blend into the crowds. She would quickly peel off her military-style overcoat, remove her hat and scarf, stuff them into a woven plastic bag, take down the braided pigtail tucked under her hat, and comb up her bangs. Her face—no longer chapped and quite pretty—would be revealed, making her look like a completely different person.

While selling shoes, she wore a men’s sheepskin hat she had bought along with the military coat, using a scarf to cover the lower half of her face.

The weather was bitterly cold, so such an outfit didn't look out of place.

By Friday, however, competitors suddenly appeared. Several other stalls selling shoes popped up, though they sold different, lower-quality, and more generic styles at cheaper prices.

An average worker at the machinery plant earned only three or four hundred yuan a month; those willing to shell out two hundred yuan for a pair of shoes were, after all, in the minority.

With more stalls, the foot traffic was divided.

By the time Li Shanshan finished for the day, she still had twenty-some pairs of shoes left. She immediately asked a middle-aged vendor next to her, who looked quite honest, "Would you like the rest of these? If you do, I’ll let them go at a loss for fifty yuan each. You can sell them for two hundred. If not, I’m taking them back; I won’t be coming tomorrow."

The vendor shook his head. "I don't have that much capital."

That was over a thousand yuan! If he had savings of over a thousand, he wouldn't be out here braving the northwest wind to run a stall.

Hearing this, Li Shanshan packed them away.

Back at the hotel, she counted her money. After deducting costs and the value of the unsold shoes, her net profit for the day was 11,400 yuan.

The day after she had finished her first batch of sales, she had set aside enough money for restocking and deposited the rest in the bank. So far, her passbook held a massive sum of 40,000 yuan.

In other words, in five days of street vending, she had made over 50,000 yuan—an average of over 10,000 yuan per day.

Explosive profits!

Truly explosive. The Boss Zhao she had known in her previous life hadn't been boasting.

He had started out selling shoes from a stall, eventually grew his business, founded his own shoe factory, manufactured for foreign brands, and later developed his own comprehensive brand. Eventually, he branched into real estate, amassing assets worth over ten billion.

Unfortunately, setting up a stall near the machinery plant was not a long-term strategy.

She could continue making money if she kept going, but it would certainly not be as frantic as it was in the beginning. Besides, she still had to attend school and couldn't stay in Fengcheng forever; there was no need to compete with the latecomers.

Shoes weren't disposable items; a pair could last for several years!

One more night at the hotel, and then home tomorrow!

Li Shanshan put the money away, washed her hair and took a bath, treating herself to a full-body beauty routine.

Perhaps because she had stayed warm and consistently applied medicine and hand cream, the frostbite on the backs of her hands had improved significantly, leaving only slight marks where the swelling had subsided, and the skin on her face had shown even greater improvement.

She was young, after all, and recovered quickly.

When Wu Yue came to see her at nine o'clock, she almost didn't recognize her.

She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, her eyes filled with astonishment.

Was the girl before her really the same one from a week ago?

Her oval face could not be called perfectly fair, and her cheeks were slightly rounded with a faint, healthy glow. However, her features were delicate to perfection, her bright eyes were as sparkling as stars, and her red lips were as vibrant as flowers.

She was prettier than the female stars on the calendar posters!

Over the past few days, Li Shanshan had taken advantage of her restocking trips to gradually buy clothes for her family and herself. She was now wearing light blue jeans that showed off her straight, slender legs, paired with a beige V-neck cashmere sweater. Her hair, which she usually wore in a braid, was fluffy after being washed and blow-dried, as if she had just had it permed. To Wu Yue, she looked exceptionally radiant.

Although young and fresh-faced, her beauty emanated from her very bones.

"Sister Wu, are you looking for me?" Li Shanshan invited her in, as if she hadn't noticed her shock.

Wu Yue gathered her wits, stepped into the room, and sat on the chair by the desk. "Shanshan, I'm relieved to see you looking like this. Before I came, I was worried you might have already left. I'm so glad you're still here."

Li Shanshan poured her a glass of water. "I plan to check out tomorrow."

Wu Yue hurriedly said, "Please don't!"

Li Shanshan raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"There's an assignment for you," Wu Yue paused, then spoke quickly. "It's for simultaneous interpretation. The original interpreter had an accident and was seriously injured, and they couldn't find a substitute on such short notice. Teacher Wang said your level of spoken English is more than enough. He asked me to find you. It pays one thousand yuan a day for five days, and you'll be staying at the five-star Ronghua Hotel, with all meals included."

A flicker of hesitation appeared on Li Shanshan's face.

"I had originally planned to return to school for classes this weekend." This had nothing to do with the fact that the largest shareholder of the Ronghua Hotel Group was surnamed Zhou.

"Oh, your English is better than many university graduates. High school coursework won't be difficult for you; missing one week of classes shouldn't affect your grades." Wu Yue finished, then pressed on: "Didn't you come to Fengcheng to earn tuition? If you earn a few more days of translation fees, you won't have to worry about your livelihood for a long time, and you can focus on your studies."

Li Shanshan seemed swayed. "Alright then, when does it start?"

Wu Yue was overjoyed. "I'll come to pick you up on Sunday morning to check into the Ronghua Hotel. In the afternoon, you'll join the team as an interpreter to welcome the foreign guests. The welcome banquet in the evening is very important, so you'll need to dress appropriately."

"Got it!"

After agreeing, Li Shanshan went to a phone booth the next day and called the local shop to ask Li Chunrong to notify her father, telling him to drive the family's second-hand motorized tricycle to Fengcheng that afternoon to pick up a batch of goods to take home for sale.

She told Li Chunrong the address of the hotel where she was staying.

Li Chunrong agreed readily.

Thanking him, Li Shanshan left the booth and returned to pack her things. Aside from the antique jewelry and the remaining shoes, socks, and insoles, there were the winter clothes she had bought for her family and herself.

Some were bought at the wholesale market, where the prices were honest and the goods reliable, while others were bought at the department store, such as the down jackets.

The wholesale market also had many down jackets for a few dozen yuan each, but the quality and cut were not as good as the ones at the Bosideng specialty store in the department store, and they were prone to leaking feathers.

Of course, the price at Bosideng was quite steep—several hundred yuan each.

It was only because Li Shanshan had earned money recently that she was willing to spend over a thousand yuan to buy one for her father and one each for her grandparents, along with two for herself, which she was already wearing.

Her father arrived after two o'clock and almost didn't recognize his own daughter!

She was tall and slender, wearing a long, hooded red down jacket that wrapped her from head to toe. She had a black scarf wrapped around half her face and was wearing matching short leather boots. Beneath her bangs, her large, clear eyes were bright and spirited.

She looked incredibly chic!

Just like someone from the city.

It wasn't until Li Shanshan called out to him that he said, in disbelief, "Is that you, Shanshan?"

"If it’s not me, who else could it be?" Li Shanshan pulled down her scarf to show him her face, then wrapped it back up. She bent down to pick up the luggage by her feet and loaded it onto the tricycle. The woven bags filled with clothes and shoes were fine, but she had to handle the one containing the porcelain and jewelry with care, even though she had used old clothes to wrap the fragile items and fill the gaps.

She placed that bag under the passenger seat.

"Dad, those bags contain the clothes I bought for you and Grandma and Grandpa. You can take them back and divide them yourselves; each bag has a name on it. There are also a few pairs of shoes that didn't sell; take those back to sell, too. This bag here has my clothes and personal items; please put it in my trunk when you get home. Be careful on the road; don't let it get bumped or broken." She couldn't afford to be careless with treasures that would be worth hundreds of millions in the future.

"I know." Her father took off his old military coat, which he had been wearing inside out, and got off the vehicle to help. "Shanshan, how did you get so fair?"

His daughter had always been pretty, but now that she was fairer, she looked even better.

She had inherited all the best qualities from him and her late mother.

Li Shanshan laughed triumphantly and climbed into the passenger seat. "The wind in the city isn't as harsh, and it's warm in the hotel. A little protection, and I got fairer. I get tanned in the summer, so as soon as winter arrives and it’s not too cold yet, don’t I quickly get my color back?"

"That's true." The city life was indeed good for one's complexion.

Her father put his military coat back on, climbed into the driver's seat, and started the tricycle. "Where do I go to get the goods?"

He didn't know the way.

Once he was familiar with the route, he could come and pick up the stock himself.

Street vending was just too profitable!

Although the later earnings weren't as high as the first day, he could still make several hundred yuan a day, and earning ten thousand a month would be no problem at all.

Li Shanshan gave him directions. "The New Year is coming soon, so business will be exceptionally good. We'll pick up a batch of socks, and then another batch of clothes, shoes, bed sheets, quilt covers, pots, and pans."

"So much? Can we sell it all?" Her father had brought all the money earned from selling the socks.

He had never seen so much money before and didn't know if it would be enough for capital.

Li Shanshan said, "I'm not asking you to sell it all in one day! You can sell clothes and shoes at the market today, pots and pans tomorrow, and then bed sheets and socks the day after. That should last for a while."

She kept only five hundred yuan for herself and took out all the rest.

Together with the eight thousand yuan her father had brought, the father-daughter duo wholesaled a total of twenty-two thousand yuan worth of goods.

One thousand yuan in socks, one thousand in pots and pans, two thousand in bed sheets and quilt covers, and one thousand in spring festival couplets, New Year pictures, hot water bottles, gloves, and hats. The remaining seventeen thousand went entirely into clothes and shoes.

They only bought fifty pairs of the fifty-yuan leather shoes; the rest were shoes priced at eight, ten, or thirty yuan, which were more suitable for rural folk.

As for the clothes, they bought eight-yuan sweaters, pants, and vests, ten-yuan trousers, and thirty-yuan down jackets... with a wide variety of women's clothing making up the majority.

Based on the current market in Baiyun Town, it was common to mark up the selling price by three to five times or more.

Li Shanshan had been to the wholesale market many times and knew which vendors had high-quality, low-cost goods and which owners were generous. She told her father to stick to these vendors, as she wouldn't have time to accompany him once she went back to school.

Her father whispered to his daughter, "Where did you get so much money?"

"I earned it selling shoes in Fengcheng. I'm doing translation work tomorrow, and I can earn another five thousand in five days," Li Shanshan whispered back. "When you get back, remember to ask my high school classmate to help me request another week of leave from my homeroom teacher, Mr. Liu."

Her father frowned. "Aren't you coming back with me to wait for school to start?"

Li Shanshan acted spoiled. "I just accepted the job, and I've given my word. I can't back out now, or it will be hard to establish myself in the translation field in the future. Don't worry, I'll return to school to study for the college entrance exam as soon as I finish this job."

Her father sighed. "We have a deal: this is the last time."

"Yes!" Li Shanshan gave a playful salute.

The goods were loaded one by one and covered with a large piece of tarpaulin, tied down at the four corners. She took her father to eat mutton noodles, adding an extra half-catty of mutton to his bowl. After he had eaten his fill, she watched him leave.

After selling this batch, their family would finally be able to shed the label of being impoverished!