Chapter 73: Time to Make It Hard for Others to Stretch Their Legs
By the time Xiao Liang took a taxi back from Shishan, it was past midnight.
He took out his keys at the door and noticed light spilling through the crack. When he pushed the door open, he saw his parents and his older brother still awake, all sitting in the living room.
“What’s this? None of you asleep yet? Waiting to put me on trial?”
“You’ve been away on business for over a month without coming home once. First day back in Dongzhou, and you still don’t come home until this hour.”
Ge Minglan looked at her younger son, thinner after more than a month away, and complained with obvious heartache.
“What exactly are you two brothers doing now? We finally see some hope of clearing out the juice factory’s inventory, and now you’re talking about registering a new company?”
Her younger son had nearly had his life ruined a month ago. Her elder son had broken up with the girlfriend he was close to marrying. Either event would be enough to shake an ordinary family, requiring a year or two to settle.
Yet no sooner had her younger son taken unpaid leave and entered a village-run enterprise than he left on business for over a month without coming home. Her elder son also took unpaid leave and followed him around. And tonight, smelling of alcohol, he came home talking about starting a new company.
How was Ge Minglan supposed to sleep?
“You and Gu Peijun went to Nanting Village and met the other three village committee members?” Xiao Liang tossed his backpack—stuffed with two changes of clothes, cash, and documents—into the wall cabinet and asked his brother.
“We had dinner together tonight. There shouldn’t be any issue with the village committee,” Xiao Xiao said, then jerked his chin toward their mother, meaning the problem here still needed solving.
“The inventory at Nanting Lake Juice Factory is nearly cleared. Production will be back on track soon. But we haven’t reported the real sales figures to the township yet. We’ve held some back.”
Xiao Liang pulled out a chair and sat beside the dining table.
“Why hold anything back?” Ge Minglan asked, confused.
“To stop people from swooping in to pick the fruit, of course.”
Xiao Liang spread his hands.
“Gu Peijun and I don’t have any real foundation in Yunshe. The only reason we got put in charge of the juice factory was because Xiao Yujun and his people had turned it into a rotten mess no one wanted to touch. Wang Xingmin handed us that mess as a last resort—treating a dead horse like it might still be saved. Maybe he was even hoping it would collapse completely in our hands, so responsibility could be cleared.”
“But now the factory has no problem getting back on track. According to the inventory sales contract we signed, after deducting bonuses, the factory should recover about four million yuan by mid-to-late August.”
“The investigation into Xiao Yujun’s case is also moving quickly. We can’t expect his group to spit out all the stolen money, but the confirmed amount involved has already exceeded three million. If Xiao Yujun wants a lighter sentence, he’ll have to at least return that amount to the factory.”
“Don’t just look at the factory’s ten million yuan in debt. Once it’s holding seven or eight million yuan in cash, that’s far too tempting. If we report the real sales figures now, who knows what kind of trouble will come up?”
“What does that have to do with registering a new company? You two aren’t thinking of crooked ways to get at the money, are you?” Ge Minglan’s expression immediately turned stern. “That’s illegal. Do you understand? We didn’t work so hard raising you two so we could watch you walk down a criminal path. This absolutely won’t do!”
“Don’t get anxious before he finishes,” Xiao Changhua said.
Ge Minglan was hot-tempered. Seeing her husband still so calm only made her more anxious. “I’m anxious? Did I give birth to these two sons alone? They have nothing to do with you?”
“We don’t want to be too honest and easy to bully, but we’re not planning to break the law either.”
Xiao Liang sometimes truly had no way to deal with his mother’s temper.
“We’re registering a new company, not trying to launder the factory’s money. We’re doing this mainly to prevent others from reaching in and taking what we built. We want to sign a sales agency agreement with the juice factory in the new company’s name ahead of time.”
“In other words, the factory’s future sales and market operations will be placed under the new company. That’s purely a business cooperation relationship, different from contracting operating rights, and it’s less restricted by the township. I’ll also resign from my position at the juice factory afterward.”
“Later, we’ll develop new products under the new company’s name, and the juice factory will simply handle production. The Company Law just came into effect on July 1st. We’ll act entirely according to its provisions precisely because we’re afraid of giving others something to use against us. How could we possibly do something illegal with no bottom line?”
Ge Minglan was barely considered middle management at her workplace and had heard of the Company Law issued by the State Council at the end of last year and implemented on July 1st this year.
But when it came to the difference between contracting management rights and business cooperation, she couldn’t grasp it.
What she couldn’t adapt to was the pace. Xiao Liang had just gone through such a major crisis a month ago. Without any pause or buffer, he took unpaid leave, transferred to the juice factory, contracted inventory sales, went to Xijiang, and vanished for more than a month. Now that he was finally home, he was charging ahead again—registering a company, taking over factory sales, launching new products.
After thinking for a long time without understanding the necessity of creating a new company, she instinctively asked, “How much money do you actually have to toss around like this?”
“By mid-August, we should be able to clear all existing inventory. My personal sales reward will be about seven hundred thousand yuan transferred into the new company,” Xiao Liang said. “And it will be completely legal and compliant.”
“So much?”
Ge Minglan stared at him for a long while, then stammered, “This time in Xijiang, including you, weren’t there ten people? How much are they getting?”
“I bore the risk for the whole thing, so of course I take the largest share. Altogether, they’ll split around seven hundred thousand too, though they’ll still have to pay personal income tax, so they’ll receive a bit less in hand. If I sign the agency agreement under the new company’s name, my sales reward can become company revenue and temporarily avoid that personal income tax.”
For a moment, Ge Minglan didn’t know what to say.
Even if her husband’s official career had been rocky, their family was not an ordinary one in Dongzhou. Yet how much had they saved in half a lifetime?
“When Secretary Chen went in, the confirmed amount wasn’t even two hundred thousand, was it?” Ge Minglan looked at her husband. “No wonder everyone now is sharpening their heads trying to go into business. Secretary Chen held such a high position, but because of that two hundred thousand, he went down just like that.”
Xiao Changhua did not bring up old matters. He patted his wife’s hand.
“If less than two months can legally and properly earn seven hundred thousand, then this fruit really is too tempting. It’s hard to say others won’t covet it. This son’s wings have hardened. I can’t discipline him anymore. Do you still want to continue?”
“Did I have the elder one and the younger one with some wild man? So now I’m the only one who likes disciplining them, and it has nothing to do with you?”
Ge Minglan never hesitated to lose her temper at her husband.
“And besides, with seven hundred thousand, what can’t he do? Why must he insist on getting into that mud pit again?”
No matter what, what happened in early June had left lingering fear. Ge Minglan instinctively hoped Xiao Liang would stay far away from Yunshe and never get involved with that place again.
She had already considered transferring his job before.
“Alright, don’t worry too much,” Xiao Changhua comforted her. “We haven’t paid much attention to Xiao Liang’s township work these past two years. Yunshe is complicated, but he’s managed to handle it himself so far. It’s late. Go rest first.”
After persuading his wife to return to the bedroom, Xiao Changhua lit a cigarette, took two drags, and asked Xiao Liang, “Aside from the foundation of the juice factory in Yunshe, what else are you considering?”
“Unless we curl up completely and never move, in some people’s eyes, even stretching a leg or giving the wrong look is a mistake.”
Xiao Liang exhaled softly.
“Of course, there’s another way to live.”
He looked up.
“And that is to make it so that in front of us, when those people stretch a leg or give the wrong look—it becomes their mistake.”
