Chapter 26: Intercepting at the Source
When Xu An packed up his stall and returned home, he found Third Granny in the courtyard with his grandmother, chatting about everything under the sun.
Xu An went into the kitchen to make two cups of tea, then brought a small stool over and sat down with the two old women, listening to their conversation.
At first, the two were discussing the usual village gossip, but somehow the topic drifted to the Witch from Ma Family Village.
"That Witch got beaten up a couple of days ago," Third Granny said with a sigh. "Apparently, a family took her advice and adopted a child, but after more than a year, they still couldn’t conceive. Later, someone referred them to an Old Chinese Physician in Hai City for treatment, and she got pregnant. The more they thought about it, the more upset they became. They felt the Witch had wasted a whole year of their time, and now they couldn’t get rid of the adopted child, so they went and gave her a beating."
"How terrible. If you can’t have a child, you should go to a proper hospital for treatment, not see some Witch." Granny Xu’s voice was tinged with concern. "What happened to the child they adopted? Did they send him back, or are they still raising him?"
"They’re still raising him. They registered the child on their household record, so it’s not so easy to send him back. The family’s not too bad, though. They just blow off steam by yelling and cursing a bit, but they don’t skimp on the kid’s food or clothing."
"That’s better than being homeless," Granny Xu sighed. She suddenly thought of Xu Juan, who had been married for seven or eight years without conceiving, and quickly asked, "Which hospital did that family go to? Who was the doctor?"
"It wasn’t a proper hospital. He runs his own clinic, and everyone calls him the Divine Old Physician. He’s not a local. He settled in Hai City over seven years ago." Third Granny didn’t know much, so she just shared what she’d heard.
When she heard it wasn’t a proper hospital, Granny Xu lost interest.
Granny Xu had never had much schooling and wasn’t very educated. But she understood one thing: someone with such miraculous abilities would never be content to stay cooped up in one small place.
Even if he were content, there would be an endless stream of people begging for his help. How could he only be somewhat famous here in Hai City?
’People like that are either crooks or just plain evil.’
Wang Qiang wandered around Qianhai Town for three days before finally finding the meat processing company his shady friends had told him about, the one that sold cheap meat.
The main gate was half-open, and a sturdy-looking man in his thirties sat at the entrance, playing on his phone.
If it weren’t for the suspicious-looking row of faucets outside the building and the faint smell of rotting meat, Wang Qiang would never have guessed that this ordinary-looking residential house was actually a food company.
When he was still two meters from the entrance, the man on his phone saw Wang Qiang, put his phone down, and stood up. "What do you want?" he asked in an unfriendly tone.
"Here to buy stock," Wang Qiang answered, stopping in his tracks. His reply was concise and to the point.
The sturdy man’s eyebrows rose. He softened his tone and asked, "Who sent you?"
"Old Liu from the Good and More Fast Food Restaurant."
A customer referred by an acquaintance.
The man let out a breath of relief, pushed the ajar gate fully open, and said to Wang Qiang, "Go on in."
The moment Wang Qiang stepped inside, he was met with an overwhelming sight. Neatly arranged shelves were packed with all kinds of meat.
There was so much meat that even six large racks couldn’t hold it all; it was piled high in the spaces between them.
Bloody water seeped freely from the meat, soaking most of the floor. The room had become a paradise for flies, and their buzzing was enough to give you a headache.
Wang Qiang felt an urge to leave. He was greedy for money, but he didn’t want to harm people.
One look at the meat on the shelves told him it had been sitting there for days. It was already rotting and crawling with maggots—not fit for human consumption.
A middle-aged woman standing behind the door saw Wang Qiang enter. She grabbed a flyer and a pen, shoved them into his hands, and said flatly, "The stuff on the shelves out here is for cats and dogs. The meat for people is in the cold storage. Everything on the flyer is in there. Just write down how much you want. When you’re done, give it to the guy in the leather jacket. He’ll get what you want from the freezer."
The old man in the leather jacket could see Wang Qiang’s hesitation. He beckoned him closer and pulled a bag of meat from a small fridge under his desk, handing it to him.
"Everything in the cold storage is this quality. No different from what you’d get at the wholesale market."
Wang Qiang turned it over and inspected it twice. Besides the incorrect date, everything else really did look about the same. His heart, which had been in his throat, finally settled back down.
"I’m purchasing this for a company, so I need a receipt for reimbursement. Can you guys issue one?"
"We’re a legitimate company, of course we can issue a receipt. It’s just that if you need one, the price is fifty cents more per jin."
Wang Qiang quickly scanned the flyer, mentally calculating the price difference between this place and the wholesale market.
He needed fifty to sixty jin of various meats per day. The average price at the wholesale market was eight yuan, but here it was five. That was a saving of three yuan per jin, which meant he could save at least 150 yuan a day.
In two days, he could afford a 268-yuan top-up; in five days, a 648!
’I can totally do this!’
The number of box lunches for the Zijing Garden construction site remained steady at twenty, but the number for the Hai City Library site had already increased to sixty per day.
Even after he sold out and was packing up each day, people would still come by asking if he had any box lunches left. Sixty was nowhere near his sales ceiling.
In the past few days, besides Xu An, seven or eight other small stalls had popped up on the street, effectively forming a small food street that attracted customers other than the construction workers.
Before, the street was wide enough for a tricycle to pass through. Now, if you arrived a little late, you couldn’t even get in. The dense crowd of vendors took up more than half the road.
To make their stalls stand out to passersby, many vendors didn’t set up along the edge of the street. The farther down the street they were, the more they jutted out.
At the mouth of the street, four people could still walk side-by-side, but farther in, only two could squeeze past each other sideways.
When Xu An first started setting up his stall here, there were only five or six vendors, and everyone would conscientiously take their trash with them when they packed up.
But now that there were more vendors, some people were less considerate. When it was time to close, they’d just grab their things, hop on their vehicles, and leave, leaving a mess of trash behind.
The ground was still relatively clean when they arrived each morning, but it got dirtier and messier as the day went on.
Eventually, some pedestrians, drawn by the fragrant smells, would come over to see what was available, but upon seeing the ground covered in wet and dry garbage, they’d lose their appetite and go to the restaurants across the street instead.
No matter how you looked at it, this was a major safety hazard.
It wouldn’t be long before the city management office discovered the chaotic situation here.
Rather than getting chased around by the city management officers, it would be better to get all the necessary permits in advance and operate according to the rules.
While packing up, Xu An mentioned this to a few of the vendors he knew nearby. They just nodded, and he couldn’t tell if they had really taken it to heart.
But Xu An had done his part by warning them. Whether they listened or not was out of his hands. He couldn’t control them; he just needed to worry about himself.
Xu An once again asked Uncle Dongliang for help. Since he already had a health certificate and a hygiene permit, the city management office acted very quickly. They came over at eleven the next morning to designate an operating area for him.
When the personnel from the city management office arrived and saw the situation, they couldn’t help but frown.
From every perspective, this food street posed a huge safety risk and needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.
The man in charge used a walkie-talkie to call over all the city management officers patrolling nearby. They went to each stall, registered them, and urged the vendors to promptly apply for health certificates and hygiene permits. He told them that once they had those documents, they were to find the officers again to have their areas designated and receive a temporary stall permit.
He explained that today’s designations were only temporary. When they came back to inspect on Friday, anyone found not following the rules or who hadn’t applied for the permits as required would have their equipment confiscated. They would only be able to get it back after they obtained the proper certificates.
The city management officer specifically emphasized that, aside from the health certificate, none of the other permits cost any money. They just required a bit of time and legwork to obtain.
As someone with all his papers in order, Xu An naturally received preferential treatment from the officers. They let him be the first to choose his operating area.
To everyone’s surprise, Xu An didn’t choose the spot by the gate of the Hai City Library construction site, which was the location with the highest and most concentrated foot traffic.
Instead, Xu An chose the three-way intersection at the entrance to the street. Although all pedestrians entered from there, the foot traffic wasn’t as heavy as it was by the site gate.
Without explaining himself to the others, Xu An rode his tricycle to his designated area and set up his stall after the spot was marked out.
For now, the area in front of the library construction site seemed like the place with the most foot traffic, but Xu An knew this situation would change in three months at most.
The Hai City Library building had already been topped out, and the remaining work was dwindling. Not only would the number of workers decrease, but once the construction barriers were removed, everyone would realize that this site gate wasn’t the main entrance to the Hai City Library, but a side entrance.
Furthermore, you couldn’t bring food with strong smells into the library. When that time came, the spot with the highest foot traffic would become the most awkward location, not benefiting from either side.
Once the workers were gone, the only customers left to support the food street would be the nearby residents and the office workers from across the street.
The spot Xu An had chosen was at the entrance. The passing residents and the office workers from across the street could all see it clearly, allowing him to intercept customers right at the source.