Chapter 32: The Food Storage Container

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Once Yu Yang had a general idea of which vegetables should be planted in the brick kiln, he looked down at the various packaging boxes scattered around the courtyard of the little Western-style house and found them much more pleasing to the eye.

He got out of the car and asked Sixth Uncle to return the farm tricycle they had picked up by the roadside.

He then invited the cardboard factory manager into the living room.

After a brief discussion, Yu Yang ordered twenty thousand suitcase-style gift boxes.

At fifty cents each, the total came to ten thousand yuan.

If sales went well, he would place further orders.

Of course, these were only the outer packages.

Once the plastic factory received its molds and produced transparent plastic containers, the vegetables could be packed separately and arranged in two tiers, with two boxes stacked on each level. The whole set would then be placed inside paper gift packaging designed to display the contents.

That way, the products could be delivered to supermarkets and sold there.

As for how to get them into the supermarkets...

His own business occupied the very top of the supply chain and was responsible only for wholesale distribution. Once he explained the plan to the vegetable vendors, those eager to make money would naturally do the rest.

Of course, the vegetable vendors were merely distributors. His business could not entrust everything to them. Once sufficient funds were available, he would still need to open directly operated stores.

...

After seeing off the cardboard factory manager, the sixty-seven farmers recruited the previous day began arriving one after another, reporting for work under the pretense of looking for employment.

Thinking of the new industry he had just begun developing, Yu Yang decided to bring the newly arrived brothers back to the brick kiln.

There, he divided them into three teams.

The first team renovated the brick kiln, removing unnecessary firebricks.

The second demolished several small bungalows that had originally stood beside the kiln but had later collapsed in the floods.

The third used red bricks and clay to build a perimeter wall that would block the view from outside.

Since the brick kiln stood at the northernmost edge of Ten-Mile Camp, hardly anyone ever came this way except for the occasional villager visiting relatives near the Buddha Temple.

The brothers therefore worked at full strength.

At noon, the eldest brother brought people over with food.

After eating and drinking their fill, they continued working.

By evening, everything inside the brick kiln that needed to be demolished had been demolished, and everything that needed opening up had been opened. After cleaning the place, they measured it on foot.

The total planting area came to 866 square meters—roughly one and one-third mu.

Each of his farmers would have one fen of land. To keep the brick-kiln operation running, he would need to accommodate at least thirteen people.

If he wanted to push the vegetables' growth rate to its limit, he would need to station four additional workers on every fen, for a total of sixty-five people.

Yu Yang counted the brothers.

There were currently sixty-seven.

The two extra men would patrol at night.

During the intervals between planting and harvesting, the brothers would also need to build living quarters, put a roof over the kiln pit to the south—the excavation left behind from digging out soil—and construct a cellar for storing all kinds of vegetables.

At the same time, so the brothers would not grow bored, Yu Yang contacted the owner of a television repair shop in Peace County and ordered sixty-seven “monitors.”

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He then contacted the sales manager at the computer mall and asked him to prepare sixty-seven sets of keyboards and mice, along with assembled “computers,” and deliver everything to the site.

Before hanging up, he also told the manager to prepare extra “memory sticks.”

At that moment, Second Brother heard that they were buying computers again and suddenly remembered something.

“Boss, I heard computers need network cables.”

“Don’t we have any?”

“No. But that won’t stop us from playing.”

Yu Yang thought it over. Not wanting Second Brother to be disappointed, he contacted the telecommunications office at the Buddha Temple and asked them to run several wired connections to the little Western-style house, the Yu Family Village, and the brick kiln.

Once the cable was plugged into the back of the television, they would be online.

By coincidence, the cable signal converter could also function as a “cat”—a modem.

Second Brother did not understand the technical details, but he was delighted.

Tomorrow, he would be able to surf the Internet.

And so he worked even harder.

The eldest brother, who came to deliver dinner, witnessed the entire scene. He fell silent, then quietly edged away from Second Brother.

After all, stupidity was contagious.

...

The next day, the molds custom-made by the plastic factory arrived.

They conducted a trial run on the spot and soon produced simple food-storage containers.

After receiving the news, Yu Yang went to the agricultural machinery station and picked up a sample to examine.

It kept water out, so it should be capable of preserving freshness.

He stepped on it.

It flattened.

But for an item that cost only five cents, as long as it preserved freshness and resisted crushing, that was good enough.

He immediately signaled to the people from the plastic factory.

“Move the equipment to Yu Family Village and run production at full capacity. Start making the food-storage containers.”

“Boss, does Yu Family Village have a transformer and a substation?”

“Uh... I don’t think so.”

Yu Yang suddenly remembered that industrial equipment required industrial-grade electricity.

“Then move it to the brick kiln. Back when the township renovated the tunnel kiln, they replaced the diesel engine driving the flat rail carts with electric motors. They installed transformers at the time. It should be three-phase, 380-volt AC.”

“That’s perfect. I’ll go get the workers.”

“Once you reach the brick kiln, don’t wander around. Those sixty-odd new fellows don’t look like good people.”

“...What?”

“Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stationed them at the brick kiln.”

“Boss, can we stay at the agricultural machinery station?”

“That place doesn’t have an industrial power circuit.”

“If we go to the brick kiln, those people won’t beat us up, will they?”

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“If you don’t wander off, they probably won’t.”

“All right.”

“By the way, how is the research on plastic wrap coming along?”

“You mentioned food-grade material. I’ve never heard that term before. If you mean nontoxic and harmless, that depends on how it’s used.”

“Explain.”

“Take PE, for example. It’s made from polyethylene and is nontoxic at normal temperatures, but it cannot be heated.

“Then there’s PVC, made from polyvinyl chloride. The material itself is toxic, but it’s cheap and easy to produce. Whether to use it is up to the seller.

“PVDC is made from polyvinylidene chloride. It’s more expensive, basically nontoxic, and can be heated.”

After the technician finished, he added, “For growing vegetables, PE plastic wrap is actually sufficient.”

“Can the plastic factory produce it?”

“Not at present. We would need to install an extrusion film machine, a stretch-film machine, a wrapping-film machine, and so on. Once we have the equipment, we’ll be able to produce most types of plastic wrap.”

“How much money would that require?”

“If we produce only single-sided adhesive film or double-layer adhesive film, and not anything with three or more layers, daily output would be one ton. Domestic equipment would cost roughly five hundred thousand yuan, while imported equipment would run around one million.”

Yu Yang calculated the money in his pocket.

Buying the AMG Mercedes had drained his savings and left him five hundred thousand yuan in debt.

The five-hundred-thousand-yuan loan obtained by the glass factory from the Commercial Bank of Chat City belonged to the glass factory and had nothing to do with him.

Three plastic greenhouses had already been put into operation, producing roughly 2,500 baskets a day each—7,500 baskets in total. However, most of that output had to go to major customers who had paid deposits in advance.

The remainder, calculated at a wholesale price of ninety yuan per basket, brought in 225,000 yuan a day.

But the previous day’s payment had gone toward repaying 200,000 yuan to the county branch, along with more than 10,000 yuan in interest.

As for yesterday’s payment...

His own brick kiln could not fire red bricks, and even the salvaged firebricks were insufficient to renovate the kiln.

Once the living quarters, perimeter wall, and gate were included, even more bricks would be needed.

Therefore, he had to order one million red bricks from Han Hamlet, then place large orders for cement, gravel, and steel bars from Ten-Mile Camp and the Buddha Temple.

The previous day’s earnings would be spent in no time. If they were not enough, he would have to use that day’s revenue to make up the difference.

He did not know whether anything would remain to pay for the computers.

“We’ll discuss plastic wrap later. We don’t need it for now. Let’s make use of the food-storage containers first.”

“All right, Boss.”

Yu Yang immediately reassigned workers to help the plastic factory transport its equipment.

After a long stretch of frantic labor, he finally returned to the little Western-style house and was about to have a drink of water.

Three Santana sedans pulled up outside the courtyard gate, escorted by two police cars, one in front and one behind.

Yu Yang stepped outside and took a look at the license plates.

Well, well.

A very big fish had arrived.

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