C10— Sold Out Madness

Posted on July 19, 2023by UntamedS

The parents’ meeting of Zhenghong Primary School, as always, lasted for two hours.

At this time, it wasn’t as important to pay attention to the privacy of students’ grades as in future generations. Not only were the total score rankings, but also the scores of each individual subject were publicly ranked. After the class teacher finished speaking, teachers in each subject would take turns to take the lead, emphasizing the importance of their own course repeatedly, and then announcing the top and bottom few, reflecting encouragement.

Sitting in the children’s desks and chairs, a large group of parents expected their children to be at the top, some were glowing, some were pale, forcing a smile.

At the seat near the window, the middle-aged man’s mouth slightly raised, listening to his youngest daughter’s name that was listed in the top three in the grade.

His child was too worry free, with excellent grades and beautiful handwriting. For a moment, his heart was filled with tenderness.

When he looked at the boy outside the school gate, his heart pounded.

Buy, he would buy it, and bring his daughter a surprise after school later!

The temperature was extremely cold in January, so Qiu Mingquan stood in front of the school in the winter sun and licked his lips, which were a bit dry and cracked.

The old man in the reception room brought a glass of water and beckoned to him: “Come on, child, have a sip of hot water, don’t get cold.”

Qiu Mingquan gratefully ran over, took the big enamel cup from the grandfather, and drank half a jar of warm boiling water: “Thank you, grandpa!”

“Can you sell this? “The old man chatted with him for a while,” Gold pen, is the pen really made of gold”

Qiu Mingquan smiled shyly, “The nib is made of gold, really 14k gold, the craftsmanship is very impressive.”

The old man laughed: “You’re the one who’s good. A pen that’s worth a few days of food money for my family, how dare you sell this? ”

Qiu Mingquan raised his sleeve to wipe his mouth and smiled: “I’m just trying.”

At this time, some classrooms began to have parents come out, Qiu Mingquan hurriedly put the enamel jar down and ran quickly to the school entrance, standing straight and looking apprehensively at the crowd coming out.

“Put away your puppy dog-like eyes.” Feng Rui said in a good-natured way, “You give me a ‘buy it or leave it’ attitude, make it strong! Do you know how to be strong?”

“Oh.” Qiu Mingquan straightened his back, and with a glance, he saw the middle-aged woman who said he was speculating walking over.

She bent down and picked up a Hero’s 100 gold pen, and insisted, “Little brother, it’s not me who is too black hearted – your pen is worth at most six yuan, I’ll take one.”

Qiu Mingquan bit down on the dead limit set by Feng Rui: “Auntie, it’s really not. I paid eight yuan , and I have the round-trip ticket to pay for.”

A mild-looking female comrade next to him silently calculated the fare and meal money for a round trip to the city center, and looked at Qiu Mingquan’s red face blown by the cold wind, her heart softened: “Okay, I’ll buy one for 8.80 yuan.”

She shook her head, took out her wallet and counted out ten yuan: “For my son, which color is good?”

Qiu Mingquan was pleasantly surprised, and while making change, he spoke according to the instructions of President Feng: “Auntie, why don’t you take this one with a gold cap? A golden crown is worthy of a scholarship in the past!”

“Aiya, you kid, you’re really good at talking.” The female comrade smilingly picked up the classic model gold pen with the golden cap, drew a few lines on the workbook provided by Qiu Mingquan, and put it into the exquisite pen box with satisfaction.

At this moment of the transaction, Qiu Mingquan was surrounded by a number of parents.

That advertisement of the hero gold pen had just started to be placed intensively these two days, and many people were quite envious of this expensive 14k iridium pen.

Once they saw that woman placed the first order, there were people who were also eyeing it. Not to mention at this kind of point in time when they had just finished a parent-teacher conference and learned of their child’s good grades?

“I’ll take a full silver pen body, I think this is atmospheric.” Someone muttered to himself and picked up another one, fondled it for a long time, finally was seduced by the good design and exquisite nib, and also shelled out money to buy one.

The sun was high, the wind was cold, and happiness came too suddenly.

Qiu Mingquan was suddenly a bit dizzy, only remembering in his mind that Feng Rui had set a limit of “never lower the price”, and in less than a moment, seven of the eight Hero 100 gold pens had been bought!

Suddenly, two people grabbed the last pen almost simultaneously and said, “I’ll take this one!”

When Qiu Mingquan looked up, the two people who were fighting for it were the middle-aged man with glasses and the woman who said he was black-hearted. The woman had been waiting to see if Qiu Mingquan could lower the price, but she didn’t expect that they would sell out in the blink of an eye, so she immediately became anxious.

“I’ll take it!” The middle-aged woman forcefully yanked the gold pen box into her hand and was about to pull out the money.

The man’s face was equally anxious: “Aiya little brother, sell it to me!”

Qiu Mingquan looked at the two people, slowly and methodically picked up the pen box and handed it to the middle-aged man: “Uncle, here you are.”

The middle-aged woman didn’t like it, “Why? I said it first!”

Qiu Mingquan said indifferently, “No, this uncle is the first one to ask for the price today.”

Wei Qingyuan breathed a long sigh of relief and hurriedly pulled out his wallet, but suddenly he was a bit dazed.

He took out all the money and looked embarrassed: “Look, little brother, I’m not trying to bargain, I’m really here for the parents’ meeting, I don’t have any extra money on me.”

Sure enough, there was only one five yuan in the whole wallet, and a few dimes.

This time, the middle-aged woman immediately came to life: “I have I have, I have money.”

She took out a ten yuan bill and shoved it into Qiu Qingquan’s hand: “Here you go! ”

Qiu Mingquan ignored her, reached out to take all the money in the man’s hand and handed over the last Hero Iridium 100: “Uncle, here.”

The middle-aged woman shrieked shrilly, “You’re crazy! He only has more than six yuan!”

Qiu Mingquan looked at the middle-aged woman and said slowly, “Yes, but a thousand yuan can’t buy me pleasure.”

He turned his head and looked sincerely at Wei Qingyuan: “Uncle, thank you.”

“Thank me for what?”

Qiu Mingquan said from the bottom of his heart, “Market economy is a good thing. Right, uncle?”

Wei Qingyuan held the pen box in a dumbfounded manner, his heart filled with shock.

He didn’t expect that this kid would be willing to sell him at a low price, but what he didn’t expect even more was this sentence that the kid just said!

“Market economy is a good thing.”

This simple phrase, how many people around dared to say, or rather, how many people knew the real truth of it?

He graduated from the University of Finance and Economics in Dongshen City, and after graduation, he took a job in the Central Audit Office for more than ten years, and now just transferred to Dongshen City to assume his duties. When discussing market economy with his respected mentor, President Gong, everyone also had doubts.

How could this teenage child casually say such words!

Wei Qingyuan tentatively opened his mouth to propose: “Why don’t you come here tomorrow at this time, and I’ll bring you money to make up for it.”

“No, I won’t come tomorrow.” Qiu Mingquan smiled good-naturedly, his little face flushed.

Still a child after all, Wei Qingyuan thought confusedly. That phrase, he probably heard it from the radio and remembered it?

Just then, a stout man bent down with a large gold ring on his finger and nodded at the last two remaining pen boxes: “This is the expensive kind, right? –50 gold eagle?”

“Yes, yes, the big leaders on a visit, sent the Soviet-Union people a national gift!” Qiu Mingquan couldn’t care less about Wei Qingyuan, his heart beat faster as his eyes fell on the thick gold chain around the man’s neck.

The man nodded his head boldly, “Wrap both of them up for me.”

Lying on the only bed in the house, Qiu Mingquan didn’t move a muscle. His grandparents beside him were already snoring after a tiring day out.

The weather was cool, and the quilt that the three of them used together wasn’t thick and didn’t keep them warm.

But his brain was burning hot!

“Mr. Feng,” Qiu Mingquan’s mind was full of the change in his book bag under the bed.

After selling ten gold pens, he had made 39.20 yuan more than the morning’s purchase price!

The bankbook had been put back, but Qiu Mingquan’s old schoolbag had more than 120 yuan in it!

Over eighty yuan of principal, that was nearly forty yuan of profit in one day!

All the gold pens sold out, and the last two of the most expensive 50 gold eagle hero gift pens brought him a profit of twenty yuan in one go.

In his dead previous life, this amount could certainly be considered shabby.

But this was 1988 in a previous life!

Even for the employees of state-owned enterprises, who were the envy of everyone, the per capita monthly salary in Dongshen City at this time was just over a hundred yuan, and for the Qiu family, who lived at the bottom of society and lived only by collecting garbage, the forty yuan net profit was almost a month’s worth of scavenging, and now, Qiu Mingquan earned it in one day!

“Don’t get excited foe this small profit.” President Feng’s voice was lazy, with a hint of imperceptible smugness, “Tomorrow we still have to go into the city again to get more goods, don’t you want to rest early?”

Rest? How could he sleep?

Qiu Mingquan’s heart was pounding. The last parent-teacher meeting recorded in the small book was six days later. In other words, the profit margin of 45% would last for seven days, a whole week!

A terrible number had instantly jumped out under Qiu Mingquan’s mental calculation.

“How is it a small profit!” He screamed excitedly in his heart, “A gain of 45% for seven consecutive times. 1,172 yuan!”

He felt like he was about to lose his breath, “Selling for seven days in a row, more than eighty principal, we can earn eleven hundred yuan, right?”

Feng Rui spoke proudly, “So this is called compound interest, compound interest, you know? Remember! First point of knowledge.”

But suddenly, he was silent again: “How did you calculate so fast?”

“Fast? It’s an easy calculation!”

Feng Rui asked suspiciously, “Have you been calculating this all the way?”

“No, just now.”

President Feng Rui suddenly asked, “What is the square root of 158?”

“Around 12.57?” Qiu Mingquan almost blurted it out, and after finishing it, he was a bit apprehensive, and then sneaked out of bed to touch the calculator in his school bag, and pressed it by the moonlight outside the window, “About the same.”

Feng Rui looked at the number displayed on the calculator and was silent for a moment. The answer was 12.5698