Era: Life's Big Winner

Chapter 86 Liu Hongchang's Private Actions
Liu Hongchang handed over a cigarette.

Zhou Futao is the elder, and after Liu Hongchang exchanged a few words with him, he didn't know what to talk about.

When asked about the situation in the countryside, he said it was fine.

When asked if the journey to Beijing was difficult, he said it was not bad.

If you talk to him about other topics, he would either say something dead or just laugh dryly, and he was very reserved.

He Wenhui, who was standing aside, saw Liu Hongchang being humiliated and laughed secretly. She covered her mouth and turned her head to look away, her shoulders trembling.

When Wang Cuilan and Yu Qiuhua met such a person, after chatting for a few sentences, they didn't know what to talk about anymore.

Then the whole family looked at each other, staring at each other.

But I can't just abandon him. After all, Zhou Futao is a guest, and it would be inappropriate to just leave him in the living room.

Liu Yunchang, on the other hand, knew that his distant uncle was a taciturn person, so after returning home, he chatted with him for a few polite words, went to take a shower, and never returned to the living room.

It was not until dinner was ready and the food was on the table and Zhou Hao came over that everyone breathed a sigh of relief. This girl had endless things to say.

"The countryside is actually quite fun, with beautiful mountains, clear waters, singing birds and fragrant flowers." Zhou Hao said while eating.

"Rice is abundant in our area. After the land was distributed a few years ago, as long as the years are good, we can barely get enough food and clothing."

"The clothes are made of coarse cloth woven by ourselves, so we don't have to spend money to buy them. Our daily expenses are not big, just salt and other things."

Zhou Futao: "Talkative."

"Dad, it's not that I talk too much, it's that you talk too little." Zhou Hao rolled her eyes at him and said in a tender voice with her lips pouted.

Liu Hongchang asked with a smile: "Do you talk a lot with your uncle at home?"

"Not much. Sometimes he doesn't say a word for many days. He just focuses on farm work." Zhou Hao shook his head and replied.

Wang Cuilan picked up a piece of meat for Zhou Hao and breathed a sigh of relief, "Thank God, they didn't make you a dull person. Otherwise, you would be so anxious when you went to the factory!"

"Mom, my uncle is here. It's very rude of you to say this in front of him, isn't it?" Wu Xiaoying couldn't help but laugh.

Wang Cuilan said with a smile: "I say whatever I want to say. I knew he was boring when he was young, but I didn't expect him to become more boring as he gets older."

"Let's not talk about him, Hong Chang. Your factory has so many people. How long will it take for the business to start making money?"

Liu Hongchang thought about it and replied, "It will take at least 20 days before the first batch of goods can be shipped out for sale."

The first batch of goods is mainly sweet sauce ginger sprouts, because summer is the time when ginger sprouts are harvested, which makes them convenient to purchase.

It is also simple to make. The ginger sprouts grown in the dog days of summer are plump, tender and white. After harvesting, they are washed clean of dirt and pickled.

Then add salt to the fresh ginger, arrange the fresh ginger in a layer and sprinkle a layer of salt, with the upper layer adding slightly more salt than the lower layer.

The last step is making the sauce, which is divided into two steps.

The first sauce is made by weighing the pickled ginger sprouts and soaking them in clean water for five or six hours to precipitate some of the salt in the ginger, squeeze out some of the excess water, and then put them into the second sauce (the remaining sauce from the previous sauce making) for pickling.

Finally, take out the ginger sprouts from the original sauce jar, remove the sauce stuck on them, and put them into the original sweet noodle sauce.

In the early stage of sauce making, raking is done three or four times a day, and then it can be reduced according to the situation. After two weeks, it is ready to be finished.

This is also the reason why Liu Hongchang said that it would take more than 20 days for the first batch of goods to be available on the market.

"Twenty days or so is not a long time. If you keep dragging it on like this, I'll be worried about you." Wang Cuilan said grumblingly.

Liu Hongchang smiled and nodded, "Mom, I know what's going on, so don't worry."

"How many people are there in Brother Hongchang's factory?" Zhou Hao asked curiously.

He Wenhui continued, "We have hired 26 workers so far, including six experienced workers and six or seven management staff."

"It must cost a lot of money, right?" Zhou Hao said admiringly.

He Wenhui nodded and said, "In the past few days, we have spent several thousand yuan on repairing the factory, ordering soy sauce jars and raw materials, etc."

"Hongchang, is the money enough? If not, we still have some saved at home." Wang Cuilan asked with concern.

Liu Hongchang shook his head and said, "It's enough for now. I borrowed tens of thousands of yuan for emergency."

The family ate and chatted. After dinner, Wang Cuilan and Wu Xiaoying cleaned up the side room where Wu Xiaoying and her family slept before. Zhou Futao slept in the side room for the next few days.

As for Zhou Hao, he went to Wang Cuilan's room and slept with her.

Around seven o'clock in the evening, the family members took a bath one after another and sat in the yard to enjoy the cool air.

Wang Cuilan called Liu Hongchang to the living room and said, "Zhou Hao gave me 1,000 yuan. When will she go to handle the formalities for this job?"

"Let's do it tomorrow! Just let Wenhui take it. The factory has already agreed on it." Liu Hongchang took the money and replied, then asked, "Have you counted the money?"

Wang Cuilan nodded and said, "I've counted three times, you count again."

"What you said, don't you think I would believe you even if you counted it?" Liu Hongchang smiled and put the money away.

Then, he called He Wenhui and Zhou Hao over and told them, "Zhou Hao, follow your sister Wenhui to the factory tomorrow."

"If you don't understand anything over there, you can go ask a girl named Gao Junling. Just call her sister. Got it?"

Zhou Hao said excitedly: "I see. Thank you, Brother Hongchang! Thank you, Sister Wenhui! I am sorry to have caused you trouble."

"Haha, it's no trouble. We have already paid you." Liu Hongchang said with a smile.

Zhou Hao smiled and said, "Although you have received the money, I know that even with this money, it is not easy to buy a job." Jobs are one thing, but obtaining a city hukou is the most important. Many people have been struggling at this hurdle for many years and have not been able to achieve their wish.

After chatting for a while, Wang Cuilan and Zhou Hao went to the yard.

Liu Hongchang handed the money to He Wenhui and said with a smile: "Take it, this is earned by your work."

"Goodbye, you keep it. I'll be staying at home and have nowhere to spend the money." He Wenhui shook her head and smiled.

"By the way, will Zhou Hao live in our house from now on? Or will he live in the factory's staff dormitory?"

Liu Hongchang pondered and said, "It depends on the situation. Take her there tomorrow and find out what she thinks on the way."

"I also have to ask my mother-in-law if she is willing to let Zhou Hao live here forever." He Wenhui said after thinking for a while.

"If she lives in our house, the food will definitely be better, but mother-in-law will definitely keep an eye on her. Living in the dormitory will give her more freedom."

Liu Hongchang nodded and smiled, "So it depends on what she thinks. If she lives with us, she will have to pay for her living expenses in the future."

"Puff!" He Wenhui laughed out loud and said, "You are really unkind. Why give her an extra pair of chopsticks?"

"You can't say that. This has not been going on for just one or two days. She can't eat for free over a long period of time, right?" Liu Hongchang said with a smile.

"Besides, even if I don't mention it, my mother will. After all, she is a distant relative. Even if there is affection, she will not let her eat, drink and live for free for a long time, right?"

He Wenhui hummed and nodded, "That's true. I'll go discuss it with my mother-in-law first."

"Go!" Liu Hongchang nodded slightly, and after she left, he waved his hand and put the money into the space.

……

The next day, food processing plant.

In the soy sauce factory, five hundred soy sauce jars are neatly arranged, and each jar is covered with a pointed bamboo hat.

This was delivered in the morning. Liu Hongchang and six masters were checking the sauce jars one bite at a time.

After completing all the inspections and finding no problems, Liu Hongchang took the masters back to the factory and started making the sauce.

In fact, these old masters can also make sauces, but since Liu Hongchang opened a new factory, he must first get to know their skills and character through work.

There is a strict set of operating procedures for making the sauce. First, the beans must be soaked and steamed, mixed with white flour, and pressed on a mill.

Then put it in the mold, cover it with cloth and step on it for ten to fifteen days.

Then pull it into three strips, chop it into pieces, arrange it on the rack, seal it tightly with a mat, and let it ferment.

In the later stage of fermentation, you need to constantly use a brush to brush off the white hair on the sauce. After twenty-one days, the sauce will be ready.

The soybeans are selected from Majuqiao, Fengrun, Hebei and Yongledian, Tongzhou. The soybeans from these two places are plump, yellow and oily.

The white flour is selected from Laishui County in the west of Beijing. It is first-class wheat. This kind of wheat is very sticky and can be processed into fine white flour, which is suitable for making sweet noodle sauce.

Because Liu Hongchang is in a hurry to open business and make money, the sauce he makes now will be used later.

The sauces used for the first few batches of pickles to be sold were all made by Liu Hongchang in the space and were only used for emergency purposes.

While they were busy, Li Mingshun and He Daxiong came back from outside and asked someone to notify Liu Hongchang to go to the small warehouse.

Liu Hongchang smiled meaningfully, said something to a few masters, asked them to continue with their work, and went to the small warehouse.

After arriving.

He Daxiong was seen carrying wine down from a tricycle. Li Mingshun came forward to greet him and said excitedly, "I bought the medicinal wine."

"Are you relieved now? I said, since Lao Jin promised to sell the wine to me, he will definitely not go back on his word." Liu Hongchang said with a smile.

Li Mingshun gave a thumbs up and said excitedly, "I was wondering why you had such great confidence in contracting the factory. It turns out you were waiting here!"

"With the medicinal wine provided by Lao Jin, we can add it to the food we produce, and the quality will be instantly improved."

Liu Hongchang laughed and asked, "How much did you buy today? What's the price?"

"Because our factory uses a large amount, it is much more expensive than what you bought before, three hundred yuan per jar. And Lao Jin told me frankly that this is not old wine, but the effect is not bad at all, it just doesn't have that much flavor." Li Mingshun replied.

"You only gave me 15,000 today, so I only bought 50 jars. Use them first. You can always buy more if you don't have enough."

Liu Hongchang pondered and said, "Fifty jars, that is, fifty kilograms. One jar of wine can support one hundred kilograms of pickles."

"That is to say, the cost of our pickles, not counting labor, vegetables, salt and other miscellaneous expenses, is only three yuan per kilogram for this medicinal wine. It seems that the wholesale price of three and a half yuan we set before is still too low."

Li Mingshun agreed and said, "It's normal for good things to be expensive. I would just set the price at 4.5 yuan per pound. That way, we can make a profit after all the hard work. What do you think?"

Liu Hongchang nodded and said, "Okay, the wholesale price is 4.5 yuan, and the retail price is 4.9 yuan. That's it. Can you report the price to the leaders?"

"Okay, I'll apply for it now and try to finalize the pricing as soon as possible." Li Mingshun said with a smile.

He was worried about sales before, but now that he knows that medicinal wine is added to the pickles, he has no worries anymore.

After he left, Liu Hongchang asked He Daxiong: "Are you still worried that our pickles are priced too high and can't be sold?"

"No, hehe, I'm not worried at all now." He Daxiong said with a wink.

On the 1st, he went to the district to do some work and drank some medicinal wine. He still remembers the wonderful taste of it vividly.

(End of this chapter)