Eighty-Four: A Small-Scale Business

That year the Olympics were being held in Beijing. Although a series of incidents had already taken place beforehand, such as the unrest in Tibet and the overseas boycott of the Olympic torch relay, they had scarcely affected the fervor of people across the country who were eagerly awaiting the Games. As May 12 drew near, the torch would soon arrive in the city where our school was located. Under such a spectacle, rare in a hundred years, business opportunities were everywhere, waiting only for someone bold enough to seize them.

Faced with this once-in-a-lifetime chance, I suddenly thought of selling national flags and Beijing Olympic Games flags. Small as they were, flags were indispensable in the days before and after the torch relay, and a flag cost only forty cents wholesale. When the relay days arrived, even a conservative estimate put the selling price at two yuan apiece.

By that reckoning, if I bought a thousand flags wholesale, it would cost four hundred yuan in all. In other words, as long as I could sell only two hundred flags during the relay, I would recover my costs. I did the rough math: if luck favored me and every flag sold, I could clear sixteen hundred yuan in pure profit. For students like us, that was no small temptation. But I could not pull together the four hundred yuan upfront. It seemed I would need a partner.

No sooner said than done. I quickly posted the idea in our class chat group, and in less than a minute Xiaokai from the next dorm had replied, asking to join me. It suddenly occurred to me that, back in middle school, I had once sold roses with classmates on Valentine’s Day. Both years ended in losses, and after that my enthusiasm naturally faded away. I wondered how this venture would turn out.

By the time Xiaokai and I had gone over every detail, we suddenly realized that it was already May 9. That meant the flags had to arrive by the eleventh, or else with only the twelfth itself, there was no way we could sell all a thousand of them. Only then did we truly understand how right the old saying was: time is money. We could not afford to delay a moment longer, so I hurried online and logged into Taobao.

During the torch relay, shops selling Olympic flags sprang up overnight like bamboo shoots after rain, and their quality varied wildly. After some searching, we settled on a store with a three-diamond rating. The owner was an enthusiastic fellow. When he learned that we were students, he immediately offered that if we were truly pressed for time, he could personally take the train and deliver the goods to us, with the fare shared equally by both sides. Xiaokai and I discussed it and felt the budget would be too high, and even then the train might not be fast enough. So we asked the owner to add postage and send it by air express instead. He agreed at once, without a second word, and promised to give our order priority.

The two days before the package arrived felt like ages. If the eleventh passed, we would truly be left with nothing but our losses. Fortunately, by noon on the eleventh the goods finally arrived.

There was no time to waste, so we decided to set out immediately.

The campus shuttle was too slow. To save time, we chartered a small van at the entrance to Student Street and raced toward the city in a blur of haste. Once inside, we had the driver stop beside a very busy pedestrian overpass. We hoisted the parcel box, still unopened, and climbed down from the van with a trace of unease in our hearts.

People flowed past in a steady stream. Standing there on the street, we were suddenly at a loss as to what to do. After thinking for a long while, we finally decided to open the package first. But before we had even peeled back one corner of the box, a sudden gust of wind sprang up and sent the flags fluttering everywhere. Frantic confusion hardly began to describe our embarrassment. Fortunately, the passersby around us were all kind-hearted. One after another, they stopped and helped us gather the flags scattered all over the ground. A blessing in disguise, that wind also brought us unexpected publicity. Before long, more than a dozen customers had gathered around us.

A middle-aged woman passing by bent down, picked up a flag, and asked, “How much are these?”

“Three yuan for one, five yuan for a pair,” we told her, using the price we had agreed on beforehand.

“That’s too expensive. How about four yuan for a pair?” the woman said, frowning slightly as she idly waved the two flags in her hand and began to bargain.

“Well... all right then.” Since she was our first customer, four yuan it was.

Because we had been in such a rush, the flags had not even been mounted on their poles yet, so we had to sell them while fitting the poles in at the same time. The efficiency was frankly terrible. After finally seeing off the first wave of customers, and while we had a brief lull, we turned around, used our bodies to block the wind from the street corner, then squatted by the box and hurriedly attached the poles to the flags.

After working for quite some time, the gaps around the box were gradually filled with red-and-white flags, and from a distance it finally looked a little like a proper street stall. Xiaokai even took a medium-sized national flag out of his backpack and hung it from a metal drying rack we had taken apart from the dormitory.

“This flag looks so much cooler,” Xiaokai said, slapping his backside as he stood up, brandishing the flag with a self-satisfied air. “Tomorrow when we watch the torch relay, waving this will feel fantastic!”

I looked up at Xiaokai and casually stuffed all the items from my own bag into his, freeing one bag to hold the money. Truth be told, our spot was excellent: close to the road, heavy foot traffic, and with our big national flag standing out, business stayed feverishly brisk. Our customers were all kinds of people too: passersby, taxi drivers, a boss in a Mercedes, even old folks on bicycles taking children to and from school. Before dinner time had even arrived, we had already recouped our costs.

“Boss, that national flag is pretty nice. Sell it to me, will you?” Just as we were in the thick of things, a woman’s voice suddenly came from behind us. Turning around, we saw a young couple, both under thirty. The woman was clutching the medium-sized flag Xiaokai had hung up as a sign and refusing to let go.

“That flag is for us to use tomorrow. It’s not for sale,” Xiaokai quickly said, getting to his feet with a broad, ingratiating smile.

“Boss, just sell it to us. Name your price,” the woman said, to our surprise acting spoiled like a child. “I want this flag!”

No matter how we pleaded, that was all she would say.

“If they won’t sell it, let’s just go...” The man took the woman’s hand and, with an apologetic look, tried to smooth things over for us.

Unexpectedly, at that very moment, while Xiaokai was off guard, the woman suddenly snatched the flag away, seized the man by the hand, and broke into a little run.

“Ah... hey...” Faced with such a sudden turn of events, Xiaokai had no idea how to handle it. He hurried after them.

The man turned back with some resignation, fished a twenty-yuan note from his pocket, and pressed it into Xiaokai’s hand. Since the deed was done, there was nothing to be done about it, reluctant though we were.

As it happened, Xiaokai’s roommate Aaron was also in the city, so we called him and asked him to come over.

“Aaron, we’re going to grab a meal. Can you watch the stall for us?” We pushed the box toward him with sly grins on our faces.

“Sure, go ahead and eat,” Aaron said with admirable good nature. Without a word of complaint, he agreed.

Having just made money, we naturally spent with far greater ease. We went straight to a nearby KFC, and perhaps because it was the first time we had ever eaten with our own money, that evening’s dinner tasted especially delicious.

It was the season when spring gave way to summer. The mornings were hot, the evenings cold. By the time we returned to the stall after eating our fill, the temperature felt as though it had dropped sharply. Poor me, I was wearing only a pair of basketball shorts, and when the wind blew, I could not help shivering. Thankfully, over my short-sleeved T-shirt I still had on a sleeveless sweatshirt, which at least kept me somewhat warm.

Setting up a stall in one place was not only boring, it was cold, too, so we decided to walk around instead. Maybe we would sell more that way. I lifted the box, and the three of us headed along the overpass toward Sun Yat-sen Street, selling as we walked, though the business was never as good as it had been in the afternoon.

“It’s all that hateful woman’s fault for stealing our national flag!” Xiaokai seemed to have found the root of the problem...

After nine o’clock, Aaron met up with several others from his dorm and caught a ride back to campus. Xiaokai and I stayed in the city. The two of us walked along slowly, eventually arriving at an intersection near the bus station, where quite a few vendors were selling Olympic-related goods.

“I’m exhausted. Let’s set up here,” I said, no longer wanting to go any farther once we had crossed the overpass.

Xiaokai looked around and felt the flow of people was decent, so he found an open patch of ground and set the box down. Next to us was a stall selling Olympic clothing. In casual conversation with its owner, we were shocked to learn that this group had actually followed the torch relay all the way from the first stop in Sanya to here.

It was hard to make money these days. One afternoon had nearly worn me flat, yet they had already run half the country. I could not help admiring their persistence.

By the time it was almost eleven, nearly five hundred flags were still unsold, and both of us were growing tired of it.

“Why don’t you sell me all the flags you can’t get rid of wholesale?” the stall owner beside us seemed to have guessed our thoughts and asked tentatively.

I quickly pulled Xiaokai aside, and after a hushed discussion we decided that we would certainly have nowhere to sleep that night, and whether we would have the energy to keep selling in the morning was a major question. Since we also wanted to watch the torch relay, it might as well be a favor done in passing. “Fine. Count each one at fifty cents, and make it an even four hundred flags.”

The stall owner thought it over briefly and agreed to our price. Cash changed hands, goods changed hands, and we left the box with him, taking only the remaining few dozen flags away in plastic bags.

Suddenly with nothing in our hands, we felt much lighter. Xiaokai said that a friend from his club was singing at a karaoke bar, and we could go spend the night with them. I thought it over and realized there was nowhere else to go anyway. So Xiaokai led the way, and we headed straight for the karaoke bar...

(Revised on October 13, 2010.)