Reborn 92's Business Tycoon

Chapter 13: Fried chestnuts with sugar

This is what he wrote this afternoon in the mountains.

It is also the result of his thinking for several days. At such a young age, his opportunities to earn money are indeed limited at the moment, and he can only rely on his parents to improve the family's financial situation. However, there are also limits to the businesses that his parents can make money from. Pig farming, for example, is currently also cheap. In case of bad luck and encountering any serious illness, they can only kill and eat the pig themselves. Moreover, raising two pigs in a family is already the limit, and raising more will become a problem with the feed for the pigs.

Given the current conditions, fried chestnuts are a more realistic option. When he was in primary school, chestnuts once sold for 5 yuan per catty, which was the historical high. Now they sell for a maximum of 3 yuan at most. Everyone thinks they're selling cheaply, but there's nothing they can do about it. Farmers have always had very little say in the prices of agricultural products.

Besides, he can make them.

After starting work, he saw that there were fried chestnuts with sugar, so from time to time he would buy some. It wasn't that he liked them, but mainly because since he was a child, every year he helped his parents collect chestnuts, from cracking them to picking them up to peeling them, and finally selling them, it was busy for more than ten days. But as far as I can remember, my family never ate chestnuts even once, not even in a bowl. I guess the whole village was the same. Even if they were sold cheaply, no one wanted to eat them. At most, when peeling them, they would eat the broken ones raw.

To put it in a nutshell, after he started working, he bought fried chestnuts with sugar. What he ate was not the chestnuts, but the regret from his childhood.

It's like many adults still listening to the children's song 'Let's Row Our Boat' as they listen to the regrets of their childhood. When Feng Yiping was wearing old clothes adapted from his sister's small clothes and helping his family do what he could, the children in the capital were dressed up nicely on weekends and rowing boats in a park not far from Tiananmen, surrounded by green trees and red walls. Because of this, when Feng Yiping's family went to Beijing for a visit later, he took his son to Beihai Park to go boating.

Zhang Yan loves chestnuts, and they were sold at the entrance to the shopping mall and the farmers' market. She bought them almost every week, and at that time, fried chestnuts were already selling for 16 yuan per catty. After their parents went to Guangzhou to help out, especially their mother, seeing that a small paper bag of chestnuts cost nearly 20 yuan, she felt it was a waste of money and said, 'If you like them, I'll make them.'

But she didn't know how to make it. Feng Yiping looked it up online and found that it was easy, with step-by-step instructions, and there were even special fried chestnut sellers. So they tried making it a few times, constantly adjusting the sugar and oil ratio themselves, and adding other spices. In the end, the enhanced version of fried chestnuts they made was definitely better than the ones you can buy outside.

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Now all they have to do is change from the original homemade version, which was fried one or two catties at a time, to a large iron pot that can fry more than ten catties at a time.

Feng Yiping had another consideration when he made this suggestion.

His parents had never been wealthy, and so they took money very seriously, unwilling to spend even a penny. Over time, this became a habit. Even after Feng Yiping had made some money, he could not change this mindset. After they moved in together, Feng Yiping could not get used to his parents' stingy habits. They were thrifty in every aspect, from clothing to food, and would save every penny they could. Moreover, Zhang Yan was not used to it either, even though his family was well-off since childhood. Therefore, there were many conflicts between Feng Yiping, Zhang Yan and their parents because of spending money.

Feng Yiping remembered that Jia Pingwa once wrote something like this: 'In my eyes, two yuan is not two yuan, it is a pile of salt.'

In the eyes of their parents, money was not money, it was really their lives. Spending money was taking their lives away. Moreover, they were old at that time, so it was very difficult to change their minds. This time, Feng Yiping was confident that he could do better than before. He also wanted to be able to earn some money when his parents were young, so that they would not value money more than their lives, as they had done.

Feng Zhenchang looked at the piece of paper repeatedly and handed it to Mei Qiuping. 'It's not difficult to say, river sand is easy to say, just go to the river and pick the best shovel, sugar and tea oil are also easy to buy, but I don't know if we can make that taste.'

'And where are we going to sell it? Not to mention the county seat, if we sell it for 6 yuan a catty, I don't think many people will buy it. I don't think it will be easy in the city either. There should be a lot of people buying it in the province, but we've never been there before, so we don't know anyone. And in the province, we'll need to find somewhere to live, plus we'll need to buy sugar and tea oil, and a stove, and all that costs money, so it'll add up.' Feng Zhenchang continued.

Feng Yiping said, 'I'm not saying we have to go to the provincial capital to sell fried chestnuts. This is just one way to do it. If this doesn't work, we'll think of something else. My main concern is that the main item in this is chestnuts, and we have our own, so we don't need to spend money buying them. We don't have enough at home, but Brother Zhiming has a lot, so we can borrow a few hundred catties first and pay him back when we sell them. I don't see a problem with that!'

Feng Zhenchang nodded, 'That's fine. His family has young children and has few expenses at the moment, so after some discussion, we should be able to borrow some.'

'The key question at the moment is whether we can fry the chestnuts well. So what I mean is that the chestnuts need to be collected by the end of this month at the latest, so let's not rush to sell them yet. Let's try frying them first. If the fried ones taste good, then we can consider doing this. If we can't sell 10 catties a day, we should be fine. If we do this for two months, we can buy 600 catties, at 6 yuan a catty, for a gross income of 3,600 yuan. My brother-in-law is not always in the provincial capital, so let's ask him to help us rent a house. If we count the rent at 200 yuan a month, and we bring our own rice, we should be fine with 200 yuan a month for groceries. Travel expenses total 300 yuan, the stove plus sugar and oil, 200 is enough. Adding it all up, it would cost 1300, and 600 catties of chestnuts would cost 1200, which is almost 1100 yuan earned. There are more than 500 yuan a month, and if you do it well, this business can be done year-round, and 5000 yuan a year should be no problem.'

Feng Zhenchang worked as an accountant in a manufacturing company in his early years. 'You've included the 400 catties of chestnuts from our family. If those 400 catties are not counted, then in two months, we can earn almost 2,000 yuan?'

Feng Yiping said, 'If you want to do this for a long time, then you still have to count the price.'

Feng Zhenchang nodded, but Mei Qiuping was a little stunned. From the time she fell ill to the time they built the house, they had racked up more than 3,000 yuan in external debt. She was a hot-tempered person who worried every day. Based on their current income, she was afraid that it would take years to pay off the debt. How could her son calculate that if they worked hard, they could pay off most of the debt in two months?

She asked anxiously, 'Yiping, did you make a mistake?'

'No mistake,' Feng Zhenchang said, 'How could I be wrong about this thousand-odd-yuan bill?'

'Thousand-odd yuan, you make it sound so easy,' Mei Qiuping was also a person with a temper, 'In the past few years, which year did the family have more than a hundred yuan left at the end of the year?'

Feng Zhenchang was dumbfounded, and Feng Yiping quickly said, 'Mom, it can't be wrong, I'll write it down for you.'

Taking the paper, she questioned, 'You spend 200 yuan a month on groceries?' She said, 'That's if you eat big meals every day!'

'Mom, this is just a rough figure, it's better to be generous,' Feng Yiping explained.

Mei Qiuping looked at it several times, 'Yes, if you calculate it like that, you can really earn more than 500 yuan a month. Even if you only earn half that, more than 200 yuan a month, I'll be content.'

Feng Zhenchang was in the mood to joke: 'You haven't even started yet, and you're already talking about earning more than 200 yuan a month.'

Mei Qiuping said, "Anyway, this is a way forward. According to Yiping, if he goes to university in the future, he won't be able to afford it by farming with us. We'll just be taking on new debts before we've paid off the old ones. Besides, how easy is it to borrow money? Since it seems like this is a way to make money, let's give it a try!'

'According to Yiping, it's worth a try!" Feng Zhenchang agreed.

It was difficult for him too. Afflicted by his father's landlord status, he didn't get married until he was 37 years old. He worked hard farming the land, but he could never make much money. In the village, although he was old and respected, everyone called him uncle or father when they met him, but he still hasn't paid off the several thousand yuan he owes for his wife's medical treatment and the construction of the house they now live in.

At present, his son is his pride and their hope. His son is right: school fees are getting higher every year, and university is even more so. You can't just wait until the last minute to think of a solution. It's really time to start thinking of ways to earn money. But I don't have any good ideas myself, so this idea of my son's is not a bad way out.