It was the end of July and the weather had been getting increasingly hot. Cicadas were singing merrily outside the windows.
Qin Guan was lounging in a chair, his face buried in a watermelon. He was thinking about his life and how he would make a living.
When it came to making money, Qin Guan was at a loss. He had been an engineering student in his past life, and every day he’d had to deal with excavators, battering rams and road rollers.
Now that he had been reborn though, he did not want to carry on with his old business. However, he could not recall any winning lottery numbers, nor did he know anything about the stock market. What else could he do?
“Others would have acted more boldly given the chance to be reborn. I have been very cautious.”
Qin Guan sighed. Even though he had the opportunity to start over, he was not able to make money in an easy, smart way.
He spat out the watermelon seeds filling his mouth. He went out in a pair of flip-flops, heading to the foundry where his cousin worked. He wanted to ask him to make him a barbecue cart using waste sheet iron.
Walking out of the foundry, Qin Guan realized that he would need help. He called Zhou Jing and Li Jian from the small grocery store next to the foundry. These two boys had no goals in their lives. They already knew that they had barely passed the minimum score for admission into a respectable college in the College Entrance Examination. One of them stayed at home, bored, with little to do except eat and sleep; and the other read smut, trying to catch up on all the chapters he had missed during the College Entrance Examination period. Listening to Qin Guan’s plan on the phone, the two boys could not bear to stay at home anymore. They all agreed to meet in the farmers’ market.
Holding two chemical fertilizer sacks with the word “urea” on them, the three boys bargained heatedly with the owner. In the end, they bought two wholesale sacks of charcoal and hundreds of bamboo sticks that they planned to use as skewers.
Li Jian asked the elder niece of his mother’s elder aunt’s younger cousin to help them set up a stall at the night market, and Zhou Jing brought some tables and short stools from the recreation room of the Bureau of Retired Officials where his father worked.
The three boys had put together all their pocket money to buy all those things, but they still had more than 300 yuan left. That meant that they could also afford to buy the ingredients. Everything was ready except for the barbecue cart.
Qin Guan’s cousin was very efficient. He delivered the cart to Qin Guan in less than three days. Qin Guan’s parents were staring at their son as if he was a monkey, but Qin Guan calmly fastened the cart, ready to start work the next day.
The iron cart was equipped with a brazier where one could make fried noodles by lowering the iron plate, and on its right side there was space for hanging a coal stove where one could fry kebabs using an oil pan.
It could match any modern multi-functional automatic barbecue cart.
Everything was ready.
The next day, at four o’clock in the morning, Qin Guan borrowed a tricycle from the factory his mother worked at and rode to the market.
Chicken, pork, mutton, all of these were must-haves. Garlic, chili, onion and potatoes were also essential for roasted dishes. “There are even wholesale cold noodles! Great. We also need cooking oil and seasonings.”
Qin Guan bought a tricycle worth of groceries. By the time he was done, he had very little money left.
It was already after seven when Qin Guan struggled to ride the tricycle successfully back home.
He proudly called Zhou Jing and Li Jian to wake them up and ask them to come and help.
When Zhou Jing and Li Jian showed up at Qin Guan’s home with a case of bed head, Qin Guan had already taken the ingredients out from the bags and put them in large bowls.
Looking at a living room full of ingredients, Zhou Jing said anxiously, “Who can handle the meat? I’ve never been inside a kitchen.” Hearing this, Qin Guan felt very self-satisfied. As a sloppy bachelor for years, he’d had to cook so he wouldn’t have to eat instant noodles every day.
Qin Guan shook his head complacently and began to assign tasks, “Zhou Jing, you distribute the ingredients, and skewer the meat and vegetables. Li Jian, you come and help me.” Then he rolled up his sleeves and walked into the kitchen.
Qin Guan laid a piece of mutton on the chopping board. The kitchen knife danced in the air as the mutton was sliced into small strips, stacked neatly on the board.
Qin Guan put the sliced mutton into an iron bowl, saying loudly: “Ready!”
Then Zhou Jing and Li Jian began the first step of their business: skewering the meat.
In just one morning, the three boys made several hundred kebabs and put them away pack by pack. As long as they managed to clean and cut the vegetables in the afternoon, they would be ready to start their business.
After lunch, they packed everything up and lied down haphazardly on Qin Guan’s small bed.
Qin Guan said bitterly, “Others make money with no effort at all. Why do we have to be so miserable?”
Li Jian stated the obvious, “We’re useless high school graduates. Some would say we’re not even strong enough for manual work. And now we have our own barbecue stand. That’s already amazing. I told our other classmates from high school and they were so jealous.”
Qin Guan quietly wiped his tears. “It’s because you’ve never read stories about rebirth. People lead lavish lives after being reborn! They have good friends and date beautiful girls. They leave their remote villages to become businessmen. They start up their own companies, buy shares in the stock market and invest in venture capital.”
But he himself was tired like a dog just by setting up a stand, and he had even gotten rejected by the girl he liked. Why was his life so different from others’?
Qin Guan got up. As a strand of hair hung down his face, he realized that he had not cut his hair since the College Entrance Examination and it had gotten rather long.
Qin Guan kicked the two boys on the bed and said, “Let’s go to my cousin’s and have a haircut. We’re now businessmen. We have to pay attention to our image.”
Qin Guan’s cousin was 20 years old. She was a senior hairdresser at a new hair salon downtown, and was trying to learn the latest hairdressing trends in Guangdong Province.
The three boys strolled into the hair salon. There were few people there in the afternoon. Qin Guan’s cousin planned to practice her skills on his hair.
Zhou Jing and Li Jian sat behind his chair and watched Qin Guan’s cousin move the scissors up and down. They took a glance at Qin Guan and found that he was very handsome with his new hairstyle. He would definitely make all his friends jealous.
Suddenly, they heard Qin Guan’s cousin scream, “Whoops, my hands slipped!” Then they saw Qin Guan’s scalp.
“Ha ha!” Instantly the two boys felt satisfied. It was like Buddha himself had granted their wish.
Qin Guan’s cousin tried to correct her mistake, but it only got worse. She did not stop until it was obvious that the hair could not be salvaged.
Qin Guan flicked his hair and looked at his choppy hairstyle in the mirror. It was so uneven that he could not even bear to look at it. Moments ago it had been too long, and now it was all gone. Instead, he had a silly buzzcut that was missing two spots for technical reasons.
He had turned from a Prince Charming into a woodlouse in mere seconds.
All day long, Zhou Jing and Li Jian could not help laughing at Qin Guan, even while he set up the stand in the night market.
Zhou Jing and Li Jian kept laughing while they unloaded kebabs and took vegetables down from the cart. Qin Guan did not care. He grinned and rubbed his short hair.
“Well, this sure must feel cool in the summer.”
Qin Guan lit the charcoals in the brazier, put the oil pan on top of it and prepared the iron plate. It was almost dark and the lights in the night market were on.
More and more people flocked there to have a fun summer night.
Qin Guan took out several kebabs and roasted them on the fire.
Oil dripped onto the burning iron plate from the newly bought mutton, producing puffs of smoke and giving off a sweet smell.
In just a few minutes, several people were already approaching the stand.
“New stand. Let’s try it. Ten mutton kebabs, ten pork kebabs, and two lamb kidneys, please.”
“Wow, there’re even cold noodles! Two more bowls of cold noodles. For here, please.”
The three boys got busy right away.
Qin Guan was in charge of roasting, frying and stirring, Zhou Jing made the cold noodles, and Li Jian cleaned up the stand and served the food and drinks.
As it got darker, business got even better. The three boys were kept busy. They saw customers come and go, and when they finally paused for breath, they realized that it was already late night.
There were fewer and fewer people on the street. Other vendors around them started to pack up to call it a day.
After they cleaned up the last table, the three boys sank down on the stools.
Qin Guan shook the metal bucket that held the beer and filled three glasses. He took one glass and drank it up.
The other two boys emptied their glasses in one gulp as well and belched contentedly. Then they all turned their attention to the moneybag around Qin Guan’s waist.
Qin Guan looked around, took out a big pile of change from the bag, and counted it out with them.
There were over 600 yuan in total. If they deducted the cost, they had earned 300 yuan in one night.
Looking at the big pile of money in front of them, they all gasped in excitement. Their fatigue was suddenly gone.
In 1998, the average salary was around 800 yuan. Now each of them could earn that much in little more than a week.
Qin Guan shook his head. He looked at the two excited boys who were cleaning up the stand and wondered whether he could make sufficient money before the new school term started to get the things he wanted. One of them was a cell phone. The newly released Nokia 5110 looked pretty good. Although it was a bit big, it would look nice in a colored case. The second thing he wanted was a computer. He had to buy one because he would be going to college. The cheapest laptop cost more than 8,000 yuan. It seemed that he could only afford a desktop.
As he rode the tricycle home under the myriads of stars in the sky, Qin Guan thought about his future business and let out a sigh. He had to work hard. He still had a long way to go.