Chapter 28 Scammer Decides to Be a Good Person 3 Lunchbox Business, Simply Explosive

“Can a lunchbox business really work?” Du Heng asked doubtfully.

But the next day, he still asked the foreman for leave and went to help Shi Lan move things around. The money had already been spent anyway, so there was no point saying more.

Pots and pans, oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar, flour, rice, and vegetables, insulated containers, disposable lunch boxes…

They made several trips back and forth.

With knife in hand and wok in motion, Shi Lan put on a little show for poor Du Heng.

With a man in the house who had a sweet tooth, half the dishes ended up on the sweet side.

Coke chicken wings, sweet and sour spareribs, candied taro, stir-fried bok choy, mapo tofu, and cold shredded radish salad.

“You can actually cook with cola?” Du Heng asked.

Shi Lan handed him a pair of chopsticks. “Why don’t you taste it and find out?”

Come to think of it, she was pretty surprised too. Cola in this era was still three yuan a bottle. Compared to rice, which cost only thirty cents a jin, cola was practically a luxury item.

Du Heng had already made up his mind. He had even thought of what compliments he was going to give, because he had never heard Shi Lan mention that she knew how to cook. No matter what, though, a whole table of dishes had taken a lot of time to make, and it would be rude to pour cold water on her efforts.

But the moment the chicken wing went into his mouth, all the praise he had prepared vanished.

His eyes lit up, and the only words left in his mouth were, “So good!”

His chopsticks were already reaching for the other dishes.

“It’s delicious, seriously delicious!”

Shi Lan asked, “So, can the lunchbox business work?”

“It can work more than work!”

Come on, with your palate so used to watery stir-fried cabbage and still calling it good, how could I not win you over?

“I’ll make another meal tonight and pack it into disposable lunch boxes for you to take back. Let your coworkers try it too. If they think it’s good, they can help spread the word so they’ll come by the stall later.”

Du Heng said, “With food this good, I’m afraid they won’t be willing to spend money on it. The cafeteria food doesn’t taste good, but at least it’s free.”

Shi Lan patted him on the shoulder. “Relax, young man. The lunchboxes won’t be this fancy. I know what I’m doing.”

She sat down to eat too.

Du Heng touched his shoulder. “Young… man?”

“Did I say it wrong? Aren’t you a young man?”

He was only twenty at most this year.

Seeing the tips of his ears turn red, Shi Lan couldn’t help wanting to laugh. He was kind of cute.

It really was an age of slow carriages and horses¹, where pure-hearted boys still existed.

And this pure-hearted boy ate her food and did work for her too.

The kitchen inside the house was too small, and the stove was too small too. There was no way to make large amounts of food in there.

So whenever he had time, Du Heng put up a lean-to in the yard for her, built two earthen stoves under it, and set up a place for a chopping board.

He did all that either after getting off work at night or before heading to work in the morning. Either way, he was sacrificing his sleep to do it.

Shi Lan saw it all and couldn’t bear to let him keep helping her after working himself so hard at the construction site all day.

Aside from those things, she slowly handled whatever she could on her own and didn’t let him help.

Actually, when she first learned that Du Heng had so easily handed over the money he’d saved over three years to his girlfriend, Shi Lan had assumed he must have been deeply in love with the original owner.

But after spending the past few days with him, she realized his feelings for the original owner had only been so-so. After all, they’d only known each other a few months.

The reason he got swindled out of his money was simply because he was naive and easy to fool.

In Shi Lan’s hands, she could trick him into falling for her with just a few meals.

Ever since he started eating her cooking, he made sure to eat all three meals at home every day. He smiled at her more brightly, rushed to do the work, and trusted her in every possible way.

Shi Lan had already scouted everything out for this lunchbox business.

Now all that was left was to make the food and haul it over on a handcart.

On the first day of business, she didn’t make too much, just enough for a trial run with one meat dish and two vegetable dishes.

Braised Pork Belly with white kidney beans, hot and sour shredded potatoes, stir-fried cabbage, plus a big bucket of steamed rice.

Du Heng had originally wanted to take time off to help, but she didn’t let him.

Shi Lan was still counting on him to bring his coworkers over and help get her business started. If he stayed holed up with her, who was going to steer those workers her way?

After a busy morning, around eleven o’clock, Shi Lan pushed her cart to an intersection she had chosen on purpose. It was the hub connecting the factory, the construction site, and the school.

Once she got there, she took out a loudspeaker, and the prerecorded message began looping.

“Delicious lunchboxes, one meat and two vegetables, two yuan a box.”

Shi Lan found a place to sit and waited for the fish… no, for customers to come to her.

There was a small display platform on the cart, and Shi Lan placed one open box there for customers to see.

In this era, disposable lunch boxes were still made of that white foam plastic. The ones Shi Lan bought were the 900-milliliter kind.

The one meat dish and two vegetable dishes all went into one box, while the rice was packed separately.

She had done the math. One lunchbox, including ingredients and miscellaneous costs, came to about eighty cents. Selling it for two yuan meant a net profit of one yuan and twenty cents. And that was with the small batch she made today. If she made more at once, the cost could drop to around sixty cents.

And a plain bowl of noodles on the street already cost two yuan, so Shi Lan’s lunchboxes had a clear advantage.

Sure enough, business came quickly. The first customers were two elementary school students, drawn in by the glossy, richly sauced Braised Pork Belly on display.

“Auntie, for two yuan, is it really this big?”

Kids really did have a terrible way of speaking. This body was only nineteen, okay? Shi Lan had looked in the mirror, and her face was still fresh and lovely.

But the customer was king, even if the king had an annoying mouth.

“That’s right. There’s also a separate box of rice. If you think it’s too much to finish, you can split one with your classmate.”

“Then we’ll take one.”

“Coming right up.”

The lunchboxes had all been packed in advance and stored in an insulated container.

The two kids didn’t bother being particular. They took their lunchbox and immediately sat on the curb to eat.

Naturally, the first thing they went for was the most tempting dish, the Braised Pork Belly.

Only after she saw them start eating did Shi Lan ask, “Is it good?”

“It’s good, and the kidney beans are good too.” The two children’s chopsticks moved at lightning speed. “Are you coming again tomorrow?”

“I am. I’ll be here from now on, selling at this same time in the same place.”

More children passed by one after another at lunchtime. Just like the first two, they bought one box between two or even three people, then sat in a neat row along the curb.

Maybe the kids’ enthusiastic eating was just too contagious, because even passersby started stopping to ask the price.

“For two yuan, is it really this big?” When adults came over, that was usually the first thing they asked, whether the actual portion was as large as the display sample.

After all, a box that big for just two yuan, with meat included, really was cheap!

Qin Xiaohui worked at a nearby factory. Her family had been fairly well-off when she was growing up, and she’d never had to suffer in the food department. But the meals in the factory cafeteria were so bad they weren’t even worth mentioning. Every noon, she’d rather spend money eating outside than eat in the cafeteria. The food outside wasn’t necessarily delicious either, but at least she could order meat dishes with a bit of oil and substance, unlike the cafeteria food, which felt like eating nothing at all.

That day, she and her friend went out during lunch break as usual to look for food, and they noticed a lunchbox stall had appeared at the intersection about fifty meters from the factory gate. The portions were huge for only two yuan, and it smelled genuinely delicious, so they stopped to ask about it. But when they saw the meat dish was only Braised Pork Belly, Qin Xiaohui, who had never liked fatty meat since childhood, decided not to buy any.

But after wandering around nearby, they still didn’t find anything they wanted to eat. The image of that red, glossy, tender Braised Pork Belly kept lingering in their minds, so after discussing it, the two of them went back and bought one box to share at the factory.

Qin Xiaohui’s friend tried the Braised Pork Belly first, then immediately urged, “Xiaohui, try it. It’s not greasy at all.”

Qin Xiaohui was skeptical, but she picked up a chunk anyway. The moment she bit into it, she found it wonderfully soft, practically melting in her mouth, thoroughly seasoned, and full of the pure satisfaction of eating meat, without the slightest hint of greasiness. The white kidney beans were just as good, simmered until they were soft and floury, soaked through with meat juices, and absolutely delicious.

Then she tried the shredded potatoes, which were crisp, tangy, and refreshing. Even the ordinary stir-fried cabbage wasn’t watery at all. It had a nice bite to it, and the tough cabbage stems had even been carefully trimmed away.

Qin Xiaohui and her close friend looked at each other and said in unison, “We’re coming again tomorrow!”

When the two of them usually ate lunch out, it cost seven or eight yuan each on average. Who would have thought that today they’d spent just one yuan and still eaten until their stomachs were round? And on top of that, it tasted especially good.

Her friend was already looking forward to tomorrow’s lunch. “The boss said today was just a trial sale, and there was only one meat dish. Tomorrow there’ll be lean meat too.”

Qin Xiaohui said, “If the Braised Pork Belly stays this good every day, I wouldn’t mind eating it for another day or two.”

–

With a whole row of food streamers on the curb drawing people in, plus the boxed meals themselves being cheap and generous, opening day business was bustling, and the lunch boxes sold fast.

By the time Du Heng arrived with four or five coworkers, the remaining boxed meals were almost not enough. It was a close call.

When those coworkers went to buy their lunches, Shi Lan smiled brilliantly and gave Du Heng plenty of face. “It’s opening day, after all. You’re all Du Heng’s coworkers, and it’s already great that you came to support us. How could I charge you the same as strangers? I’ll give you half off. One yuan per box.”

“Now that’s more like it.”

None of them had expected such a pleasant surprise, and Du Heng’s coworkers were all overjoyed.

They took their boxed meals and squatted by the roadside to eat, all of them with mouths shining with grease. They couldn’t come up with any fancy praise, only kept saying it was delicious.

Du Heng was still eating nearby, and after Shi Lan finished tidying things up, she didn’t leave either.

Right there on the spot, she started counting the day’s earnings.

They had prepared fifty boxes in total today, and in the end even the box that had been sitting out as a display sample and had already gone a little cold was bought.

Shi Lan was generous, too. She sold that one at half price as well.

So out of those fifty boxes, forty-three were sold at the full price of two yuan. Six were sold for one yuan, five to the coworkers and one display sample.

And Du Heng ate one without paying.

Today’s revenue was ninety-two yuan, costs were forty, and on opening day they made a net profit of fifty-two yuan.

This was the 1990s, when average monthly income was only four or five hundred yuan. A young, able-bodied man like Du Heng could work himself to the bone on a construction site and only make a little over twenty a day, thirty at most. Ordinary office clerks usually earned only three hundred and fifty a month, and even those in higher leadership positions made just five or six hundred.

Even without increasing production, if Shi Lan made fifty or sixty yuan a day, then over the course of a month she’d be earning three to five times an ordinary person’s salary. It was practically profiteering.

Seeing Shi Lan sit there counting money, one of Du Heng’s coworkers said, “Business really does make money.”

She had a fistful of loose bills in her hand with nowhere to hide them, so Shi Lan simply displayed them openly and said, “It looks like a lot, but the costs are high too. I give big portions and sell them cheap, so I only make twenty or thirty cents on each box. I was up before dawn this morning, working nonstop, and only managed to make fifty portions. Just like you, I’m earning hard-earned money.”

Someone had already done the math in his head and asked, “Then doesn’t that mean you’re only making a dozen yuan or so a day?”

Shi Lan said, “Isn’t that exactly it? This afternoon I still have to go buy vegetables, wash them, and get everything ready for tomorrow. I don’t get to rest at all. At least compared to working at the barbershop, this is a little more flexible.” She paused, then added, “And I’m closer to Du Heng too.”

“Hahahaha…”

The coworkers immediately started teasing, and the topic turned to the relationship between the two of them.

Du Heng silently lowered his head like a shy ostrich.

In reality, he was quietly complaining to himself: What a lie. When he left for work this morning, she hadn’t even gotten up yet. He was the one who lit the stove fire before leaving. And when they were buying supplies earlier, she had clearly said they only needed to shop once every three days…

Translator’s Notes