Chapter 107: Where Has the Wife Gone?

Chen Huajiang stayed at the shop at East Gate Sluice for seven days.

In those seven days, he got the shop back on track and turned it into the hottest place in the area, with a steady stream of customers coming and going without pause.

Along the way, he also added a number of refinements. For lunch and dinner, the shop offered free pickled side dishes. To speed up table turnover, he installed a separate counter for customers picking up their food, and everything was packed in kraft paper for people to take away.

He even set up what would later be called delivery service. Because Black Tiger had so many underlings, Chen Huajiang wanted to make the most of the available labor. He had them deliver meals to nearby shops and street vendors. Of course, this was limited to the area around the Main Sluice Gate; anything farther away was beyond their reach.

In this way, the shop made more than six hundred yuan in seven days. During that time, Black Tiger also handed out a bonus of over a hundred yuan; otherwise the profit would have reached more than eight hundred.

Chen Huajiang took three hundred yuan with him and arranged for Er Mao to act as his agent, coming once a month to collect the money.

Of course, the signboard had also been changed, now reading Kunlun Catering East Gate Sluice Franchise.

In a place with so much foot traffic, Chen Huajiang was naturally not about to miss the chance to advertise his Kunlun Catering.

"Where is everyone? What happened? Why aren’t they home at this hour?"

Chen Huajiang returned home at eleven in the morning, just in time for lunch, only to find that both his wife and daughter were not there.

That made him slightly worried. After all, his wife was usually very regular in her habits.

But worry was useless. In those days there were no cell phones, not even pagers. If people wanted to get in touch, they practically had to shout.

Of course, landlines had already appeared in workplaces and little corner shops on the streets, but a landline was no good for contacting someone at any moment.

Chen Huajiang made himself a bowl of noodles to fill his stomach. By two in the afternoon, Lin Jiayin and Huanhuan still had not come home, and this time he truly began to worry.

"Brother Chen, what brings you here? Looking for your wife?"

Chen Huajiang had just arrived at Red Flag Factory when he happened to see Liang Long patrolling with his men. Seeing him, Liang Long came over with a smile and casually tossed him a cigarette.

"Yes. Jiayin didn’t come home at noon, and I’m worried something’s happened."

"Did Jiayin come to work this afternoon?"

Chen Huajiang caught the cigarette and asked Liang Long.

"I wasn’t paying close attention. What about you lot? Did anyone see Comrade Lin Jiayin?"

Liang Long thought for a moment, then looked back at the men behind him and asked.

"I didn’t notice."

"I think I saw her."

"How about this, I’ll run over and check whether Brother Chen’s wife is here."

The factory was crowded with people coming and going, and no one had been making a point of remembering. For a moment, no one could say for sure.

Soon, however, one of Liang Long’s men ran a quick errand to the workshop. When he returned, he shook his head and said, "She’s not here. I asked the workshop director, and Comrade Lin Jiayin took the day off today."

Took leave? Chen Huajiang let out a breath. If she had asked for leave, then it was not an accident.

If she had not taken leave and still was not in the factory, he really would have been worried.

"Since it was just leave, then I’m relieved. All right, thanks for the trouble, brothers."

Chen Huajiang smiled and nodded gratefully at Liang Long and the others before turning to leave.

"Wait."

Just as Chen Huajiang was about to go, Liang Long hurried after him.

"What is it?"

"What do you mean by that? Why are we both speaking so cautiously? Looking down on me, is that it?"

Seeing him hesitate, Chen Huajiang pretended to be displeased.

Obviously, he knew Liang Long must have some favor to ask, and he said this only so the other man would stop fretting over it.

"It’s like this, Brother Chen. Is your barbecue stall still hiring?"

"I have a few comrades-in-arms from the county town below. They still haven’t found work lately, and they came to rely on me a couple of days ago. But Red Flag Factory isn’t making much money right now, and it’s not hiring either."

"So I wanted to ask for them: do you still need people over there? I can promise you this much: those brothers all have good character, and when we were in the army they were all hardworking men."

Liang Long looked at Chen Huajiang with a plea in his eyes. They were his comrades, after all, and if he could help, he wanted to.

Chen Huajiang considered it and found it rather difficult.

The people he hired at the shop were all waiters and cooks. He could not exactly have Liang Long’s comrades-in-arms working as waiters.

"Brother Chen, if it’s too much trouble, then forget it."

"Last time I heard somebody say the glass factory over there seemed to be hiring. I’ll go take a look this afternoon and maybe help them get something arranged."

Seeing Chen Huajiang frown, Liang Long understood the answer already.

He did not blame Chen Huajiang. After all, a private restaurant in those days did not really need security guards. Besides, his hesitation earlier had also been because he did not want his brothers to end up as waiters.

"Hold on. Ask your brothers whether they’d be willing to run a private business."

"Something like the food stall I opened by the factory gate. I can supply the equipment and the know-how first, and once they make money, they can pay me back."

"But you have to make it clear to them beforehand. There’s no problem making money in this line of work, but it’s hard and exhausting. If they can’t stick it out later, I don’t want them saying I, Chen Huajiang, cheated them."

A sudden flash of inspiration struck Chen Huajiang, and an idea sprang up in his mind, a big one.

He was going to build another food street.

Wasn’t the area by the glass factory in later years the famous food street of Nanming City? But that would not happen until the nineteen nineties, when mass layoffs left many workers without a way to make a living.

After that, a great many workers set up stalls to support themselves. In particular, all kinds of snack stands and open-air food booths sprang up around the glass factory, gradually gathering into a reputation by word of mouth.

Even in later years, Nanming City tried to create several food streets, but the citizens refused to recognize them. They only accepted the food street by the glass factory.

There was even a story like this: a tourist from out of town came to Nanming City and took a taxi to the food street according to the official map. Naturally, the taxi driver brought the customer to the food street by the glass factory. But the place the customer actually wanted was the food street in the high-tech district shown on the official map.

The customer and the driver argued fiercely, and even the police were called.

In the end, of course, the driver apologized, but on the local forums everyone was unanimously supporting the driver, because in everyone’s heart there had never been more than one food street, and it had always been the one by the glass factory.

"Then... all right. I’ll ask them first."

Liang Long’s eyes lit up, and he nodded with a smile.

The two sides then agreed on a time. Liang Long would first go ask his comrades what they thought, and then come back to give Chen Huajiang an answer.

That afternoon, Chen Huajiang returned to the shop and seemed rather listless.

"Boss, are you sick? Maybe you should go see a doctor."

Seeing his expression, Wei Lanhua assumed he was ill and offered her concern.

Chen Huajiang waved it off. He was not sick; he simply could not stop worrying about Lin Jiayin.

The more he thought about it, the more anxious he became. Public order in those days was nowhere near as good as it would be in later years. There were bandits on the roads, robbers, all kinds of criminals everywhere.

No, the more he thought about it, the more frightened he became.

He decided to go find Black Tiger and have him send his underlings to search. If something had happened to his wife and he was still standing there clueless, that would be unforgivable.

But before he could go looking for Black Tiger, Chen Huajiang discovered he had simply been overthinking it. Liang Long called the shop and said Lin Jiayin had passed by the gate of Red Flag Factory. She was probably on her way home.

Chen Huajiang hurried back home, where Lin Jiayin was indeed cooking in the kitchen.

"What is it?"

Seeing her husband standing at the kitchen door, looking at her with obvious concern, Lin Jiayin was a little bewildered.

"Where did you go today? You didn’t even tell me. You nearly scared me to death."

Chen Huajiang walked over, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his head on her shoulder, speaking in an unhappy tone.

At that moment, the knot of worry in his heart finally loosened.