These past two days, Fan Hongying and Li Xiuxiu have been following Acan around Guangcheng. They've seen everything from small hair clips to large items like refrigerators and televisions, leaving the two girls dazzled by the sheer variety.

Fan Hongying lingered for a long time in front of an electronics store. The window displayed imported Japanese Sanyo radios, Hong Kong-made electric fans, and a double-door refrigerator she had never seen before. What surprised her most was that these sought-after items could be purchased freely, without needing to collect various receipts; all she had to do was pay.

"If this were transported back to Jiangcheng..." Fan Hongying murmured to herself.

Ah-Can smiled knowingly: "Many businessmen from the north think the same way. However, electrical appliances are troublesome to transport, easily damaged, and require a lot of capital. It's better to start with small items to test the waters."

Fan Hongying nodded in agreement. The main issue is that there is only a policy direction at present, but it is not very clear, making it easy for people with ulterior motives to take advantage of it. Let's take it one step at a time.

Moreover, both she and Xiuxiu are currently students, and completing their university studies is the most important thing for them.

Although Li Xiuxiu was also tempted by these appliances, she was most interested in clothing. She gently tugged at Fan Hongying's sleeve and pointed to a clothing store across the street.

The two walked over hand in hand, carefully examining the clothing store. The store wasn't large, but it was tastefully decorated, with clothes hung in categories by color and style.

The first thing Li Xiuxiu noticed was the jeans. They were made of a dark blue fabric that wasn't particularly striking, and the jeans flared out from the knees down. In the few minutes she was observing them, several girls came in, chose their sizes, and went inside to try them on. A little while later, a girl with long, slender legs came out, and her whole demeanor seemed to have changed a lot.

The key point is that, besides jeans, the store also has many other novel styles: ruffled shirts, fitted dresses, T-shirts printed with English slogans...

Li Xiuxiu was touching the jeans in her hand, but her eyes kept wandering around the store, feeling that every piece of clothing was very beautiful.

"If you like it, go ahead and try it on." Fan Hongying noticed Li Xiuxiu's interest and encouraged her to go to the fitting room.

Li Xiuxiu hesitated. Usually, when buying clothes, she would just tell the store her size and take them. This kind of on-site try-on made her feel a little embarrassed. She always felt unsafe taking off her clothes in public.

"You can try on any of the pieces you like; the small cubicles inside are the fitting rooms." The proprietress, a young woman with fashionable curly hair, spoke Mandarin with a Cantonese accent. "These are the most popular styles in Hong Kong this year, and they're the only ones available in the entire city."

"I want to try it on too, will you come with me?" Seeing that Li Xiuxiu was hesitant, Fan Hongying chose a size that fit both of them and pulled Li Xiuxiu into the fitting room.

In the enclosed space, Li Xiuxiu felt much more at ease and quickly changed into flared jeans.

When Li Xiuxiu came out of the fitting room, she was stunned to see Fan Hongying wearing bell-bottoms. Fan Hongying, who was already slender, looked even more tall and straight with her legs accentuated by the bell-bottoms.

"It's so beautiful!" Liu Xiuxiu exclaimed sincerely.

Across from her, Fan Hongying looked at Xiuxiu in jeans with a face full of amazement: "Xiuxiu, you look so different in these pants, you feel so..." She didn't know how to describe the feeling, but she felt that Xiuxiu had a kind of dashing and heroic temperament.

The proprietress laughed and said, "That's cool. She's gone from a good girl to a cool girl."

"Cool?" The two were a little confused. What did that mean? But they were too embarrassed to ask. They felt like country bumpkins here, their every move revealing their restraint, afraid of making a mistake and losing face.

Li Xiuxiu turned around in front of the dressing mirror, liking it more and more each time she looked at herself.

"She looks just like this now, so energetic and cool!" the proprietress explained with a smile. She saw a reflection of her younger self in them, a timid girl who dared not do anything, afraid of making mistakes and losing face.

"How much are these pants?" Li Xiuxiu asked shyly. She and Fan Hongying had already spent a long time here and tried on the pants for so long, so she felt embarrassed not to buy them, especially since she really liked them.

The proprietress pulled out the price tag on the pants and pointed to the price on the pants for the two people to see: "25 yuan."

"25? That's so expensive?" Li Xiuxiu was a little surprised. A pair of pants cost more than many people's monthly salary. She had just seen many girls come in, try them on, and then take them away. She thought it was because they were relatively cheap.

"It's not expensive at all. It's only because I have connections and channels. Otherwise, if someone else brought the same goods here, they would have to pay at least 30, and some would even sell them for 50." Perhaps because she had heard such surprises so many times, the proprietress was not angry at all and patiently explained.

Li Xiuxiu and Fan Hongying paid the money with heavy hearts and walked out of the clothing store carrying two bags.

Ah-Can, who was sitting on the shady stone steps, saw the two of them come out and quickly went up to them: "Do you like buying clothes?"

Li Xiuxiu blushed slightly: "I'm sorry, I've never seen so many styles before, I'm a little overwhelmed by the choices. Have you been waiting long?"

"Hey~ what's the big deal?" Ah-chan waved his hand dismissively. "What I mean is, if you guys like, I can take you to the wholesale market. They have a lot of goods there, but they don't sell retail, they only wholesale."

"Really?" Li Xiuxiu perked up immediately upon hearing the suggestion. Seeing A-Can nod, she looked at Fan Hongying and asked, "Hongying, shall we go?"

"Go if you want to!" Fan Hongying knew that Xiuxiu was very interested in clothing and highly agreed with the suggestion: "Anyway, isn't the purpose of our trip here to learn more about these things? It's always good to see more."

The next morning, A-Can took the two girls to the clothing wholesale market. They were astonished by its scale: three whole streets were lined with clothing stalls, and vendors from all over the country, speaking different accents, were haggling with the owners, creating a lively atmosphere.

Suddenly, Li Xiuxiu spotted the same pair of pants she had bought yesterday. Just then, someone asked about the price, so she stood there for a moment. But soon she returned to Fan Hongying's side, looking dejected: "Hongying, these jeans only cost eight yuan here!"

"Eight yuan?" Fan Hongying was a little surprised. The purchase price was eight yuan, and the selling price was twenty-five yuan. This was not even half profit, but more than three times the profit by one yuan. Is the clothing industry really that profitable?

"So doing business is really profitable now. As long as you're not really stupid, doing business is like picking up money off the ground." Ah Can smiled when he heard their conversation. "But wholesale requires a minimum of twenty pieces of each size, which adds up to about a hundred pieces in total."

Fan Hongying immediately did the math in her head: a pair of pants costs eight yuan, and you can make seventeen yuan by reselling them; ten pairs would be one hundred and seventy yuan, and one hundred pairs would be one thousand seven hundred yuan.

“The profits are indeed very tempting, but the costs are also quite high,” she said, exchanging glances with Li Xiuxiu, both of them conveying the same sentiment.

Although the two of them could scrape together this much money, Fan Hongying wanted to take this opportunity to try a few more things. Putting everything into jeans not only left them with no other options, but also no way out; if sales didn't meet expectations, they wouldn't even have the capital to turn things around.