Chen Hong shook her head: "Dad, I've decided to stay in Rongcheng from now on. I have a house and land there, and a fishing boat. A trip to sea to catch some fish is enough for my mother and me to live on. With my swimming skills, it won't be difficult for me to make money at sea."
"If we came back, how much money could we get from selling the house, land, and boat? Besides, even if we got the money, we'd spend it all in a few years, and my daughter and I wouldn't have any income. How much could we earn working for someone else? It probably wouldn't even be enough to feed and clothe us."
The father worried for her, "What can you do by yourself while taking care of the child?"
Taking advantage of the situation, Chen Hong pretended to be vulnerable: "Dad, come with me. You can help me pick up the kids. I really can't manage right now. If you come, I can focus on going out to sea to fish and earn money. I'll pay you a salary, and we can work together."
The father opened his mouth, but couldn't bring himself to say anything. His daughter was divorced and needed his help; he had to help her through these next few years, and things would be better when the children were older.
My younger sister came into the room at this time and also advised, "Dad, why don't you give it a try? You can come home for the New Year at the end of the year and let my sister pay you your salary. If you don't go, she will also hire someone, and we are not at ease leaving the child with someone else."
Dad looked at Mom: "Old Niu, what do you think?"
The mother was quite open-minded. "Go ahead. You're often away from home for long periods of time when you're working. You'll come back for the New Year. Let her look after the child for two or three years, until the child can go to school on his own, then you can come back."
The older brother also said, "Dad, you should go too. Go see the sea and eat some seafood with your sister. The seaside is so nice, the temperature is just right. I want to go see it too."
The whole family approved the proposal, and Dad made preparations to go to Rongcheng. The next morning, after breakfast, Chen Hong and her sister went to Jinan. They first went to a long-established gold shop in the city center, where the sales staff warmly greeted them.
After examination by an appraiser, all the pearls Chen Hong presented were natural seawater pearls. This time, Chen Hong brought out thirty pearls, two of which were exceptionally large and milky white, measuring 22 millimeters in diameter. Their large, round shape and translucent color are quite rare. The jewelry store offered 100,000 yuan per pearl.
The two Melo beads were offered for 500,000 and 400,000 respectively.
Five relatively large white pearls, each 15 mm in diameter, were priced at 30,000 yuan each. Six golden pearls, each 12 mm in diameter, were priced at 25,000 yuan each. The remaining seventeen pearls, some smaller, some not perfectly round, and some with minor flaws, were priced between 3,000 and 20,000 yuan each.
Xiaoyun, the younger sister, went out and called her kindergarten principal to report the results of the jewelry store's appraisal. Next to her sat a relative who owned a jewelry store. After hearing the appraisal results, the relative offered Xiaoyun 200,000 yuan each for the two 22mm beads and 43,000 yuan each for the five 15mm beads.
They're demanding an exorbitant price of 100,000 yuan per pearl. Please make sure Xiaoyun brings these nine pearls back to Beijing. If she sees them in person and is satisfied with the quality, you can give her a little extra. She uses them to make jewelry for her own shop, so the price certainly won't be lower than what the gold shop would offer her.
She also said that if she had access to natural seawater pearls, she could help her make contact, as her shop needed such high-quality pearls and hoped for a long-term supply. She could sign a purchase contract, guaranteeing to buy them at a price higher than the industry average. She was waiting in Beijing for Xiaoyun to inspect the goods and pay.
When Xiaoyun returned to the store, she overheard Chen Hong discussing prices with the store manager. The manager stated that he had no decision-making authority and that payments and reimbursements were based on the appraiser's pricing, leaving no room for negotiation.
Seeing her younger sister come in and give her a wink, she could only awkwardly say, "Then let's go to a few more stores to inquire and discuss it. If you offer the highest price, then we'll decide whether to sell it to you." After saying that, she pulled her younger sister out of the jewelry store.
After coming out, Xiaoyun told Chen Hong about the conversation. The two sisters discussed it and decided that selling in Beijing would definitely get them better prices than at the gold shop in Jinan.
However, neither of them knew anything about the market. Now that they were here, they decided to visit each gold and jewelry store to see the price differences and figure out how deep the water was in the market.
The two sisters only brought five 15mm pearls and two gold pearls to explore the shops. After spending the morning there, they sat down at a restaurant, eating and sharing their experiences from the morning.
I discovered that the market here is quite complex. I visited six stores in one morning, some with ridiculously low prices, insisting that they were cultured pearls, costing several hundred yuan per pearl, while the two largest pearls were only priced at two thousand yuan.
If these pearls hadn't been caught and dug out by hand in the sea, the shop assistant would have really fooled her into thinking they were cultured pearls. This made her sister so angry that she argued with the shop, and both sisters remembered this shop.
I will never do business with them again. They are obviously dishonest and swindlers.
Some shops were quite friendly, but offered lower prices than the first one. Another shop wanted to take their pearls to the back of the shop for appraisal, which the Chen sisters definitely wouldn't agree to; they would never allow their pearls to leave their sight.
Seeing that this shop was also an unscrupulous business and even tried to switch their pearls, the two sisters left immediately. No matter how much they offered higher prices, Chen Hong didn't turn back.
Having lived two lives, Chen Hong saw through these little tricks at a glance.
In the end, the two sisters didn't sell a single pearl. Chen Hong decided to give them all to her younger sister to take to Beijing to sell. If they couldn't sell them to the headmistress's sister, they could sell them at the first store's flagship store in Beijing.
King Fook has branches in major cities across the country. As long as you have good products, you don't have to worry about not being able to sell them.
In the afternoon, the two sisters went to the Hekou Clothing Market to buy their parents a set of clothes each, and then went home.
The next morning, after having breakfast early, the two sisters, along with their father and two children, rushed to Jinan at six o'clock to catch the train. They first saw the younger sister and her mother onto the train to Beijing, and after waiting for half an hour, Chen Hong and her father, along with Yu Yang, also boarded the train home.
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