Chapter 54: The Dealer Yu Pengfei

As for the young man, seeing that all the anger had shifted to Xiong Dan, he didn’t hesitate for a second—he grabbed his clothes and bolted out the door.

A woman could never be a match for a man in a fight.

So, before long, Xiong Dan was subdued by Liu Qingwen.

Seeing more and more people gathering at the doorway, Liu Qingwen got up and shut the door. Glancing down at Xiong Dan’s underwear scattered on the floor, he couldn't help but recall the scene just now—her hair disheveled, lost in pleasure. Rage welled up inside him. He picked up the garments and tore them to shreds.

“You think you’re hot stuff, huh? Think you can make a fool out of me? I’ll show you what happens when you act like this!” he spat.

“You filthy woman, I was willing to let it go when you cheated on me—I figured if you left with that guy, so be it.” He sneered. “I even let it slide when you stole my subscription certificates—just treated it like I’d paid for a night with a hooker and called it even.”

“But damn it, why did you have to steal Jin’s certificates too? What did my brother ever do to you?”

Xiong Dan was stunned. “What are you talking about? What subscription certificates from your brother?”

“The box was empty. I didn’t steal his!” she shot back.

“Still playing dumb? I saw with my own eyes Jin put a pile of certificates in there—what, do you think I’m blind?”

“Hand them over.”

And so it went: one demanding, the other denying with all her might, and the two of them quarreling fiercely in the room.

It turned out Liu Qingwen had woken up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, only to discover that Xiong Dan wasn’t in bed. At first, he didn’t think much of it. But as soon as he got back into bed, a gust of wind blew their door open. He got up again to close it, and heard, from the corridor outside the guesthouse at three in the morning, the sounds of a heated struggle growing closer. A woman’s shouts, a man’s moans. The more he listened, the more familiar the voices sounded.

Curious, he crept to the next room and listened at the door—sure enough, it was Xiong Dan, the woman he had spent so many nights with. At first, fury surged in him, but then he remembered: wasn’t she just one of many bedmates in this vast sea of people? With that thought, he swallowed his anger.

When he woke in the morning, Liu Qingwen saw Xiong Dan lying naked beside him. The thought struck him: Had that wretch gone to the next room last night with nothing on? Rage flared up again, and he let Xiong Dan have it once more.

Afterward, he went to shower, and when he came out, he noticed his bag had been tampered with—but his subscription certificates were still there. So he pretended not to notice and went downstairs for breakfast.

Sure enough, the woman soon made an excuse to return to the room and stole his certificates. That alone might have been forgivable. But after sleeping with her man, instead of fleeing, the wretched woman started a brawl to celebrate—and she even stole Jin’s certificates too. That was the last straw for Liu Qingwen.

After about an hour of deadlock, the door was suddenly kicked open from outside. In walked a bald man of about sixty, leaning on a cane. He paused for a few seconds, then waved a large hand. The men he brought with him immediately seized Liu Qingwen and dragged him away.

...

Chai Jin was entirely unaware of the morning’s drama at the guesthouse. After leaving the breakfast shop, he went straight to Cai Weiqiang’s store. The atmosphere inside was still buzzing. The price of subscription certificates kept climbing, and the buyers were acting as if they were at an auction.

Chai Jin didn’t pay much attention, since the prices were still far from what he was waiting for.

But that morning, he met a very interesting man—Yu Pengfei.

Yu Pengfei hailed from the northeast, from a border city near Russia. They struck up a conversation, mainly about the collapse of the Soviet Union. From Yu, Chai Jin learned that Russian traders often visited their city to resell goods. With the Soviet Union disintegrated, resources in Russia were extremely scarce.

Yu Pengfei laughed heartily as he described the situation: “Things are so bad over there, you could probably trade dog shit for cash in Russia these days!”

“I used to ship over daily necessities, but then I realized there’s a bigger profit in subscription certificates,” he confided. “Once I’m done with this haul, I plan to ship whole containers of goods by sea over there.”

This was another lucrative opportunity of 1992—smuggling daily goods into Russia, a venture that made many fortunes.

Chai Jin thought for a moment. “Do you have contacts over there, then?”

“Contacts? Of course. You think you can move goods into someone else’s country without connections?” Yu Pengfei scoffed. “It’s chaos over there right now. Not to brag, but if you’ve got the cash, I can get you all the way up to the top of the Moscow government!” He looked every bit the part of a local kingpin.

An ordinary person might have thought he was exaggerating. But when Cai Weiqiang introduced them, he’d mentioned that Yu moved goods on a massive scale—one or two shipping containers left the Zhonghai docks for his company in the northeast every day. In his own town, he was absolutely a major player.

He just seemed inconspicuous in a place like Zhonghai.

Chai Jin considered this and offered him a cigarette. “What if I told you I want to bring airplanes from Russia to China? Can you smooth things out over there for me?”

Yu Pengfei froze. “Airplanes? Is that even possible?”

“Didn’t Mou Qizhong of Sichuan try that for years and fail?”

Chai Jin smiled. “He does his thing, I do mine. There’s no overlap between us.”

Yu Pengfei fell silent for a while, then replied gravely, “Secondhand planes are cheap in Russia now, that’s true. But they still go for four or five thousand dollars apiece. In the whole country, there can’t be many with that kind of money.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble. This kind of deal takes more than just money—it needs massive domestic connections and resources. Not something just anyone can pull off.”

He still felt like Chai Jin was talking pure fantasy.

Chai Jin took a sip of tea. “I have my ways. Let’s work together.”

“These days, isn’t it all about who’s got the guts and the vision to get rich?”

“Just look at these subscription certificates—people wouldn’t even pick them up off the street for thirty bucks each back then.”

“And now?”

Yu Pengfei burst out laughing. “True, true.”

“So how do you want to partner up?” He was still skeptical about Chai Jin’s abilities, but asked out of curiosity.

Chai Jin didn’t waste words. He laid out the plan: You help me handle contacts and sellers on the Russian side. I’ll give you five million as a facilitation fee. You won’t get a share of the business profits. Everything else on the domestic side, I’ll take care of myself.

Yu Pengfei thought it over. He knew the Russian side better than anyone, and smoothing those relationships was his specialty. It wouldn’t take much effort—out of the five million Chai Jin offered, he could probably get it done for less than half a million. The rest would be his profit.

If Chai Jin had tried to bring him in as a full partner, he might have refused outright. But this way—he was just being paid to open doors, with no investment or risk—why not agree?

And so, he gave his word.