The Birth of Shanghai's First Conglomerate

My younger sister got married.

Chen Pingsheng was at home in a mess, mainly because he had drunk too much and couldn't participate in any of the evening's activities.

So much so that the next day, when Gao Hu left Beijing for Guangdong, he couldn't even see him off at the airport.

I felt a bit unwell after drinking too much alcohol; it took me a whole night to recover.

His wife was always there to take care of him.

This is just for his younger sister's wedding. If it's Chen An'an and the others' wedding in the future, won't he, as their father, feel even more empty?

Suddenly it seems very likely.

Song Yanxi handed him a cup of tea. "You're finally awake. Are you hungry?"

"Kind of."

Chen Pingsheng seemed to remember throwing up last night; it had been so many years since he had done that!
Song Yanxi helped him up. He was only drunk for one night, and he's sober now, so what could possibly happen?

She didn't need her help; she washed up by herself and then drank some congee.

Song Yanxi said, "A lot of people came to say goodbye to you today, but they all left after I told them you were drunk."

"Hmm... drinking really does cause problems, I won't drink so much in the future."

"Xiaoqi and her husband will be here soon. Hu Lin has a lot of classmates with him, and they want to meet you alone."

"forget it."

Chen Pingsheng waved his hand in refusal, "What can we talk about if we meet? She just wants to get a better job. You'll see, Chen Qi will definitely need some time to adjust after she gets married. If Hu Lin's relatives ask her for money, she probably won't refuse much."

"Didn't you already know this would happen?"

Song Yanxi said, "My little sister received so much money in gifts today, the young couple must be very happy. As the older brother, you shouldn't try to interfere in everything."

"I don't care. We'll have to pay back all those wedding gifts anyway."

Chen Pingsheng said, "I'm just worried that she'll suffer after borrowing the money. Didn't you do that for a while before? When those relatives came to borrow money, you couldn't come up with any excuse. But when it came time to pay them back, they could make you sick to death."

Now everyone in Hu Lin's hometown knows that he married a very wealthy woman.

His older brother and sister-in-law are doing well; they work diligently at Tengsheng Fresh Food.

If they persevere for more than half a year, they might both become managers, and their combined monthly salary would not be less than 30,000 to 40,000 yuan.

This is already considered quite good for a couple from the countryside who came to Beijing to work.

Chen Qi even gave them a house to live in; she treated Hu Lin's wife very well.

A short while later, Chen Qi arrived.

First, I went to see her parents, and then I saw him drinking tea in the tea room as if nothing had happened, so I thought I would invite him to Hu Lin's classmate reunion.

Don't open your mouth at all.

Chen Pingsheng refused outright, saying that it was his younger sister's business how she wanted to help others.

Even if Hu Lin's relatives asked her to borrow 100 million, he wouldn't care as long as she was willing.

She just needs to avoid being mistreated in the future.

As for Hu Lin's people trying to get in touch with him through his sister, don't even think about it.

He's already lost a young woman, and now he wants to lose himself too.

What do you think?
Chen Pingsheng simply refused without even bothering to come up with a reason.

Let them think what they want.

Chen Qi left somewhat disappointed, and Hu Lin was also quite embarrassed.

It's supposed to be awkward; Chen Pingsheng just wanted him to realize his own limitations.

You need to have the right mindset at least.

You can't have everything and expect to accommodate him in everything.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

After Hu Lin and Chen Qi left, they went to another class reunion.

Chen Qi was truly down-to-earth, even adopting an extremely humble attitude.

The main reason was that she felt her education level wasn't high, and that marrying Hu Lin was already a great achievement.

Although Hu Lin himself is not young, his way of dealing with people has always been very simple.

He was naturally very good to Chen Qi, but he couldn't resist the constant nagging from his classmates and relatives.

Seeing how proactive Jiang Jia was at the dinner table, everyone thought that they should also be more proactive.

If Chen Qi's brother could help her, transferring to Beijing to become a teacher wouldn't be a problem at all.

Then, they chatted back and forth, and Chen Qi went to drag her brother over here for a drink.

In their minds, the prerequisite for getting things done is to drink well.

Even if you drink yourself into bed and stay drunk for days, it's fine.

Who knew that Chen Pingsheng wouldn't come at all.

Many people started making sarcastic remarks, saying that Hu Lin had no face.

He couldn't even get his own brother-in-law to come.

This made Chen Qi quite embarrassed.

As for Hu Lin himself, he would naturally have some of these thoughts as well, since they were his university classmates for four years.

I just wanted to invite my brother-in-law over for a drink.

If Chen Pingsheng and Song Yanxi weren't there, otherwise he would have definitely gone straight for her and used his ultimate move, saying, "Who do you think you are, I want to drink with you?"

He knew this was bound to happen; it was unavoidable.

So they simply stopped coming from the beginning, as were all of Hu Lin's relatives.

Apart from his parents, grandparents, and older brother and sister-in-law.

The others won't even be allowed to enter his house.

Not to mention wanting to ask him out for dinner and drinks alone.

Is this just simple drinking?
It's just that Chen Qi is still young and doesn't know the ins and outs of this.

They thought the reason Jiang Jia brought it up directly at the dinner table was because she had already anticipated it.

Given Hu Lin's status, he can forget about ever arranging a private meeting with Chen Qi's brother again.

If you want to invite her out, you can only do so when Chen Qi comes out, and then invite her brother to have a meal with her as well.

They directly contacted people using Hu Lin's name.

That's pretty funny, and it might even be offensive.

After all, this was a loss of one or two hundred million to marry off his own sister, not a gain of one or two hundred million.

The dowry at the wedding was so high that the bride received a total of 60 to 70 million yuan in return.

None of this money came from the Hu Lin family.

There is no one who is because of the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan in gifts he gave.

It can only be said that Jiang Jia comes from a relatively privileged background and has been more familiar with these interpersonal relationships since childhood.

That's why, even at the risk of inappropriate timing, I wanted to say it directly the first time I met Chen Pingsheng.

Others don’t know, so doesn’t she know?

Someone like Hu Lin wouldn't have any standing with Chen Pingsheng.

The best approach would be for him to simply make an excuse to refuse whenever anyone tries to arrange a meeting with Chen Qi under the guise of being classmates.

This might even earn him some respect from others. And as it turned out, it was exactly as she had guessed.

Jiang Jia is still here only because she's gambling on a slim chance.

What if he really comes?

Although Chen Pingsheng said at the wedding that she could work at the company.

Who knows if this is just an excuse?

Raising funds is never easy.

Unless you already have such connections from the start.

It's obvious that Jiang Jia doesn't have that; her family's good conditions are only relative to people like Hu Lin.

Compared to Chen Qi's brother, she's nothing.

If she wanted to find a top investor like Tong Zhelan in the industry, she couldn't even get a meeting with him.

The hardest part of raising money isn't having a bad project, but finding the right person to gain their trust.

Isn't that where the concept of "circles" comes from?
When people invest, they all expand their reach through the network effect.

It's like a reliable friend introducing another reliable friend.

If she can get Chen Pingsheng's money, she's doing a pretty good job.

Later on, he could easily get money from Tong Zhelan and the others, because Chen Pingsheng would connect her with them.

One good comment from Chen Pingsheng is worth more than ten thousand words from her.

How did Masayoshi Son manage to get Masayoshi Son to invest in him back then?
That's because Tsai Tsung-hsin was already in that circle; he had gone to Masayoshi Son's company, Little Sun, many times beforehand to communicate with him.

This is the story of how 20 million US dollars were invested in just a few minutes.

In other words, the middleman is the most important person.

It serves as a guarantee.

Jiang Jia understands these things quite well, and it's quite obvious.

Zhang Yang and his friends wanted to meet with Brother Chen Qi, but their main purpose was to resolve work-related issues.

As for jobs, in school you rely on your grades, after graduation you rely on your parents.

In the past, after graduating from university, I couldn't rely on my parents, so I could only wander around Beijing, either working in a field unrelated to my major.

Either go back to your hometown in the county town.

Anyway, I want to stay in Beijing and find a job I like.

Forget about 985 universities, even graduating from Tsinghua or Peking University is impossible without connections.

That's just how society is, all about personal connections.

With Chen Pingsheng's connections, he wanted to help them find jobs with monthly salaries of ten to twenty thousand yuan.

Without saying a word, a mere glance is enough for someone to take care of it for him.

The key question is, why did they give me that look?

You want someone of his caliber to solve your problem for a job that pays ten or twenty thousand a month?

He would only ask such a question if he were a close relative.

Otherwise, it only happens once in a lifetime, and you can only have it once.

It's clear now that Hu Lin won't even get one chance like this.

If he actually does that, he'll probably only disappoint Brother Chen Qi.

She recalled that she had found a boyfriend from the countryside to live with her family, and his income was not too low, but her family absolutely refused to agree.

At this moment, it seems possible to understand her parents' feelings.

The reason is simple: it's not a problem in their relationship.

Rather, the two families simply couldn't be together.

Now it's quite obvious from Hu Lin's perspective; he even glanced at Chen Qi, seemingly conveying something through his eyes.
Could you call your brother again? These are my best classmates from college. Could you let him come and meet them?

Chen Qi immediately took out her phone, suggesting that she had become the weaker party in this marriage.

Just as she was about to hit him, Jiang Jia grabbed her hand and shook her head, saying, "Don't hit him, it will make your brother sad."

Chen Qi was baffled. In the past few years, she had worked as a receptionist at a beauty salon in Shacheng right after graduating from university, earning several thousand yuan a month.

There's still more than half left.

She would often ask her brother if he needed money to buy a house, and she said she did.

Later, when she arrived in Beijing, she still worked as a receptionist at a beauty salon.

The difference was that it was her brother's company, and her brother gave her a quarter of the shares.

And then, she became richer and richer.

There's absolutely no difficulty involved.

Her brother and sister-in-law took care of everything; she was only concerned with dividing the money.

This is why, despite already being worth hundreds of millions, he...

But his way of dealing with people and his mindset are not yet matched with this wealth.

That's why we're in this situation today.

Otherwise, she alone could make these people swallow their words and obediently take them back.

"Jiang Jia, what do you mean?"

"Don't you understand what I mean?"

Jiang Jia frowned and said, "Hu Lin just got married, and you're all so jealous that you're trying to sabotage him?"

"Who's jealous? We just wanted to invite Chen Qi's brother out for a meal and drinks," said a classmate who wasn't doing so well in life.

"You still say it's not jealousy? If you put it bluntly, it won't make sense."

Jiang Jia said, "Don't you even think about what kind of person Chen Qi's brother is? Do you really think you can rely on Hu Lin's status to get him to help you get a Beijing residency permit and a job?"

"You're criticizing me, aren't you the same yourself?"

Once the truth was out in the open, there was nothing for anyone to be afraid of. The main problem was that Hu Lin was too lowly; he couldn't even manage to get people to come out.

What can we expect him to do?
"You yourself were already fawning over him at the dinner table, and you still want 100 million? Do you think 100 million is as cheap as cabbage?"

"At least I spoke openly and honestly at the dinner table. Besides, I said it again: my project is valued at least in the hundreds of millions, while what about yours?"

Jiang Jia sneered, "Instead of her own brother coming out, you're secretly trying to provoke Hu Lin. If Chen Qi's brother really were here, would you dare say another word you just said?"

If Chen Pingsheng were really going to stay, they certainly wouldn't dare say a word.

The key issue is that he's not here.

He can become a billionaire and run such a large conglomerate.

There's a reason for that.

Even if they had three times the courage, they wouldn't dare to be presumptuous in front of this kind of person.

Not to mention playing such petty tricks.

It was something Jiang Jia could see at a glance.

Do you think those big shots wouldn't notice?

What do you think?
(End of this chapter)