1982 Started from Hong Kong

Chapter 419 Happy New Year
Lao Zhou’s addiction to acting lasted until the next day and he still hadn’t satisfied it.

Early in the morning, Zhai Yuan came downstairs from his bedroom.
Zhou's wife was sitting on the sofa, listening to Zhou Ping and Yu Feihong talking about some things they had seen and heard in Hong Kong.

Zhou Xuejun was holding a thermos cup, wearing a neat Zhongshan suit and a pair of slippers. He was sitting upright by the window, holding the thermos cup and muttering to himself.

Zhai Yuan smiled and nodded to Zhou's wife and the others, then came behind Zhou Xuejun.

Zhou Xuejun was so immersed in the role that he kept muttering to himself, "So... let's just talk about three key points... we need to implement them... actively develop... the first big point and the second small point... today's meeting ends here, Xiao Li, you stay for a while... hehe!"

Zhai Yuan smiled helplessly, unable to tell that Comrade Lao Zhou was still a power-hungry person.

"Leader, Xiao Li is not here, can Xiao Zhai do it?"

Zhai Yuan patted Zhou Xuejun's shoulder with a smile, and Old Zhou was caught off guard and shuddered in fear.

Turning back, his old face turned red.

Zhai Yuan teased, "Are you still taking acting lessons?"

Zhou Xuejun smiled and said, "I feel like I didn't perform well last night. I'll try to figure out the essence of leadership."

"That's enough, that's enough. Look how scared you scared those two last night."

Zhai Yuan thought of the scene last night when Xu Jiaqiang was shaking his hips while singing "Amazing Grace" and laughed, "This kind of thing only needs to happen once, just go through the motions."

Zhou Xuejun then asked curiously, "Who are those two people? Your business partners?"

Zhai Yuan did not tell him in advance about the identities of Xu Jiaqiang and his wife. Zhou Xuejun thought that Zhai's business in Hong Kong needed a leader's support, so he came to make a cameo appearance.

In fact, with Zhai Yuan's current influence, it would be a great honor to invite the top figure of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles or even people of higher level.

But those who understand will understand, so how can they dare to bother the big boss to show up? Anyway, Lao Zhou speaks in Beijing accent, which is enough to fool those unsophisticated people in Hong Kong.

"The people of Xinji..."

As Zhai Yuan spoke, he pulled out a chair and sat opposite Zhou Xuejun, and was about to ask the nanny Maria to make a cup of tea.

Yu Feihong immediately and sensibly brought over an enamel teacup.

"Brother Yuan, the tea is ready. It's a little hot."

"Oh~ Little Feihong is still sensible."

Zhai Yuan smiled and raised his hand to rub Yu Feihong's hair. Thinking of his own sister Zhai Yao who was still sleeping in, he sighed again.

The difference is too big!
Yu Feihong chuckled and returned to the sofa, then heard Zhou's wife scolding Zhou Ping in a low voice.

"Look at how lively Feihong's eyes are. Living in someone else's house will help you study harder..."

Being interrupted by Yu Feihong,

Zhou Xuejun only understood half of it and asked, "What's new?"

Zhai Yuan took a sip of tea: "Xinji."

"What kind of business is this company?"

"Um...society."

"Oh!" Zhou Xuejun nodded, not quite understanding, "It's the clan association in Guangzhou!"

Zhai Yuan looked up, glanced at him, smiled and said nothing.

Zhou Xuejun was surprised and asked, "What's wrong?"

Zhai Yuan pointed at his Zhongshan suit and asked: "What color is your suit?"

"Gangsters..." Zhou Xuejun was stunned for two seconds, then his face gradually became clear. He stared and asked, "Gangsters?"

"Stop discriminating against others."

Zhai Yuan had a look on his face that said, "How could you do that?" and said, "There are patriots in the underworld too. Look how much respect the couple showed you last night."

Zhou Xuejun finally figured out what was going on.

No wonder when I was asked to play the role of a leader, I was told not to be nice to the other party. It turns out that he is a hooligan.

Zhou Xuejun looked at the good young man in his mind with complicated eyes, and said incomprehensibly: "Tsk! Why are you hanging out with that kind of person?"

After all, he is from the mainland, and he occasionally comes to Hong Kong on business trips to handle official business, so it is inevitable that he is not familiar with the local environment.

Zhai Yuan laughed and said, "This is the conduct of this place. If you randomly grab a handful of people on the street, at least a few of them have a social organization background. This is considered corporate culture."

This data is not made up by him, but comes from the "Police Magazine" news after the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau was abolished and quickly reorganized two years ago. It said that the population of Hong Kong is more than 550 million, and the number of community members is nearly 30.

Zhou Xuejun was surprised and asked, "Won't it be a mess?"

"It's OK." Zhai Yuan smiled and explained: "You can think of it as an outsourcing company, but the company doesn't pay these people. You should go to work on weekdays. If something happens, you can stand up and cheer. You can get a few hundred yuan more. If you encounter trouble, tell him the name of the company. Occasionally, you can make a name for yourself."

"With hundreds of thousands of people, wouldn't there be fights every day?"

"Forget it! Who would dare to invest here when there are fights every day? They are just doing some gray industries. For example, if you want to be a valet parking, they will give priority to you if you have a community background. It's the same for moving bricks at a construction site, collecting rent at a tenement building, and even loan sharking."

Zhou Xuejun nodded thoughtfully. He probably understood what he heard. It was nothing more than a means for a small circle to divide the cake and exclude outsiders.

"The guy named Xu Jiaqiang last night?"

"He is the chairman of Xinji and claims to have more than 40,000 subordinates."

Zhai Yuan laughed and said, "For example, if he opens a bar, all the valet parking staff outside are from Xinji. After they get paid, they have to give part of their salary to the manager, who then gives it to the general manager, who then gives it to the board of directors, and after the board of directors gives it, the final share is his."

Zhou Xuejun frowned and said, "Getting something for nothing, this is too capitalistic."

"Hey! They even invested in a bar!"

Zhai Yuan smiled and said, "Besides, most of the jobs he arranged were low-level ones. Of his more than 40,000 followers, at least 30,000 of them couldn't get jobs. They had to go out to work and earn money. If they were lucky enough to find a better job, they would basically stop associating with the society."

Zhou Xuejun shook his head noncommittally: "We still need a severe crackdown."

Zhai Yuan shrugged, unable to respond.

Zhou Xuejun had a new understanding of Hong Kong. He looked up at Zhai Yuan and asked hesitantly, "You are not with that couple..."

"Don't make a fuss, I'm a serious businessman." Zhai Yuan rolled his eyes at him and said, "Buy insurance. After all, less trouble is worse than more~"

"Yeah, that's right." Zhou Xuejun was silent for a moment, glanced at Zhou Ping and Yu Feihong on the sofa, and asked, "Will it affect the children's schooling?"

If there really are hundreds of thousands of gangsters running rampant, Lao Zhou thinks it would be better to take the children back to Yanjing City.

Zhai Yuan curled his lips, too lazy to deal with such questions.

Most of the aristocratic schools in Hong Kong have a church background, and the number of their followers is even more exaggerated than that of the social societies. If something happens, the public opinion impact can reach the UK.

Therefore, those big guys who want to quit the underworld, but are afraid of being retaliated by their enemies, their first choice is to convert to religion and become priests.

Your boss is Xu Jiaqiang? My boss is Jesus!
…………Zhou Xuejun and his family stayed in Hong Kong for another two days. They visited the school buildings of Zhou Ping and Yu Feihong. Old Zhou also made a special observation of the market environment and finally dispelled his worries about being intimidated by Zhai Yuan’s 30 troops.

The evening of April 2.

Zhai Yuan took his family to the theater and watched the company's own film "Hiroshima Monster".

This year's Christmas and New Year's Day seasons have an extremely high dragon content.

"Police Story 2", "Project A 2", "Hiroshima Monster"

There are a total of six plays, and he played the leading role in three of them.

Unlike most monster movies, "Hiroshima Monster" does not have the American horror and bizarre cult elements, but instead integrates the monster into a kidnapping story.

The kidnapped person was naturally Noriko Sakai who was abducted by a monster.

Chen Shilong, Zhong Chuhong, Liang Jiahui and Qin Pei, who came to rescue the monster, started a life-and-death battle with the monster.

On the screen,
After the coward Chen Shilong appeared on the stage, his previous character image of a fist-fighting man was overturned. As a middle-aged man who worked in his father's restaurant and lived off his parents, Chen Shilong stole the customer's squid legs when he served food to the customers at the beginning of the show, which aroused the curiosity of the audience.

How could my great and glorious Brother Long have such a low character?

In the next shot, the diners asked Qin Pei why the squid was less in quantity.

Qin Pei found Chen Shilong and scolded him, "You can eat it if you want, but why did you eat the longest leg? Go and take a few cans of beer and apologize to the customer."

In the cinema, a few smart-aleck audience members have already started guessing the plot.

"It must be that those Japanese guests were not satisfied and wanted to continue to criticize Chen Shilong. Then Brother Long took a sip of beer and used a set of Drunken Eight Immortals to deal with them!"

"Hey! He cheated on me and beat me up? The director wouldn't do such an outrageous plot, would he?"

"In today's society, even those who carry shit have to steal food. It's normal. You deserve to be unsuccessful in your life!"

It’s a pity that there are no Drunken Eight Immortals.

When Chen Shilong found the guests with beer, he discovered that they were gathered by the river and talking. On the opposite side of the Hiroshima Bridge, a dark green monster was hanging upside down at the bottom of the bridge, slowly falling into the river.

"Lost! Where did it come from?"

The audience in the theater stretched their necks.

The monster's shadow was looming on the river surface, and the guests threw whatever they had at hand over to test it.

Only Chen Shilong was still like a silly boy, holding a can of beer to explain and apologize to the guests. Seeing that no one paid attention to him, he threw the can of beer in his hand into the river. Then, a tentacle suddenly stretched out from under the water and rolled away the can.

The guests on the screen and the audience outside the screen cheered in unison.

The shadow at the bottom of the river quickly disappeared.

The camera follows Chen Shilong's gaze.

The next second, a huge monster that looked like a lizard came ashore and was rapidly approaching the crowd along the river bank, knocking over countless passers-by along the way.

Just a few minutes into the show,

The entire environment is on the sunny riverside, with large areas of bright green color, which subconsciously makes all viewers feel safe.

In these routine horror movies, when a crisis occurs, it is often set in a dark and cramped environment.

However, "Hiroshima Monster" uses an unconventional expression method, without any tense atmosphere, allowing the audience and the protagonist to encounter a sudden crisis together.

As the monster appeared, the screams in the entire theater became louder.

Zhai Yuan clearly felt that Zhou Haimei beside him trembled with fear, and then clutched her sleeves tightly.

"Don't be afraid~"

Zhai Yuan hugged his cousin, leaned close to her ear with a smile, and whispered, "Do you know how this monster was made? The toys you and I played with last night are made of the same material."

Medical silicone!

Zhou Haimei blushed when she heard that, and thinking of Zhai Yuan's strange daily necessities, she punched him lightly.

Looking at the monsters on the screen again, the sense of horror was indeed reduced a lot.

Less than ten minutes into the show, the Hiroshima monster has revealed its full appearance from multiple angles under the bright sunshine.

Sharp teeth, sharp claws, and a long tail.

The movie also deliberately arranged for a bus to pass by, using the bird's-eye view of a passerby to fully present the monster in front of the audience.

"Awesome! It's a Hollywood monster movie. You have to wait until the last few minutes to see the monster, and it's pitch black and you can't see it clearly."

"This monster is so lifelike, it looks like it's about to burst out."

"Where's Chen Shilong? Bring your mother out to fight the monsters!"

From the moment the Hiroshima monster revealed its full appearance and crazily attacked passers-by on the shore, the cinema was filled with whispers.

Next is the newcomer Chikako Aoyama, who is sitting on the lawn listening to music, dressed as a pure female college student. In other movies, she would be the face of the heroine, but she is pinned to the ground by the monster's claws just seconds after she appears on the stage.

Just like the movie poster says:
'When the monsters come, no one is spared'

…………

2 month 7 day,
Zhou Xuejun and his family, along with Yu Feihong, set out on the journey back to Yanjing.

The couple brought gifts with them before they came.

There were large and small packages of hard goods such as canned yellow peaches, concentrated fruit juice, malted milk, royal jelly, and cod liver oil.

Zhai Yuan must not fail in his task.

The return gifts were all Kee Wah Bakery cakes, Nian Ci'an's loquat paste, almond cookies, coconut crisps and the like.

By the way, he bought a set of Chanel for Zhou Ping and Yu Feihong, and gave each of them a red envelope of 1,000 yuan.

when parting,
Old Zhou had forgotten the community incident mentioned by Zhai Yuan and was only obsessed with "Hiroshima Monster".

"This movie must be sent to Yanjing for screening, Xiao Zhai, it's awesome! By comparison, what we imported from America at a high price is just crap! Let the mainland audience see that this is a movie made by our own people, and it's not inferior to Hollywood at all!"

"Alright, alright, you've said it so many times."

Zhou's wife stopped her husband and said to Zhai Yuan with a smile, "Don't pay attention to him, he's mentally ill! Xiao Zhai, I'll send Xiao Ping and Fei Hong here after the New Year. I'm sorry to trouble you. I'll say hello to Sister Zhen and Yao Yao, and wish them a happy New Year."

"Okay, Happy New Year!"

2 month 16 day.

New Year's Eve has passed, and 1988 has arrived...

(End of this chapter)