50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 337 California Gold Mine
Sun Zhiwei now has seven employees: store manager Belinda, appraiser Norman Simmons, and bartender Tony McCoy are full-time, while the others are part-time.

The antique appraisal shop remains open five days a week, but the afternoon opening hours have been extended from three hours to four hours.

The small bar opens at 1 p.m. and stays open until 9 p.m.

It has to be said that the neighbors living in this area are truly full of hidden talents; Sun Zhiwei can find all the kind of people he needs here.

Bartender Tony McCoy and forensic expert Norman Simmons are both local residents. The four part-time workers are all Georgetown University students.

Tony used to work at a bar in the city, where he had to work until the early hours of the morning every day. It was hard work, and the pay was very low.

With the economy in a slump, he was laid off from the bar. Just then, Sun Zhiwei's small bar opened, and a customer introduced Tony to the bar.

Norman is in a similar situation; he has had his appraiser certificate for many years, but he has been working for capitalists all along.

He had also lost his job a while ago, and Sun Zhiwei happened to find him a job.

Tony is alright; he's single, young, and just wants to make money, and Sun Zhiwei can fulfill that need.

Norman, however, had a family to support and was under considerable financial pressure. Sun Zhiwei's short working hours meant he could find a part-time job to supplement his income.

Because Sun Zhiwei's shop had a high turnover and he was very generous, he paid his employees very high wages.

For example, the three full-time employees, Belinda, Tony, and Norman, all receive substantial commissions, and the part-time students' salaries also exceed those of ordinary part-time workers.

Therefore, the atmosphere in his shop is very harmonious.

As it turns out, as long as the salary is sufficient, there are no such ridiculous problems in the workplace.

In the past few months, Sun Zhiwei has started receiving financial statements from the two mines.

The iron ore mines in Borneo produce around $10 a month with little fluctuation. Sun Zhiwei left the money in the mining company's account and did not transfer it back to the United States.

The net monthly income of gold mines in California is around $6. It's not that the income from gold mines is low, but rather that the production costs in the United States are very high.

The gold mine can extract and sell $20 worth of gold each month, but taxes and mining costs can reach as high as $14.

He carefully calculated the gold mine's monthly expenses and his own monthly income. After much deliberation, he gave an order to the person in charge of the gold mine.

Starting this month, mined gold will no longer be sold to the public, but will be stored in the vaults of the Bank of California.

As for the mine's expenses, he would allocate funds from other sources each month.

International gold prices are about to surge, making it a profitable time to hoard gold.

He invested most of his income in gold mine production, which allowed him to avoid most taxes, killing two birds with one stone.

However, the California gold mine produces $20 a month, which is equivalent to 50 kilograms (1764 ounces) of gold. That's a very small amount.

Based on the standard size of 400 ounces per gold bar in the Federal Reserve's underground vault, he could only produce 4 gold bars in a month, 3 of which were for cost.

He spent $300 million to acquire this gold mine, and based on the current returns, it would take five or six years to recoup the cost, which is not worthwhile.

By this time, it was August, Washington was entering its hottest season, and business in the shops was starting to slow down, while business in the bars was getting better.

At the request of his clients, he had to extend the bar's opening hours until midnight every day.

To this end, Sun Zhiwei hired another bartender and promoted Tony to bar manager. Once the business in Washington was on track, he finally had time to go to California.

California is one of the most unique states in the United States. It was ceded to the United States by Mexico during the Mexican-American War in the 18th century.

Compared to other states, the California government is more independent from the White House in many ways.

California's geography is also quite unique, running from northwest to southeast, with the Coast Mountains on the left and the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the right.

Between the two mountain ranges lies a narrow basin, 50 kilometers wide and 700 kilometers long, much like the Sichuan Basin in China.

This has led to the formation of abundant mineral resources and magnificent natural landscapes in the area.

The United States has 59 national parks, nine of which are in California, in addition to about 300 state parks.

It encompasses almost everything, from magnificent canyons and steep mountains to vast lakes, arid deserts, and enchanting coastlines.

Economically, California is developing in almost every aspect, including tourism, mining, film and entertainment, information technology, and biotechnology.

No wonder that in the 21st century, California was known as the world's largest province, with an economy larger than Japan's and ranking fourth in the world.

To put it simply, if California were independent now, it could be completely self-sufficient and wouldn't need to rely on any other state, which would be truly remarkable.

As early as the 18th century, a gold rush swept across the West Coast, with California being the main region of that gold rush.

Sun Zhiwei's small gold mine was located near the mining area during the gold rush, roughly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, more than 100 kilometers east of San Francisco.

On August 16, Sun Zhiwei took a direct flight to San Francisco International Airport, where the gold mine manager sent a person and a car to pick him up.

Sun Zhiwei noticed that the person who came to pick him up was neither the deputy factory director nor the head of an important department, but merely a young clerk in the office.

Upon seeing the office clerk, he raised an eyebrow; this was clearly someone up to something.

Aside from something fishy going on at the mine, he couldn't figure out why the mine manager would treat him, his new employer, with such a cold attitude.

He didn't say much, and didn't even ask the person's name before getting into the SUV that came to pick him up.

"Let's go to the mine."

“But the factory manager said…” The clerk tried to struggle a bit, but after only a few words, he saw Sun Zhiwei’s sharp eyes and had to back down.

No matter what the factory manager said, he was still just a factory manager, a mere worker. The person in the car was the mine owner, the real boss, and he dared not disobey his boss's orders.

"Drive." Only after Sun Zhiwei realized he had frightened him did he order the other man to drive.

Sun Zhiwei is stubborn; the more the other party doesn't want him to go, the more he wants to go and see what's going on.

Although his gold mine is located in a mountainous area, due to the rich mining industry in the area, the roads from the central valley to the mining area were all built to high standards.

Their off-road vehicles passed through without any obstacles.

The journey, which was over 100 kilometers in total, took them less than two hours to reach the mine.

(End of this chapter)