Folk customs begin with the entire funeral procession

Chapter 11 Curator
Chen Miao's entry into this industry was indeed inseparable from this 'family business', but he never thought he would inherit this 'family business'.

So when Chen Miao heard what his uncle said, his first reaction was to refuse.

It was both a resistance to this sudden arrangement and an anxiety about one's own inadequacy.

"Uncle, I can't."

Chen Weiyi seemed to have guessed Chen Miao's answer, and said with a smile, "Don't be so quick to refuse, listen to me first."

"I made the decision to put you in charge of the funeral home the moment you chose the funeral profession."

Chen Miao was taken aback. That was five or six years ago. His uncle had been considering it for so long.

"So you don't need to worry that this is just a passing fancy for me."

"As for why I'm giving you the funeral home, you should be able to guess."

“Your cousin has always disliked funeral homes since she was a child, and she has argued with me about it many times. Even now, she doesn’t want to mention what her family does in public.”

Chen Weiyi smiled helplessly.

"But that's normal. To outsiders, this line of work is indeed considered unlucky, but it's precisely because of this that I'm able to earn more money in this line than most people in Tianmen County can."

“But now that your cousin is of marriageable age, I don’t want to put pressure on her in this regard. Do you understand what I mean?”

Chen Miao suddenly realized.

That's true. Even if my cousin's boyfriend doesn't care what her family does, her parents and elders might not.

It's really not good to create unnecessary obstacles for my cousin's love life.

but……

"Uncle, I'm afraid that if I don't manage it well, I'll squander all the hard work you've put in over the years."

Chen Miao spoke honestly, but Chen Weiyi waved his hand.

“The operation of a funeral home is just these things. You yourself said before that once the number of customers at a funeral home drops to a certain level, it won’t drop any further. You just need to continue with the old model.”

"Given the current situation of the funeral home, the annual profit is around 300,000 yuan. You can give me 100,000 yuan every year, and the rest of the income is yours. If the annual income drops below 200,000 yuan, then you don't need to give me any profit. As for if it really goes bankrupt... you don't need to worry. Your uncle has accumulated a lot of wealth over the years, and he also has storefronts outside that he can rent out. You don't need to worry about your uncle not being able to make a living."

"Even if we take a step back and there's no one to take care of Uncle in his old age, you'll still be there for him."

Chen Weiyi smiled as he said this.

“Over the next month, I will explain everything about the funeral home to you, and you can try to get started on some things. I think a month should be enough.”

Chen Miao wanted to say something more, but was interrupted by his uncle.

"Alright, if any problems arise, you can always ask me. Can you really bear to see your cousin being bullied by her in-laws?"

"Have you forgotten all the good things she did for you?"

Chen Miao opened his mouth, but said nothing more.

Back in his office, Chen Miao began to space out.

His uncle's sudden plan threw him into disarray.

The leap from a monthly salary of four thousand to an annual income of two hundred thousand is quite significant.

For someone in his industry, it would take at least five to eight years to become a senior funeral director.

My uncle's step saved him five to eight years of travel!
Not to mention that in the days that followed, he didn't have to be managed by his superiors at all, which is the kind of work situation that young people dream of today.

And so he suddenly arrived.

Chen Miao was only twenty-four years old, so he was naturally excited.

But just as he told his uncle, he was worried about not being able to manage it well.

However, things have come to this point, and his worries will not make things better; pointless internal strife will only make things worse.

"They come, the security."

Chen Miao's eyes regained their clarity.

Just then, my uncle sent me a message on WeChat.

Chen Miao opened the files on his computer and began looking at information about Tianmen Funeral Home that he had never looked into in detail before.

Once Chen Miao focused his attention on the information, he was shielded from external influences.

Bing Xin is exerting its influence without anyone realizing it.

In this state, Chen Miao finished reading the relevant information about Tianmen Funeral Home in just one hour and gained some understanding of it.

Based on the stories his uncle had told him, Chen Miao basically reconstructed the process of how the Tianmen Funeral Home was built from scratch.

Nine years ago, the site of Tianmen Funeral Home was a wasteland. Although the location was good, no one had the courage to build a factory there until my uncle appeared.

At that time, my uncle had a sum of money in his hands.

This sum of money is not small, and as for its source, one can only say that my uncle's family was very lucky.

The eldest aunt's family had no boys, so the three sisters were allocated a property left by their parents in the center of Tianmen County. At that time, Tianmen County was undergoing demolition, and the three sisters received a share of the demolition compensation.

With the demolition compensation and their original savings, the uncle's family bought a house and a shop in Tianmen County.

Who knew that less than two years later, they would face demolition again.

That's not all. During this time, my uncle happened to get inside information from a friend's factory and immediately invested 100,000 yuan of his spare money into the stock market.

After 100,000 became 400,000.

The uncle didn't dare to embezzle and ran away.

As a result, all the compensation money from the demolition and the money earned from the stock market were stuck in his hands.

The more money you have, the more temptations you face.

Fortunately, my uncle and aunt are both clear-headed people and didn't fall into the same trap as other people who made a fortune from land expropriation and gambled away all their money. But having a lot of money doesn't make them feel secure.

Who knows if we'll ever encounter demolition again?

You can't just sit around and live off your savings.

So, after holding onto the funds for six months, my uncle decided to invest them in the vacant funeral industry in Tianmen County.

If all the previous wealth was due to my uncle's good fortune, then the Tianmen Funeral Home was a testament to his vision and courage.

The land where Tianmen Funeral Home is located is more than a kilometer away from the edge of Tianmen County. It is considered suburban industrial land, so the rental price is not that expensive.

But it's not a small amount; the rent alone costs 200,000 a year!

My uncle signed a ten-year contract, which means that over the next ten years, the cost of this land alone will be two million, not including the fixed annual rent increase stipulated in the contract.

At the time, this was an astronomical figure; even if my uncle had poured all his funds into it, it wouldn't have been enough.

But my uncle wasn't scared by those numbers.

After acquiring the land, he began to build the funeral home.

Setting up a funeral home is relatively easy; it can be done for around 100,000 to 200,000 yuan. However, the main focus of a funeral home is not on that.

First, there's the hearse. A domestically produced, compliant minivan costs around 200,000 yuan.

Because of limited funds, my uncle did not buy a new car, but instead spent 100,000 yuan to modify a second-hand minivan.

Secondly, there are freezers and crematoriums.

Smaller funeral homes typically do not have their own refrigeration units or crematoriums. Instead, after receiving a client, they seek out other funeral homes with cold storage and cremation equipment to rent.

Although the funeral home's revenue is reduced, the initial investment is much smaller.

At that time, there were no decent funeral homes in the surrounding counties of Tianmen County, and they all rented equipment from the city.

However, the distance between Tianmen County and the funeral home in the city is three or four hours by car, which is quite troublesome.

So after calculating the funds he had, my uncle spent 100,000 yuan to buy two six-compartment second-hand freezers!

The reason for buying two freezers was that my uncle thought that if Tianmen Funeral Home had freezers, other small funeral homes nearby might not choose to go to the city.

In this way, earning rent can be considered a way to recoup the principal.

With the same idea in mind, the uncle spent another 300,000 yuan to buy a second-hand crematorium furnace.

In this way, although the Tianmen Funeral Home is small, it has all the necessary infrastructure.

It turned out that my uncle's idea was quite farsighted. Even now, some funeral homes are still reluctant to buy such a large item as a crematorium.

Over the years, my uncle has earned back the money he spent on equipment simply by leasing refrigeration and cremation services.

Of course, because the crematorium furnace is relatively old, the maintenance costs are also considerable. In order to meet environmental protection standards in the future, environmental purification devices have also been installed.

But that's all in the future; once the funeral home is up and running, these issues will no longer be a problem.

In those six months, my uncle spent nearly a million yuan on funeral services!
To alleviate the financial pressure, he even mortgaged his family's storefront to borrow another 200,000 yuan.

To outsiders at the time, it was absolutely shocking.

Even those who lost all their demolition compensation money through gambling would scoff at what Uncle was doing and say, "It's better to have lost it all gambling."

Despite the ridicule and skepticism from outsiders, my uncle persevered and got the funeral home up and running.

After the first year, things went smoothly at the funeral home.

The gazes of those who had been watching the uncle's family shifted from initial amusement to later astonishment.

Although some people still think that working in the funeral industry is unlucky, the uncle's family has managed to become one of the wealthy in Tianmen County by operating a funeral home.

Those who looked down on my uncle's family could only greet them with a smile when they met.

Everyone experiences birth, aging, illness, and death.
In the future, we'll inevitably have to deal with each other when handling business.

This is the history of Tianmen Funeral Home.

After learning about the relevant information about Tianmen Funeral Home, Chen Miao understood the problems he would have to face next.

Maintenance of freezers and crematoriums, upkeep of hearses, procurement of funeral supplies, business negotiations, recruitment of employees, etc.

Although these tasks are handled by specific individuals, as the curator, I still need to coordinate them.

As for the land lease expiring soon, he didn't need to worry about it. His uncle had his own connections, so it wasn't a big problem.

So for the next month, Chen Miao's task was to first understand these things.

If you simply shirk your responsibilities, you risk being deceived.

My uncle served as the curator for nine years and knew all these things by heart. As the future curator, he naturally couldn't do any worse.

After glancing at the time, Chen Miao continued to study the relevant information after finishing his meal.

As evening approached, he went to the cold storage again.

The cold storage manager is still being recruited, and in the meantime, he will have to continue to stay at the cold storage.

However, before entering the cold storage, Chen Miao would always take a look at "Notes on Becoming a God in the Mundane World" to determine if there was any danger.

After all, everything that has happened so far has been related to cold storage.

I just don't know if there will be any problems with the crematorium and columbarium.

Chen Miao felt that he would need to add more activities to his daily routine from now on.

It would be ideal if danger could be detected and resolved in advance.

……

(End of this chapter)