Chapter 24

The other person smiled and said, “Oh, so you know each other. He mentioned feeling a bit tired and went to rest in the room. Do you need to speak with him? I can go ask him.

Zhu Hongyu shook her head and said, “I just happened to pass by. I’m not looking for him. Let him rest.”

Ignoring her, the person walked to the bedroom door, gently knocked, and said, “Haowen, a classmate is looking for you.”

They heard some commotion inside, and Song Haowen, still half-asleep, opened the door, asking, “Sister Wang, who’s looking for me?” Without waiting for an answer, he spotted the visitor and exclaimed, “Sister Hongyu, how did you find this place?”

Zhu Hongyu gave a cold smile and asked, “Is this the house you call rented?”

“Yeah. This is Wang Li. She and her boyfriend Qian Youlai are both my partners.”

“She is my college classmate, my class monitor, Zhu Hongyu.”

Song Haowen introduced Zhu Hongyu and Wang Li, then took Zhu Hongyu to tour the rooms and the courtyard.

After the tour, they sat in the pavilion in the courtyard. Zhu Hongyu exclaimed, “Such a large place, how much is the rent?”

“Oh, this? It’s only 12 or 20 yuan per month.”

“So much? Where do you get the money?”

Song Haowen shrugged it off. He hadn’t even mentioned that he had bought the house.

“Did you see the appliances in my house? I do appliance repair and sell second-hand appliances. In the first month, I easily made a big profit. I won’t say how much it is.” At this point, Wang Li served them tea. “Can you ask Wang Li how much her salary and bonus were last month?”

“My boyfriend and I each got 150 yuan,” Wang Li gratefully said.

Zhu Hongyu was surprised. “Can you earn so much? The monthly salary of a university-level professor is only around one or two hundred yuan.”

Song Haowen chuckled, “You’ll soon hear from society, ‘The income of making new inventions is not as much as selling tea eggs.’.”

Zhu Hongyu didn’t believe it. She said, “So your sole purpose is to do business? You are promoting the notion that studying is useless.?”

Song Haowen sighed and said, “I’m not saying studying is useless. I’m trying to say that in the tide of the market economy, knowledge, if not connected to the market, will find it challenging to demonstrate its value.”

“You are focused solely on money, not on progress. It’s a kind of regression, a bit dangerous, my young friend,” Zhu Hongyu said with disappointment.

Song Haowen knew that he couldn’t persuade her in the short term. Saying more might even damage their relationship. As someone with experience, he believed in the saying, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” Unfortunately, many people take half a lifetime to understand such a simple truth.

At this moment, a customer bought a used Sanyo recorder for six hundred yuan, and Wang Li happily informed Song Haowen.

Zhu Hongyu then inquired about the buyback price for the recorder. When he mentioned fifty yuan, she was shocked, as if struck by lightning. Angry, she exclaimed, “So you’re a heartless profiteer!”

Song Haowen retorted.

“Then, tell me what would be a fair price? A new one costs over a thousand yuan. Do you think our buyback price is too low? But if these appliances are broken and not repaired, they are just useless and take up space.”

“Of course, customers can choose to repair, spend some repair fees, or choose to sell and recover some of the costs. We never force anyone to sell or induce customers to make a particular choice.”

Zhu Hongyu was momentarily speechless. However, the difference of five hundred and fifty yuan was truly staggering.

Song Haowen continued, “This is the power of knowledge, the reward for my skills. Sister Hongyu, the more society develops, the more it values intellectual property. In the future, the returns from patented technologies could be astronomical. Do you believe it or not?”

Shortly after, Qian came back with more items. Today’s harvest included a 14-inch black and white TV and a 9-inch black and white TV.

Song Haowen connected the two TVs to power, plugged in the TV signal, and all that appeared on the screen was static, with “shushu” noise coming from the speakers.

Zhu Hongyu asked, “Can you fix these?”

Confidently, Song Haowen said, “The cathode ray tubes in both of these are fine; they just have minor issues that can be easily fixed.” He opened the back cover of the 14-inch TV, used a multimeter to measure a few points on the circuit board, and then, with the help of some electronic components, replaced a transistor and a diode. The TV’s image and sound were restored to normal. It took less than a minute.

Although Zhu Hongyu was displeased with Song Haowen’s unconventional pursuits, she admired his repair skills. She asked in a low voice, “If you were to sell this TV, how much could you make?”

“Not less than eight hundred yuan,” Song Haowen said proudly.

Zhu Hongyu fell silent immediately. Song Haowen had given her quite a shock today. She dared not estimate his monthly income now, fearing her heart couldn’t handle it.