2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 507 A Glimpse of Life on New Year's Eve

PS: This is a transitional piece focusing on everyday life.

Year after year.

Tan Jincheng's fourth New Year, the two of them spent in Ningbo.

Without the usual hustle and bustle and commercial atmosphere of the Golden Week, this year's Spring Festival was unusually quiet. Although there was no snow accumulation on the main roads of Ningbo due to timely clearing, it did not mean that there was no disaster.

Transportation, market supply, and the power system still faced considerable challenges.

"How do I look in this?" Gu Qingqing asked Tan Jincheng in front of the mirror.

GXG doesn't have women's clothing, but they did specially order women's clothing for Gu Qingqing. The two of them often wear their own brand when they appear in public, which has a certain brand promotion effect.

Today, Gu Qingqing is wearing a white down jacket, a fairly standard color, but the style is very modern. Tan Jincheng is wearing a black matching jacket, a black and white combination.

"Yes, it's fine. It's better to dress simply. It's not good for us to be dressed up when they can't go home for the New Year."

"Too."

Today is Lunar New Year's Eve. The Flash employees stranded in Beicang, mainly from the Flash Technology and Jinpeng Industrial regions, had a big gathering at noon today, which served as their New Year's Eve dinner.

Boss Tan is taking his family to visit these two places, which is probably a way to appease his employees.

In his past life, he and Zhang Xupeng were trapped in Beicang. At first, they were quite happy, playing games without any restrictions and not having to go to work. But before the Lunar New Year, especially on New Year's Eve, they were quite lonely.

homesick.

Most of the frontline employees at FlashChe were spending the Lunar New Year away from home for the first time, and without any prior warning. This feeling was similar to that of Tan Jincheng in his previous life, so he could understand their feelings.

"Let's go, Mom and Dad are still waiting downstairs," Gu Qingqing said, straightening her clothes in front of the mirror.

Which parents?

Despite the snow disaster this year, the Tan family celebrated the New Year more lively than ever before, with many relatives from both Tan Jincheng and Gu Qingqing's families spending the holiday here.

The families of Gu Qingqing, Gu Yanning, and Zhang Qingliang, plus Zhang Xupeng, make a total of 17 people. In addition, the families of Lin Yumin and Wu Zhenping, as well as some local executives, will also come to wish Boss Tan a Happy New Year.

In addition, the district government also has a lot of activities, but it is estimated that there will be fewer activities this year. With such severe disasters all over the country, it is best to keep a low profile.

When they arrived downstairs, both families, including Zhang Xupeng, were already waiting for them.

"Are we going to have two meals today?" Zhang Xupeng asked, smoothing his hair.

"Then let's eat less. Anyway, we'll miss the time for both, so we can just go through the motions."

"What a damn boss! He's busier during the New Year than usual. If only we had stayed back with that trading company, we could have gone home and been showing off much earlier."

"Watch your mouth, Jin Yue is still here, don't swear," Tan Jincheng said with some displeasure.

The little kid nodded in agreement, saying, "Don't swear."

Today, everyone in the family is dressed quite simply, except for her, who is dressed up in a flamboyant way. The little princess of Flash is very popular at the company, and she might even be the star today, so we have to dress her up beautifully.

"I didn't notice, I didn't notice, it's my fault, it's my fault."
-
On New Year's Eve, Xiao Chen had already returned to Jinling.

The electric kettle I bought from Chengpin.com for a coupon worth a few hundred yuan still hasn't arrived. It's been 15 days since I placed the order, and it looks like it won't arrive until the entire Spring Festival holiday.

It seems that it will take at least 20 days to receive this electric kettle. Xiao Chen is somewhat frustrated and regrets not heeding the advice from Orange Products customer service.

"Sigh, I should have extended the coupon period."

There were no gatherings with classmates or old friends today. With nothing to do at home in the afternoon, Xiao Chen browsed the forum and wrote about his frustrating experience of buying an electric kettle in a post, which quickly received a lot of replies.

There were those who felt sympathy, but there was much more ridicule.

"You go and buy an electric kettle from a clothing website. You're just asking for trouble. It's good that you didn't receive it."

These comments made Xiao Chen even more depressed, but as he scrolled through them, his mood improved because there were many people in worse situations than him.

"Haha, I actually sent you a brick. You're in a much worse situation than me. I just didn't receive the goods. Besides, Orange Products' customer service is really good. They even replied to me today."

"I heard some courier companies are still operating, but I don't know if it's true. I haven't seen many. Sigh, I hope I don't receive a brick." "Speaking of which, Orange Goods and SF Express have the best reputations this time, right? Orange Goods is really pushing orders out."

"Sure enough, I called the courier company after ordering something, and they said it wasn't their responsibility; damn it, whether the package was delivered or not is none of their business, you could at least say something nice, especially during the Chinese New Year."

"What happened to me was even more outrageous. I bought a piece of clothing on Taobao to prepare for the Chinese New Year, but the store just shut down. I can't find it anywhere now."

"Chengpinhui is much better. Their customer service is always there to help with the issues they can't resolve, and they promise to give everyone a coupon of 5 to 10 yuan, which is equivalent to waiving the shipping fee. They are much better than those shady merchants on Taobao."

"Jingdong isn't much better. Their biggest advantage used to be cash on delivery, which was fast and safe. But they shut it down for the New Year. I was planning to get a computer to play with during the holiday."

During the Chinese New Year, the most frequent posts on internet forums were sharing terrible online shopping experiences and criticizing courier companies. Although there were objective factors involved, netizens didn't care about those, especially with the prominent presence of Orange Shopping Club.

OrangePin's customer service staff worked in shifts even on Lunar New Year's Eve, and their response time was only slightly later than usual. Furthermore, the service attitude of their partner courier, SF Express, was also quite good.

Although not being able to deliver it is still a bit frustrating, it makes me feel a little better.

Meanwhile, Xu Xinglei, who had just returned to his hometown on the 26th of the twelfth lunar month after a period of travel mishaps, was now browsing the company account of FlashTech on Kaixin.com after finishing his work of delivering gifts to his new father-in-law.

"Wow, I'm not coming back next year no matter what. The food was too good. The boss even went to toast them."

Speaking of his journey home, he had a lot of hardship to share. Not to mention the fuel costs, he spent over a thousand yuan on food alone on the way. He also didn't dare to keep the air conditioning on for long periods of time for fear of running out of gas.

The further north they went, the more severe the snow accumulation became. The border between Zhejiang and Anhui provinces was a watershed. Not only did the price of boxed meals eventually rise, but it was already a stroke of luck to be able to buy them at all. When they got home, he and Zhao Xinbin were both exhausted.

Fortunately, there were no accidents on the way, and this wedding was truly memorable.

Before the New Year's Eve dinner, all the businesses had closed. During this time, Xu Xinglei stayed in the countryside with nothing much to do. He browsed the company's event posts online while chatting with his colleagues.

At the same time, he also shared the company's post with his fiancée, Zhang Lijuan, via QQ.

Zhang Lijuan is four years younger than him. She used to work in a factory in Wencheng, making sports shoes. However, after they get married next year, Zhang Lijuan will go to Ningbo to work with him. Xu Xinglei plans to use his connections to arrange for his future wife to work in Jinpeng Industrial's factory.

There's not much difference between a shoe sewing machine operator and a clothing sewing machine operator; neither requires much technical skill, and you can get the hang of it after a while.

"Look how great our boss is! He even went to the company to have New Year's Eve dinner with the employees today. See that little girl with her face blurred? That's the boss's sister. She's very popular in our company."

"With so many people taking photos in your company, is blurring their faces even useful?" Zhang Lijuan asked.

"Haha, you don't understand. Our boss has some influence. Besides, there's an unwritten rule in the company: it's okay to take pictures of the little princess, but don't post them online. If they find out who posted them, they might get fired."

“So strict?”

"Although there are no explicit rules, an employee once secretly took a picture and posted it online with the caption that the little girl was only two years old and didn't need to work hard. As a result, he was fired on some pretext within two days."

"That's incredible! How can they even find out who it is?"

"Of course, my boss also owns an internet company, so checking these things is very easy for him. You may not know my boss, but he's incredibly powerful. If I had listened to him this time, I would have avoided a lot of trouble."

Xu Xinglei was among the first batch of employees at FlashTech's Xiapu factory. He witnessed the factory grow from a small workshop to a key enterprise in Beicang District and even across the country. Of course, the Xiapu factory was really small; to put it bluntly, people could barely turn around.

The boss was so young, to be honest, if it weren't for the good salary and benefits, not many workers would have wanted to work there. In fact, most of the people who joined the Xiapu factory at that time were newcomers to the workforce. The seasoned factory workers were not willing to go to such small factories and were more used to the large factories run by Taiwanese bosses.

Zhang Lijuan clearly sensed this as well: "Didn't you say that FlashDrive has two bosses? There are two in the photo, right?"

"Oh, you mean General Manager Zhang? He doesn't manage us, but if you go there next year, you'll be under his management. He's in charge of our company's clothing business. I only trust Boss Tan."

"You seem to really admire your boss, Tan?"

"Absolutely! He's even younger than us, and he built a company from scratch to a scale of several thousand people. That's incredibly impressive."

"Besides, if it weren't for the boss, I wouldn't be able to afford a car, wouldn't be able to earn such a high salary, and I wouldn't have met you."

Xu Xinglei's family wasn't well-off. If he hadn't started earning money in the last two years, getting married would have been quite difficult, as he couldn't afford the bride price. Therefore, his gratitude and admiration for Tan Jincheng were heartfelt.

In Xu Xinglei's view, the boss's visit to the two factories to comfort the employees during the Chinese New Year was not entirely a show. In addition, Xu Xinglei did not expect that the factories would have such a high operating rate during the Chinese New Year.

In the photos, he saw many familiar faces from his workshop.

"That was a miscalculation. We'll have to work harder next year, or we might lose our group leader position."

(End of this chapter)