Chapter 211: Chapter 128: Unscrupulous Couple
"Are you up yet?"
"Hmm?" Pan Ge grumbled as she answered the phone. "What’s up?"
She found her voice a bit hoarse, so she rolled over to the edge of the bed, reaching for water on her nightstand.
"Come out, I’ll take you to eat something."
"I don’t want to!"
Pan Ge’s wariness was immediately cranked to the max. "You’re definitely up to no good again!"
Heaven knows what the girl had gone through yesterday...
The dog of a man soothed her with a chuckle, sounding very much like a kind man. "Relax, we’re just going to a restaurant for a meal... Are you interested in some Chaoshan hotpot? Maybe some soup or something?"
"Are we really just going to eat?" She was still skeptical.
"Yep, I swear."
Before he could coax her out, Han Lie could offer endless gentleness and patience.
Pan Ge glanced at the time. It was 10:30 AM. Seems like... if she got ready quickly, it would be just about the right time to head out for lunch?
"Then let’s go to Beef Inc. today! Get there early and grab a number!"
She suddenly perked up and assigned Han Lie a rather troublesome task.
Unexpectedly, Han Lie agreed quite readily. "Which branch?"
"The one on Hongcao South Road. Taxi drivers should all know it."
"And what time should I get the number for?"
"Let me see... I’ll be there right at 11:30 AM, so you can probably go get in line for a number now."
"Okay, I’m on my way."
Listening to the dial tone, Pan Ge’s expression changed. She scoffed and tossed her phone aside.
So tender, so considerate, so obedient... There’s something fishy about you!
Trying to lure me out and slaughter me again?
Pan the Clever was sure she couldn’t have misjudged that dog of a man, yet strangely enough, she still happily began to get ready...
What happened to the saying that bootlickers never meet a good end?
「...」
Han Lie had Nata arrange an ordinary Mercedes S400 for him and left the house in a great mood.
Arriving at Hongcao South Road, he hadn’t even reached the entrance when he could already see a long line outside Beef Inc.
Beef Inc. in this era was really popular. Of course, it wasn’t much different later on either.
It had operated for many years, opening branch after branch, and always had a queue at mealtimes. This proved the business really had something special.
However, Han Lie had no intention of foolishly standing in the cold wind to line up.
He had the driver find a nearby place to park. Then, with a smile, he took out two 100-RMB "Grandpa Mao" bills and handed them over.
"Sir, could you please line up for a number for me? Here’s a little something for your trouble, go have a smoke."
Normally, this wasn’t the driver’s responsibility. If it were anyone else asking, Master Wang wouldn’t even bother responding.
But the thing is, drivers ordinarily don’t receive tips! They weren’t like hotel staff; they received a fixed salary, and if a customer even said "thank you," that was considered polite.
Han Lie didn’t give much, but the extra cash was just too easy to earn, so Master Wang happily stood at the end of the line.
Then, Young Master Han reclined in the back seat with his legs crossed, leisurely fiddling with his phone.
Of course, there was no way he was scrolling through Douyin or anything; that didn’t even exist yet.
At the moment, it was still the 3G era. This was a time when even the freedom to binge-watch was unreachable, rendering an iPhone almost useless.
But things would change by the end of the year. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s plan, 4G networks would officially be up and running by December at the earliest, or by January of the next year at the latest.
By then, as long as one didn’t care about data charges, most apps could be used freely.
There were many, many business opportunities in this, like the explosively popular short video apps that basically laid their groundwork in the coming few years.
Kuaishou, the biggest relic of that short video era, was founded in 2011. It became a short video community by the end of 2012, but it wasn’t until 2015 that it truly embraced the market.
They comfortably held the top position in the short video market until Douyin went viral in 2018. Yet, Kuaishou still kept up without falling behind.
In 2021, they went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, hitting a peak market value of 179 billion US dollars on the first day.
Han Lie remembered that figure very clearly.
The only thought he had at the time was: holy shit, the market has gone mad... How are you going to value Douyin?
Indeed, Kuaishou’s IPO marked its peak, and what followed was a long, drawn-out drop, truly proving the painful truth of rises and falls... That wasn’t a typo; the stock price really did fall to the point where investors were crying "Daddy!"...
The dreams of the shareholders and executives to become fabulously rich didn’t last long. Before the lock-up period even ended, the stock price had already been slashed to the ankles.
But the two key individuals still managed to increase their net worth to 37 billion RMB and 30 billion RMB respectively, much more comfortable than Tencent, which had bought in at the high point.
Pony Ma of Tencent exchanged 4 billion US dollars for a 20% stake in an investment that, at its lowest point, was worth only 4 billion RMB. Truly tragic.
However, the most unfortunate had to be Didi. It had blazed a trail with great fanfare and lightning speed, burning through 180 billion RMB of investors’ money. In the end, its market value plummeted to less than 40 billion RMB at its lowest, and then it was fined a cash penalty of 8 billion RMB by the state. Harsh doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Um, one could only call it well deserved.
So Han Lie wasn’t in any rush to build an enterprise. In the next ten years, there would be plenty of opportunities, but even more pitfalls.
Piles of ventures and platforms, seemingly with endless promise, would, over time, prove to be nothing but alluring traps.
Jack Ma, Richard Liu, and others of their ilk were accelerating their cash-outs; who was qualified to go against the current?
What really guaranteed power, status, and influence were always high-tech industries or those that could ensure employment and stabilize local economies.
Especially in the post-pandemic era.
Of course, in the short term, I’ll still focus mainly on speculation and consumption.
Messing with the tediously slow network, Han Lie had a lot on his mind, though his thoughts weren’t entirely coherent.