People in love were all fools!
Mama Wang had been through it herself, so she understood that perfectly well. That was why, when Wang Cheng said he needed to go to the jam factory, she immediately announced that she would go with him. Her reason was perfectly legitimate too. She had been visiting the factory regularly before and could already count as one of its staff.
Wang Cheng had no choice but to agree. After dinner, mother and son went to the jam factory together, while Papa Wang headed to the jam shop.
Besides checking the factory’s current situation, Wang Cheng wanted to look for a storefront in the city. He planned to open the second shop there, but good locations were hard to find and poor locations were not worth taking, which made things troublesome unless he got particularly lucky. Seeing him seriously discussing work with the people at the factory reassured Mama Wang somewhat. She had been worried he might secretly use this trip to meet Chu Yifeng. When Lu Dade’s wife saw Mama Wang arrive, she immediately called her over to look at their latest results.
The jam factory was not simply churning out product blindly. When it came to flavor, they wanted to keep improving. They were not insisting on being the absolute best, only on becoming better.
The moment Mama Wang walked away, Wang Cheng let out a breath of relief. Being put under close surveillance was stressful too.
Seeing him like that, Lu Dade asked curiously, “Factory Manager, is something wrong?”
“No. Keep going.”
Lu Dade did not ask further and returned to what he had been saying. “If you want to open a jam shop in the city, Factory Manager, the commercial district would be the best choice. That’s where foot traffic is highest. The rent will naturally be expensive too, but these days a lot of people don’t focus on the rent first. The harder question is whether you can even find a storefront you like in the commercial district.”
The commercial district was one of the busiest parts of any city. Monthly rent below ten thousand yuan was almost impossible there. But people who truly understood the potential profits usually did not care much about that expense. As long as they could establish themselves in the commercial district and the goods they sold were not terrible, they could recoup the cost quickly.
Wang Cheng frowned. It looked like he would have to make the trip himself. “Right. How did yesterday’s delivery arrangements go? Nothing went wrong, did it?”
“No. The factory drivers who handle deliveries are all experienced. Once I gave them the customers’ addresses, they took care of everything.”
“Good.” Those were Wang Cheng’s first customers after his jam went into production. By now, each of them placed a fixed order every so often. The largest orders came from Renchang Supermarket, which he had personally negotiated with. His cousin had said that sixty to seventy percent of the jam displayed on the shelves of Boss Lin’s supermarkets was theirs, with only a scattering of other brands.
“A few customers did call to ask about it, though. Since the delivery people suddenly changed, they were worried it might be a scam.”
“That’s not a big problem. Just explain it clearly.”
Wang Cheng planned to visit the commercial district and take a look around. The moment he told Mama Wang, she frowned.
The commercial district was not far from where Wang Cheng had used to work, and Mama Wang had heard them mention it before. Although her son’s reason for going was perfectly reasonable, she clearly did not feel reassured. In the end, she said she would go with him.
Wang Cheng had expected that result and was not surprised. He was not so desperate that he needed to see Chu Yifeng every single day. The two of them had not been dating for long, but they were both men. Their sex and personalities meant they were never going to behave exactly like a pair of lovestruck young man and woman.
The large shopping center Wang Cheng and Chu Yifeng had visited before was part of the commercial district. The difference was that the shopping center itself was a corporate complex, while the wider commercial district gathered businesses from all over the country. Establishing a foothold there was genuinely difficult.
The commercial district was busiest at night. Once darkness fell, it became even more crowded than a produce market. Daytime was not exactly quiet either, with at least one-fifth of the nighttime foot traffic.
Wang Cheng and Mama Wang concentrated on storefronts with rental notices posted outside. There were not many in good locations. Plenty were available in poor locations because businesses that could not sell enough to cover the high rent had no choice but to rent the space out to someone else. The better locations, however, came with painfully high prices.
Wang Cheng and Mama Wang found several possibilities and wrote down the contact numbers before returning home. That evening, Wang Cheng called the owners one by one. The storefront he liked most had the best location. It was not right in the center of the district, but it stood at one of the busiest intersections, which also made it the most expensive. The owner opened by asking for forty-five thousand yuan, nearly ten thousand above Wang Cheng’s budget. He did not know this business well, so he had investigated beforehand, and Lu Dade had also explained the basics. A price like that would not be outrageous in a major metropolis, but Shanhai City could at most be considered a mid-sized city.
Still, Wang Cheng did not want to give up such a good opportunity. Good storefronts were hard to find. He bargained with the owner for a while, and perhaps sensing that Wang Cheng genuinely wanted to rent the place, the other party softened slightly. In the end, they agreed to meet in person and discuss it further.
Because Wang Cheng was so focused on the new shop that he seemed to have forgotten Chu Yifeng, Mama Wang relaxed her vigilance a little. When he told her he had arranged to meet the storefront owner the day after tomorrow, she generously gave her approval, merely adding a few verbal reminders.
Wang Cheng was hardly some fragile little woman who would threaten to live or die just because his parents opposed his relationship with Chu Yifeng. Even before they were discovered, the two had not seen each other all that often. What Wang Cheng had not expected was that Mama Wang still had not given up on arranging blind dates with other women for him.
The next afternoon, Wang Cheng glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was nearly five, yet Mama Wang did not seem to be preparing dinner. He casually asked about it, only to discover she had apparently been waiting for him to ask.
“Your father and I are going to Grandma and Grandpa’s for dinner tonight, so I’m not cooking.”
From the way she phrased it, Wang Cheng realized she seemed to mean only the two of them. Apparently he had been excluded. “What about me?”
He did not mind making his own dinner, but shouldn’t they at least have told him beforehand?
“You’re eating out. Mom has already arranged it for you.”
“Arranged what?” A bad feeling immediately rose in Wang Cheng’s heart.
Mama Wang said unhurriedly, “This morning, a matchmaker introduced me to a woman around your age. Her conditions sounded decent. I’ve already arranged for you to meet. The place is Heshun Donkey Restaurant. You should know where it is. The appointment is for six. Don’t be late.”
So his mother still had not given up on making him fall for someone else!
Wang Cheng did not know what to say. Mama Wang had never been the kind of parent who ignored her children’s wishes and arranged things on her own. Normally, she asked for their opinions. If they disagreed, she would reconsider whether there was some compromise both sides could accept, and only if there truly was no middle ground would she insist on her own view. Situations like this were exceedingly rare. Clearly, after being pushed this far, Mama Wang really was capable of anything. Papa Wang, who still did not know the truth, could not understand her behavior at all. Their eldest son still had no prospects, while the second son was only twenty-five. Why was she in such a hurry? No matter how worldly Papa Wang was, unless someone pointed it out directly, his thoughts would never twist far enough to land on homosexuality.
Wang Cheng was practically being forced onto the stage, no matter how unwilling he was to keep the appointment.
Heshun Donkey Restaurant specialized in donkey meat. The prices were not especially high and most people could afford to eat there. Business was said to be excellent, though Wang Cheng had never tried it himself. The restaurant was in Chengping, so the woman he was meeting was probably from Chengping too.
Under Mama Wang’s watchful stare, Wang Cheng had no choice but to change clothes and drive to Chengping. He arrived at around five-forty. Since he still had twenty minutes, he went to the jam shop first. None of his family had come in today, so only Guan Jiahe and the others were watching the place. After checking on things, he changed course and headed to the donkey restaurant. He arrived with exactly one minute to spare before six.
Plenty of people were eating at this hour, and the servers were too busy to spare anyone to greet Wang Cheng. He had to look around on his own. After scanning the restaurant, he spotted a table near one of the central pillars where a woman sat alone. That was probably her, so he walked over.
“Excuse me, are you Miss Zhu Bi?”
The woman looked up at the sound of his voice, but her expression was rather impatient. She clearly was waiting for someone and seemed annoyed that the other person had arrived late.
The woman really was Zhu Bi, Wang Cheng’s blind date, and she did not have much patience. She herself had arrived five minutes early, but in her opinion, a man should arrive even earlier than a woman. When the time had nearly reached six and he was only just appearing, she had become irritated. Hearing his voice, she was preparing to express her displeasure, but the moment she saw his face, she froze.
Chengping was not Guanjia Village. Even though Wang Family Jam had achieved some success there, very few people actually knew Wang Cheng. A matchmaker’s words could not be taken entirely at face value either, so Zhu Bi had never imagined the man she was meeting would be so strikingly handsome.
“I-I am.” Zhu Bi’s face reddened slightly and she began to stammer.
“Hello. I’m Wang Cheng, the person you’re meeting today.” Wang Cheng showed the basic politeness expected of him. Whatever the process looked like, as long as the final result achieved his purpose, that was enough. Unfortunately, that thinking made him underestimate this particular blind date. Reasonable and rational women like Su Yunyun were definitely not common.
During the conversation that followed, Wang Cheng finally experienced what a truly stereotypical blind-date woman could be like. Zhu Bi asked about everything from income to housing, from life before marriage to life afterward and how many children they planned to have. She almost went as far as insisting that one of the children would carry her surname.
She wanted a bride price of two hundred thousand yuan. He had to buy an apartment in the city larger than one hundred square meters, but the property deed had to be in her name. After marriage, she wanted her own parents to move in with them and did not want to live with her husband’s parents. All marital finances had to be managed by the wife, and on and on she went. They had not even started dating and she was already planning their married life?
Fine. Wang Cheng understood that matchmaking and dating for love were different. Having compatible values was important because it determined whether two people could actually live together after marriage. Although he did not agree with her approach, he answered all her questions anyway, deliberately giving answers opposite to what she hoped to hear. Unfortunately, his face was too handsome and he owned a factory, so in the end the woman still refused to give up and asked for his phone number, clearly hoping to develop things further. Wang Cheng claimed he had just changed numbers and could not remember it, then told her to leave him hers instead. Whether he ever called it would depend entirely on whether he felt like it. One thing, however, he knew with absolute certainty: he never wanted to attend another blind date like this again.