() One night in April 2013, in the Yellow Sea of China, 300 nautical miles east of Weihai Port, an ocean-going fishing boat was heading eastward with its night lights on. The boat had no ship number and no flag.
A person who understands the national flag can guess at a glance: there is something wrong with this ship.
In fact, the problem is not the ship, the problem is the people on the ship. There are 12 people on the ship, and the tallest one is the protagonist of this book - Liu Xiangyang, a native of Beijing, 39 years old. This is his first time to ship goods with the ship, and the destination is
North Korea's port, Nampo Port.
Liu Xiangyang is a native of Beijing, 39 years old, married. His childhood was happy, and his grades were very good until junior high school. However, after he entered high school, his parents began to quarrel, and then they got divorced. Liu Xiangyang followed his father.
I moved away from my home where I had lived for more than ten years and replaced my school with a new one. As a result, my grades plummeted and I had no hope of going to college.
After graduating from high school, the father of his girlfriend who had a puppy love (in the era when Liu Xiangyang lived, high school was considered a puppy love) helped him find a job as a treasury manager in a commercial company. In the first half year, Liu Xiangyang performed very well, and the new environment made him happy.
He was very excited. Most of his colleagues were veteran workers in their 40s, and they all took care of him as if they were their own children. However, he only received a few months’ salary.
, Liu Xiangyang’s excitement was gone. His salary of more than 90 yuan a month was spent on going out with his girlfriend a few times. Although there was no temptation of cars and mobile phones at that time, it was always difficult to have no money to spend, so in a
At the reminder of a salesman from another unit who often came to pick up goods, Liu Xiangyang stretched out his sinful hand - issuing false warehouse receipts, and together with the salesman, he hacked several goods from the unit.
The ending that followed was very uncreative. With the banknotes in hand, I took my girlfriend to shopping malls, movie theaters, and amusement parks to create things (actually there was nothing to create in that era, and there were not many entertainment projects). Then
It was when the incident came to light that he was imprisoned and sentenced to one and a half years.
After a year and a half of prison life, Liu Xiangyang has changed. Although his personality is still very loose, he has become much calmer in his work and has learned a lot about society and life. He began to look for a job everywhere and prepared to live a down-to-earth life. Desire
It's beautiful, but the reality is
Cruel. Today's young people may not understand the difficulties faced by those released from prison at that time: there are basically no suitable jobs for you. After countless encounters, Liu Xiangyang knew that finding a serious job was a no-brainer, but he was not discouraged.
Without despair, he decided to go into business.
With tens of thousands of yuan borrowed from relatives, Liu Xiangyang first opened a beauty salon. The profits were good in the first two years. However, with the gradual deepening of reform and opening up, many people from southern coastal cities came to Beijing to hunt for gold.
.These southerners had new ideas, new business concepts, and new craftsmanship and styles. Liu Xiangyang could not compete with the more sophisticated bosses. As a result, his income dropped and he had to close down.
In the summer of 1998, with a total of less than 100,000 yuan saved by opening a store in the past few years, Liu Xiangyang relied on a hobby at the time (playing computer games) to open a website with only 10 computers (it was not called a website at the time).
, called Computer House). Because the Internet was a new thing, there was only one Bei Jing store at that time. Outside the east wall of the Capital Gymnasium, it seemed to be called "Ying Haiwei". It was opened by a well-known access provider and was a real business.
The network has not appeared yet.
When it first opened, it was packed with people. Whether they were curious to try it out or computer enthusiasts came for real entertainment, it was always overcrowded as soon as it opened, and the price was very high: 10 yuan an hour.
Just a few years after the good times, with the famous Blue Speed Network arson incident in 2002, the network was dealt a blow and all of them were shut down for rectification.
After wandering around at home for more than a year, I finally received the good news that the Internet can apply for opening. Comrade Liu Xiangyang trotted to the competent department and asked. He was dumbfounded. He could apply for a new Internet, but it required more than 80 machines and a business area of 200 square meters.
More than square meters
, an enterprise with a registered capital of 500,000 yuan. Lao Liu did a quick mental calculation: to open a website, it would cost at least 1 million yuan. I found a friend with connections to calculate it, and I opened it! Even if it costs 1 million yuan! We are good at this.
, you can still make money, why not open it!
So, the two of them scraped together millions of dollars, relied on connections, found suitable houses through various channels, and finally opened the website again. However, Liu Xiangyang was under a lot of pressure this time to open the website. Not only did he borrow more than 100,000 yuan in debt,
Just the rent, optical cable rental fees, staff wages, electricity bills and other daily costs are quite a lot, and network management is becoming more and more strict. At first, minors were not allowed to enter, then their ID cards were checked, and then smoking was banned.
....
Liu Xiangyang felt helpless when his old-age company closed down. What would he do in the future?
At this moment, an old customer of the Internet gave Comrade Liu an idea. This old customer's surname was Sun, and his name was Sun Guangfu. He was from Qingdao. He often worked in Beijing and lived in a hotel across from the Internet. He came to the Internet to play games basically every day.
, and he was very familiar with Liu Xiangyang. He told Liu Xiangyang that his business was to "deliver goods" to North Korea. Of course, he didn't deliver it himself. He also had a small organization with strong connections behind him. If Liu was interested, he could pay for a batch.
The goods are counted as shares.
Liu Xiangyang didn't take it seriously at the time, and stayed home for more than half a year. The economy was getting worse and worse, and various small businesses were getting harder and harder to do. If he blindly invested the little money he had, he probably wouldn't even see the splash.
.But if you don’t invest, you have to do something.
In addition to earning a living, it was quite uncomfortable to stay at home every day. One day, when Lao Liu got a new mobile phone and was sorting out his address book, he suddenly saw Sun Guangfu's phone number and remembered the "business" he told himself.
", I can't help but feel a little excited.
Action was better than excitement. After pondering for a few days, Lao Liu couldn't help but call Sun Guangfu, and got a definite promise: The business is still going on, and it's doing pretty well. If you want to invest in shares, hurry up. If you hadn't been hanging out together on the Internet for several years,
I won’t take you to play at all! Liu Xiangyang gritted his teeth, stamped his feet, took out 100,000 yuan, and went to Weihai with the person and the money.
