A friend opened a franchise laundromat in Chanba. I said, "You're going to make a fortune, and your standard outfit in the future is a luxury car." My friend said, "What do you want?" I wash, iron, iron, remove hairballs, pack, work 12 hours a day from morning to night, the limit is to get 20 clothes, an average of 20 yuan a piece. A day's labor force is 400 yuan. In addition to investment, rent, consumables, water and electricity, and the off-season, after three years, it is good to be able to cover up food and drink.
I carefully calculated, it was really so, I couldn't help but take a breath of cool air. The friend continued: "I don't know how difficult it is to do business without opening a shop."
My understanding of doing business has always stuck in the memory of my childhood. At that time, rich people were all in business, but whenever there was a stall, they earned enough money to live in the city than there were workers.
■ Stills from "Chicken Feathers Fly to the Sky"
In the 1980s, my uncle set up a stall near the bell tower to sell fried cold powder, the business was hot, the money was like flowing water, and the profit of the day was at the top of my father's monthly salary. The seven aunts and eight aunts of the family all came to their uncles, washed dishes and served dishes, and the whole courtyard borrowed money from their uncles. At that time, my uncle was satisfied, and he used a shovel to knock the edge of the pot to jingle: Show us a county magistrate whether we can do it!
Years later, my uncle was 60 years old. When you are young, money comes and goes quickly. Now I live in a low-rent house far away from the city, and I have not bought social security, and I work for a car wash on weekdays. Wash a car, accumulate into a dog, commission 10 yuan, just enough for a meal.
The good old days that belonged to my uncle lasted for a while in the early 90s. By 1995, street stalls were a small business. The streets and alleys of Xi'an, the villages in the city, and the entrances of family homes are full of barbecue stalls, night market stalls, and snack stalls. A basin of dishwashing water with one night, greasy black, small investment, low technology, this small stall business has become the first choice for laid-off, unemployed, rural migrant workers. At that time, Uncle Tou was one of the first people to experience the inner volume of competition. They were also the first to retire from the stage of history.
■ Stills from "God Eater"
Next up is the glamorous clothing business. In 1999, everyone did not have the awareness of buying commercial housing, and there were very few cram schools, and everyone's concept was to make money to spend money. I was just 20 years old, the age of "fighting for beauty." Every weekend, a few girlfriends get up, pedal 8 cm high heels, wrap up in corsets, from Jiefang Road to East Avenue, and then visit South Street, buy clothes, shoes and some small trinkets in the 40-degree heat. At that time, it seemed that if you didn't dress beautifully enough, if you weren't fashionable enough, you would be looked down upon, and you would be seen through as a poor ghost. Nowadays, young girls rarely wear high heels, and few people wear plastic clothes, and people are paying more and more attention to comfort.
In 2000, I just worked, saved half a year, spent 1800 to buy a coat, and now that I think about it, 1800 at that time was enough to pay a down payment for a suite!
In 2000, the clothing business ushered in a good time for more than ten years in the future. At that time, whether it was a shopping mall, a boutique house, or even a clothing stall on the street, the women who sold clothes were very good. Most of the clothes are not allowed to be tried on, and they pay money when they see it, and they are not allowed to touch it. Buy home, try, the yard or style is not appropriate, and then go to the merchant, wearing muffin shoes, a curly hair of the fashionable bosses, will involuntarily send you away. The light will give you a blank eye, ignore you, and the heavy will throw the clothes to the door and let you get out of the egg quickly.
Time flies, twenty years have passed. I'm also past the age of desperately buying clothes. Today I saw 79.9 clothes on Pinduoduo and I felt expensive. Time has slipped away, and the golden age of clothing has passed. There are very few clothing stores on the street now. Those glamorous and gorgeous lady bosses, also missing...
■ Stills from "Thirty Only"
The next good time belongs to medical beauty. Girls' definition of beauty is no longer to draw a delicate makeup, or wear expensive clothes, a new generation of little girls, to 360 degrees of beauty without dead angles, to remove makeup as exquisite. Billboards in the streets and elevator rooms are the most accurate places to touch the times. All corners are all kinds of medical beauty advertisements, and in the middle stands a man with the appearance of a professor, known as the first knife of Asian beauty nose, leading a team, which is the standard of every medical beauty institution.
Everyone says that women's money is easy to earn, and that's when they're not married. When housing prices in Xi'an continued to rise, when other people's children began to learn English at the age of three, few women were calm. At this time, clothes and medical beauty are all over the clouds, and the most important thing now is not to lose at the starting line.
The new generation of business models relies on big data computing, and countless network writers help to create anxiety. When I opened the circle of friends, I suddenly found that the children of all the friends around me were math geniuses, English speaking champions, reading experts, and various punch cards every day. Every time I finish brushing the circle of friends, I will rush to attack my heart, beat the girlfriend who is still "breaking her finger" to write math homework, and then I will receive countless phone calls: "Sister, there is a 49.9 mathematical thinking audition class, let our children improve."
The place where money is spent is changing with age and ideas, and it is also changing with the torrent of the times.
Life is like yesterday, and the past is vividly remembered. Gone are the days when a cool leather stall could get rich many years ago; the extravagant experience of spending a few months on a piece of clothing is a thing of the past. Perhaps in a few years, the chicken blood life of giving everything to the children to enroll in various classes will also pass.
This is the growth of a person's age and experience, and it is also the process of a country's development. Everyone's small era is a big era of a country.
Author | Wang Yuping | Xi'an people