Chapter 67

A graduate enterprise scheme? How had she forgotten that? Back in the dormitory, Li Lan opened her computer and looked it up. Which was when she discovered how generous this year's national provisions were, particularly since the push to encourage new businesses at the start of the year had tilted both policy and resources heavily towards students setting up on their own.

To begin with, the hundred thousand in registered capital needn't be paid in one instalment — two years to settle it was enough. Registration itself was waved through: filing and documentation fees waived entirely, and various tax reliefs for three years from the date of registration with the commerce bureau.

Registration, then, would be fine. The address was more awkward. Her company would in a sense be a research company, which meant a great deal of experimental work — the necessary equipment, and also wastewater treatment and the rest — so the site had to be chosen carefully. Office space in the city was plainly unsuitable, and the suitable places were generally out in the suburbs; suburbs meant poor transport, poor transport meant she'd probably need a car, and a car meant a licence first.

Beyond that came the other outgoings: raw materials, staff, office equipment, and so on and so on.

You never know until you add it up, and adding it up is a shock. Looking at the column of pure expenditure, large and small, she went briefly dark behind the eyes. The company didn't exist yet and money was already pouring out. The few hundred thousand from the novels barely made a ripple against setting up, particularly the research-heavy sort she had in mind, which burns money at the start and nothing else. Without the shop behind her she'd never have dared. Wouldn't the money be better spent on a flat?

Painful or not, the company was happening, and she had a candidate for the site: the Peking University medical industrial park. She'd learned about it in May, when Professor Lin took on a consultancy for a pharmaceutical company whose laboratory was there. Being in Beijing, several of the laboratory's people including herself had gone back and forth constantly, so she knew the place.

As far as she knew the park had only been established at the start of the year, inside the Zhongguancun life sciences park. Being new, it was anxious for tenants and investment — though with research centres and university laboratories all around it, she wasn't sure any laboratory space was still free. There had been empty offices when she was there a few months ago. Whether they'd been let since, she didn't know.

She got out her phone to ask in advance; thanks to Professor Lin she'd met a good many researchers there.

It was answered after two rings, and she smiled. "Hello — good morning, Sister Zhang."

"Lanlan. Good morning." The voice at the other end was hearty. "Professor Lin said you'd gone back for the entrance exam. How did you do?"

"Not badly." Li Lan smiled.

A few pleasantries, and then she got to it. "Sister Zhang, do you know whether the park still has any offices to let?"

There was a pause. "Do you know, Lanlan, I really don't. But I can ask my old colleagues."

Li Lan caught it. "Old colleagues?"

She admitted it cheerfully enough. "Well, they are, once you've resigned. I stopped about a month after you left. Unemployed and at home. Ha."

Li Lan was surprised. As she remembered her, Sister Zhang was an excellent researcher with a great deal of experience, and had been about to be promoted. Why would she resign like that?

She didn't want to load Li Lan with any of it. "Listen to me. You want offices to let, is that right? I'll ask now."

Off the phone, Li Lan opened her QQ space, which she hadn't looked at in a long time; being used to other messaging, QQ was a chat client to her now and she checked the space only when it occurred to her. She opened Sister Zhang's page, where the recent posts were all small amusements, and scrolled a good while before reaching one from a few months back. From today, looking forward to a new life arriving.

Which appeared to explain the resignation. And the date was a few days after she'd left — so Sister Zhang had resigned shortly afterwards. Or been resigned.

The phone rang again before long, and the same hearty voice. "Lanlan, I've asked, and there are a few offices still free. I've got the manager's number and sent it to you. Give him a ring."

Li Lan was grateful. "Thank you, Sister Zhang."

"Don't be silly. Are you renting it for Professor Lin?" She said it without much thought. Working with him, Li Lan might have been the youngest student in the laboratory, but her practical ability beat some of the new researchers', and Sister Zhang had treated her as a younger sister throughout.

"No. For myself." Li Lan liked her, and didn't hide it.

"Yourself? You're still at university. What do you want an office in the park for?" Having assumed she was asking for the professor, Sister Zhang couldn't help adding a little more. "The rents there aren't low, you know, and it's all by the year. It comes to a good deal."

Li Lan didn't mind. "I know. I've a use for it."

Which told Sister Zhang the decision was made. Young as she was, Li Lan wasn't like other girls of seventeen or eighteen; she knew her own mind, and she wasn't actually Li Lan's sister and couldn't press her. "No — I'm not comfortable with you going alone. Tell me when you're going and I'll come with you."

Nobody at the park was going to swindle her, but sensible as Li Lan was, she was still a girl to Sister Zhang's mind. There wasn't much else she could say, but the thought of her going alone bothered her, and she had nothing on; an afternoon wouldn't cost her anything.

Li Lan hadn't expected quite that much kindness, and refused at once. "There's no need. I'll be fine."

"Nonsense. I live ten minutes' drive from the park. It costs me nothing, and if you argue I shall be annoyed with you." She said it laughing. "Right, that's the time, I'm going out. Remember to ring me." And hung up before Li Lan could refuse again.

Li Lan looked at the dead phone, helpless. She knew Sister Zhang was afraid of her being taken advantage of, and she wasn't really an eighteen-year-old girl and not as fragile as all that. Still, it was kindly meant, and she didn't ring back to decline.

---

Finding she had time, she opened a document with a few words in bold across the top: Cerulean — development plan.

She'd taken a long time over the name. In Chinese it was Weilan, the lan being a homophone of the lan in her own name; and a blue expanse stands to some degree for the earth, and the shop could collect the plants of the whole earth, so there was that in it too. All right — she admitted she'd picked it at random. She'd happened across it while searching online.

Money being what it was, she wasn't going to start with anything high-end. The plan had four lines to begin with: a calendula line for calming and inflammation, a rose line for whitening, an aloe line for basic hydration, and a mint line for clearing the head — the four things she'd grown at Beiguan.

Besides money there was the question of technique, except that unlike other research companies she didn't need to develop anything new. New technique she had as much of as she liked, and failure didn't come into it. Her problem was that her head was full of theory she couldn't actually execute. An enviable sort of difficulty.

So the elementary products were also chosen because she needed a great deal of practical work to build experience. She guessed that when her L1 products reached ninety per cent completion it would mean she could take on L2.

Ninety, because a hundred per cent would require every step from cultivation onwards to be flawless, and she had no time whatever to grow things and could only buy raw material in. Ninety it was. When the company was large enough, there'd be somewhere to cultivate to her own methods.

Being L1, she'd provisionally settled on two products per line: a calendula toner and lotion, a rose serum and a rose cream, aloe gel and a hydrating spray. Mint didn't lend itself to conventional cosmetics, so mint would become a reviving spray and lozenges — a spray of that at end-of-term exams would clear anybody's head.

---

She'd barely saved it when the other three came back from looking round the campus. They said hello, and Xia Yanyan's eyes went to the computer. "Lanlan, what make is that?"

She was in computing and would certainly need one. Her family had meant to buy one at home to bring, and then, knowing little about computers and afraid of getting the wrong thing, had given her the money to choose herself. Computing student or not, term hadn't started and she didn't know much about them either, so she couldn't help asking whenever she saw one.

"Oh — mine's last year's. It performs well enough." She'd bought it over the National Day holiday last year, deliberately specified high because of the data analysis.

Xia Yanyan nodded along. "Is it good for programming?"

Ni Xing came over to listen too, being in the same position — money for a computer and no idea what to buy. "I'm getting one as well. Yours is too ugly, though, Lanlan. I want something better-looking."

Xia Yanyan said seriously, "Xingxing, you can't judge electronics on looks alone."

Ni Xing choked slightly, looked at the black and lumpish thing, and said, conflicted, "But it is very ugly."

Li Lan didn't mind. The specification did make it heavy. It worked, which was the point.

Luo Yu joined in. "If I'd known you were all buying, I wouldn't have brought mine from home."

"You've got one, Xiao Yu? What's it like?" Ni Xing was interested.

"Same make as my phone. I'll get it out." And she went to the cupboard.

Li Lan looked at the Apple phone on her desk. The same make as the phone…

"Xiao Yu, yours is lovely. Apple as well?" The silver-white machine in her hands looked a great deal better to Ni Xing.

"Yes. My aunt gave me both as a present for getting in." Luo Yu wasn't much interested in electronics, and with Apple not yet in China and years off being in everybody's hand, she only remembered the make because of the distinctive logo.

"I see." Ni Xing was disappointed. She knew the aunt was in America, so evidently you couldn't buy them here — and she'd wanted the phone badly the moment she saw it.

"Next time my father goes abroad I'm making him bring me a phone and a computer instead of always bringing my mother cosmetics." She was aggrieved. She'd only learned the brand existed from Luo Yu, and had always told her father there was nothing she wanted, and now bitterly regretted it.

Her own phone was the newest full-keyboard smartphone. She had no other interests; she didn't care much about food or clothes and liked buying new electronics, and no MP3 or MP4 lasted two months in her hands before something newer replaced it. Which was why, having seen Luo Yu's phone and then her own, she found hers ugly from every angle.

The computer conversation over, the room went quiet again. Phones did little; neither Ni Xing nor Xia Yanyan had a computer, and Luo Yu's had nothing to connect to, the room not being wired yet. Not that there was no way online — she had a wireless card, but it cost a fortune and nobody liked to ask to borrow it. So they sat at their own desks staring at one another.

Bored, Ni Xing leafed through yesterday's textbooks, got two pages in, thought about it and bent to fetch two books from the cupboard below. "Xiao Yan, Xiao Yu, do you read novels?"

The other two shut their textbooks, interested. "What sort?" Most of their energy in high school had gone into schoolwork and they'd kept well clear of anything that interfered with it. They were at university now. Where was the harm?

Ni Xing put the two books on the shared table in the middle. "These are by my favourite author, Yijiu. They're wonderful. Highly recommended."

They took one each. There was nothing else to do, and a novel wouldn't hurt. Having made the sale, Ni Xing warmed to it. "One's romance and one's boys' love. Do you know what boys' love is?"

Seeing them shake their heads blankly, she launched into it as though injected with something, and watched the bewilderment arrive on both faces. She recognised it. She'd come in through Yijiu's romance too, and had only found out what the second book was when she got to it, and had reacted exactly the same way — and having gritted her teeth and read it, had been won over completely, and still reread it often.

"The author's so self-indulgent, though. She used to miss updates constantly, and the second book finished over a year ago and she still hasn't started anything new." Remembering her years of following it, Ni Xing was indignant. She'd had little time for novels in high school, but the misery of secretly keeping up was something she would never forget.

Being indignant, she didn't notice that at her first sentence the clatter of typing beside her had stopped. Hearing her out, Li Lan quietly turned the screen away and put her body between the room and a chat window that was still filling up.

Editor Shang Shang: Yijiu, are you serious? You're starting something new?

Editor Shang Shang: I never thought I'd live to see it.

Editor Shang Shang: Have you decided on the subject? Do you have an outline? Send it over.

Editor Shang Shang: Yijiu? Yijiu? Why aren't you answering? Don't tell me you're vanishing again.