Chapter 97 How to find a girlfriend when you are so stingy!
After finishing his phone call with Ji Ling, Zhang Yunqi went to the vegetable market, bought some vegetables and returned home to cook.

It wasn't until it was almost done that the doorbell rang.

Ji Ling is here.

As soon as she entered the door, she looked around with her eyes wide open, seeming to be in a very good mood. Finally, she found a TV show called "All's Well, Ends Well" starring Stephen Chow, turned up the volume of the TV very loud, and sat on the sofa, watching it with relish.

Zhang Yunqi brought out all the snacks from home for Ji Ling to eat, as well as some local specialties brought by his elder brother Zhang Yunfeng, such as sweet potato strips and fried cakes. Ji Ling, who was sitting on the sofa with her knees hugged, looked at Zhang Yunqi who was busy running around, and suddenly smiled and said, "I feel like home here."

Zhang Yunqi knew that Ji Ling's parents were both workaholics and were away from home from morning till night. Ji Ling lived alone in a big villa like she was living in a high-end hotel. She lacked family affection, so she liked to go to Yunxi Village every summer vacation.

Although it is poor there, it is full of human touch.

Zhang Yunqi smiled and said: "Then you can come to my place every weekend when you have nothing to do."

Ji Ling thought about it and nodded.

Zhang Yunqi said: "Then I will make you something delicious."

Back in the kitchen, Zhang Yunqi fiddled with it for about ten minutes and brought out two bowls of fish noodles. Now, whenever he entertains guests at home, he always asks them to eat Zhangji Qifengdu fish noodles.

After the fish meal was served, Ji Ling looked at the layer of red oil floating in the bowl and said, "Why put so much chili?"

Zhang Yunqi knew that Ji Ling didn't like spicy food, so he tried to use as little chili as possible. But he had to add it. Firstly, the fish smell was strong, and secondly, he felt that the Qifengdu fish powder would lack a unique flavor without chili.

People in southern Hunan are afraid of food that is not spicy enough, and Jiangchuan City is the area in southern Hunan that can eat the spiciest food. This can be seen from the fact that the spicy Qifengdu fish noodles have become the daily breakfast of Jiangchuan citizens in later generations. For breakfast, the stomach has not yet recovered, so most people like to eat something lighter, but people in Jiangchuan want spicy food for every meal. No matter what they eat, they feel it is not tasty without chili peppers.

Zhang Yunqi said, "My family is planning to open a noodle shop on the street in front of the No. 1 Middle School in the city to sell this fish noodle. I know you don't like spicy food, so I just added a little seasoning. This fish noodle is called Qifengdu fish noodle. It's not very delicious without chili. I don't know if you have eaten it before. How about trying it first to see how it tastes? If you think it's spicy, I can make you something else, okay?"

Ji Ling smiled: "No, I can eat it."

Zhang Yunqi handed her the chopsticks: "Then eat it."

Ji Ling had a small appetite. Every time he went out to eat with her, Zhang Yunqi saw that she only ate a little bit and ate very slowly. She didn't like to talk while eating. But what Zhang Yunqi didn't expect was that she ate a bowl of Qifengdu fish powder for more than 20 minutes and finally finished it all. Her little face was full of sweat. She opened her red mouth and said, "Water, bring me some water, it's so spicy!"

Zhang Yunqi smiled and stood up to pour her a cup of warm Longjing tea. Ji Ling gulped down the tea, then puffed up her delicate cheeks and exhaled, "Although it's spicy, it tastes really good. When your noodle shop opens, I will eat breakfast at your noodle shop every day."

At this point, Ji Ling narrowed his eyes and smiled slyly: "Xiao Zhang, given our relationship, you won't take my money, right?"

Zhang Yunqi said: "That won't work. Friends are friends, business is business, and the money should be collected."

Ji Ling said: "How can you find a girlfriend if you are so stingy?"

Zhang Yunqi laughed: "That's a matter for the future. Even if I want to find a girlfriend now, my mother will not agree. By the way, we have nothing to do in the afternoon, how about we go shopping? I want to buy a pager." Ji Ling agreed.

After picking up the leftovers, the two went out shopping.

However, although they were talking about shopping, Zhang Yunqi only took Ji Ling to buy two cups of hot coffee, and walked around Ximen Street casually, and then they found a nearby store selling pagers.

The owner of the BP machine shop was a charming woman in her thirties, who was very good at reading people's expressions. She glanced at Ji Ling's ladies' watch and knew that the girl was from a wealthy family. She enthusiastically introduced various models of BP machines to Zhang Yunqi and Ji Ling. Finally, she pointed to a black BB machine and said with a smile: "Young man, this Motorola digital machine is very cost-effective. It only costs two thousand and three. You can use it to send digital messages to your girlfriend when you have nothing to do."

In the early 5201314s, when there was no WeChat or mobile phones, young people had very few ways to express their love across a distance. But as pagers became more and more popular, they gradually developed a way to express their love using numbers, such as romantic messages like 53880 and , which could capture the other person's heart with just numbers.

But this is not the point. The point is that Ji Ling was a little dissatisfied when he heard the word "girlfriend". He wrinkled his delicate nose and said, "Boss, the guy next to me is stupid, stout and short. How can he have a girlfriend?"

Zhang Yunqi almost vomited blood: "Where did I pinch?"

Ji Ling rolled his eyes and laughed: "You are a big stickler everywhere."

The female boss was a little embarrassed.

She thought to herself, the girlfriend I'm talking about is you, but after hearing what this girl said, it probably isn't you.

She quickly changed the subject with a smile and said, "Young man, what do you think of this Motorola digital phone? How about I turn it on for you to try?"

Zhang Yunqi waved his hand and said, "No, you are busy. I will look at other things first."

Zhang Yunqi and Ji Ling started to choose along the counter. Digital machines were inconvenient, so he planned to buy a Chinese-style machine. However, the various types of Chinese-style BP machines were not cheap, and none of them were less than three thousand. Converted into the value of RMB in later generations, it would be about thirty or forty thousand. Most people could not afford it, and most of them were foreign products.

Actually, there is nothing that can be done about it. In the current era, foreign brands occupy 99% of the market share of BP machines, while domestic BP machines simply cannot be sold. Quality is one aspect, but the main reason is that Chinese people at that time were keen on foreign products and were particularly fond of foreign things. The most obvious manifestation of this was the craze for English and going abroad at that time.

This was a strange trend in the early 1990s.

In that era, it seemed that learning English and going abroad was a shortcut to success, a magic weapon for ordinary people to change their destiny and achieve success. A large number of young people worked hard to learn English. Some people memorized GRE words more than a hundred times, and they still read, studied, and memorized a word book that was already in tatters. Some took TOEFL, GRE, and IELTS dozens of times, and some even spent all their money to go abroad.

In fact, without talking about the fanatical worship of foreign countries by ordinary people, Yanda and Tsinghua University are awesome enough. The students there are elites selected from thousands of miles away, and they have received a lot of patriotic education since childhood. But to put it bluntly, at that time, it was almost a talent processing base established by the United States in China. As long as there was an opportunity, they would rush to Silicon Valley like refugees. The most annoying thing is that they also contributed to the American science and technology industry.

But have they really achieved what they once dreamed of in the United States?

The movie "Chinese Partners" gives an answer to this question: Chinese people in the United States are not bosses, but workers.

(End of this chapter)