Shengsheng

Province G on February 2003, 2

The warm wind of the seaside city, accompanied by a little cooling in winter, has also shrouded the exterior of this coastal city with a hazy thin layer of frost.

Outside the suburban airport that is about to be completed in the future, the large-scale construction site that is built step by step emits violent roars, and heavy trucks carrying various types of goods frequently come and go on the road.

Accompanied by the traffic flow up and down the viaduct, some private cars, which were rare a few years ago, have quietly entered a corner of the city.

This is Province G - the financial and trade capital of China.

Looking around the country, in the future, countless foreign-funded enterprises, heavy industry factories, and electronic technology companies are about to break ground and incubate here, the most fertile soil.

The government's annual economic output value has achieved historic breakthroughs here in recent years.

The Chinese, overseas Chinese, and foreign businessmen on the other side of the sea have also valued this land one after another, making this place more and more popular in the business circle in the past two years.

People come here to seek money and business opportunities, and negotiating business is the top priority.

And early in the morning, through the transparent floor-to-ceiling windows of the Sheraton Hotel, in the distance, a plane flying slowly through the atmosphere comes into view, and faint conversations break into people's ears.

"Hey, hello, OK, who are you looking for? Hey, hello, I'm Mr. Liang's assistant, Xiao Mao."

"..."

"Oh, Mr. McJoe, the one we had dinner at the Pearl River Hotel the day before yesterday, of course I still remember haha, you want an electronic file for yesterday's investment case, okay, I'll use the fax machine at the hotel right away I'll get you a..."

"..."

"Yes, Mr. Liang is not here at the moment. Didn't we set up a temporary foundation in the Eastern District to take a look at? He went to the site to see the blueprints and arrange workers for the past two days. Yes, I will ask him to give it to you when he comes back. Go make a call..."

Beside the messy carpet covered with documents, there was a male assistant who was woken up by the phone and hurriedly got up to answer the phone next to the two makeshift desks.

He looked about thirty years old.

With square eyes, slightly fat, can speak proficient English, and the handwriting left by taking out the pen and quickly dropping it on the sticky note is also very neat.

Although the shirt under his body was crumpled by his arms and stapler, he looked like a professional assistant in terms of eloquence and ability.

As for the high-end suite in the hotel, judging from what he said, it should be the temporary office of this assistant and Mr. Liang——Comrade Liang Sheng.

Speaking of our old friend, Liang Sheng.

In fact, it has been more than ten days since he himself was invited by the investor of the Metro store to the capital city of Province G to negotiate the future 'shoppingmall', and the investment and construction period is almost ten days.

Years ago, he and his family had come to this provincial capital alone since they came back from a trip to Beijing in a low voice, and enthusiastically devoted themselves to this new year's new career.

It is said that he is destined to be restless and wants to make a fortune all day long.

But in fact, the grand blueprint concept of 'shoppingmall' circling in his mind at the moment can be traced back to his previous life at the earliest.

At that time, he himself was still an ignorant child.

After dropping out of school in his teens, he didn't continue to study, but just messed around in society. He hadn't seen the big world a few times, and airplanes and cars only existed in his imagination.

But once, by coincidence, he saw a very strange and magical scene on a landscape calendar hanging in a hair salon.

It was a landscape painting wall calendar produced in 2003, corresponding to Liang Sheng's own previous life, which happened to be at this point in time.

The calendar shows a ten-story glass high-rise building, which has many shops with fruits and vegetables. It looks very grand. There is a parking lot underneath, and there are flyover promenades, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, etc. outside.

This kind of existence must have been very strange and novel to the Chinese who were still in the eyes of the Chinese who were still in economic strength and had just come into line with international standards.

And it was through this opportunity that Liang Sheng knew at that time that this was the legendary 'shoppingmall', the predecessor of the shopping mall, the shopping mall that every large, medium and small city must have in the future.

After all, in the retail industry, shoppingmall is an advanced commercial format.

In western countries, shoppingmall is a common form of business like a department store-supermarket. It belongs to an emerging complex commercial retail business. It has the characteristics of large scale and complete functions. It integrates shopping, leisure, entertainment and food. It is a super commercial center including Quanli department stores, hypermarkets and many specialty stores, entertainment centers, chain stores and restaurants.

Ever since then, the ideal of having a perfect large supermarket chain that can meet all the needs of people has been buried in his heart.

Until this life, he started from scratch, starting from a tricycle peddler in the vegetable market, step by step to the present, able to contact real foreign supermarkets with contacts and introduce them to China with complete market purchase channels and sufficient confidence.

All of this, I have to say, sounds like a dream, or a fantasy.

"Liang Sheng, tell me, why on earth did we take such a big risk to engage in this... Supermarket, hypermarket?"

"..."

"The basic consumption level is not even in line with international standards these days. Can we who started selling canned food really do it? Just tell me what you want to do!"

"Haha, I'm going to wait for our city to open a large shopping mall, a nationwide chain of large supermarkets, and then fill the shelves with all our canned food, and we want to buy our products to the United States, sell them to Canada, and sell them all over the world. Go to any place where Chinese people live, so that those overseas students and overseas Chinese can eat haha! I will be the 'supermarket king' known in our city, our province, and the whole country!"

"Damn, Liang Sheng, you are wishing to go to Africa to sell slippers, you are looking for death!"

"If you want to die, you will die. You live to die. The American cowboys in the gold rush in the west would never have imagined that there really existed a gold mine in such a barren place. I, Liang Sheng, was born to be such a lonely hero!

This is a promise he made with a smile to the Changping factory, including Lao Pang, when he decided on the provincial capital plan before departure.

But before Liang Sheng left City Y, the Spring Festival holiday seemed to be over.

As a result, after all this tossing, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month seemed to be busy by him in a daze.

During this period, he was so busy that he didn't touch the ground, and he didn't have much time to contact his family. He only had a few phone calls, but he didn't have a few words with Jin Ping and Xiao Liang.

But I have to say that this time is indeed the biggest and most unmissable opportunity he has encountered so far in his [-] years of life.

If he catches it, he will personally win the No. 00 in China as a partner of a large supermarket chain in the mainland after 1.

If you can't grasp it, even an optimist like him will inevitably regret his whole life because of such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Because of this, Liang Sheng, who hurried to the provincial capital with a few suits, a computer, and an outside assistant, spent most of his days working in the hotel room.

The hotel delivers three meals a day, all of which are good-looking Western-style simple meals that are specially delivered in a small trolley.

But his Chinese stomach raised by this kind of rice is so unaccustomed to eating a single bite.

Because of this, his immune system was weakened, he had a low-grade fever and a headache, and his assistant Xiao Mao even went to the pharmacy to buy painkillers for him.

But in order for the business to go smoothly, Liang Sheng, who vaguely felt a little uncomfortable in some part of his body, could only bear with it.

The battle field guarding this shopping mall is exhausted with all kinds of investors, and the mouth is full of bubbles. Every day, I can only drink foreign coffee vigorously to refresh myself.

And in the first five days, he basically brought people to meet and dine with foreign guests.

During this period, he saw waves of foreigners with beards and blue eyes, and the number of business cards stuffed in the interlayer of suits also increased.

Fortunately, his English level is good. Although he is still half-baked after self-study for so long, he is familiar with all kinds of professional vocabulary related to commercial contracts, and he also has an assistant, Xiao Mao, to assist him.

So, carrying the hopes of dozens or even hundreds of people from the two factories in Changping and Y City, our Mr. Xiao Liang will be the sole boss of this company this time, and formally compete with the various personnel sent by the other party at the negotiation table. up.

……

City Y on February 2003, 2

(In-broadcast broadcast content)

"On the morning of the 26th, the Department of Diseases of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in this city once again attracted a peak of registrations. During the period of high incidence of infectious diseases, please pay attention to hygiene and safety in the public environment. Due to the spread of rumors and the malicious guidance of some unscrupulous vendors, prices in the market have risen again recently. All districts Residents purchase a large number of fruits and vegetables, masks, and 84 disinfectant, and hereby refute the rumors, please do not believe in false social rumors..."

Outside the steel windows locked tightly with locks between the residential buildings, the sound of announcements is coming from under the loudspeakers on the telephone poles downstairs.

The city radio station rebroadcasted the content to the whole city several times in the early morning, but it is completely unknown how many people listened to the content.

At this moment, there are actually very few vehicles walking on the road outside.

The day after the Spring Festival holiday was not particularly cold, but the air and clouds above the head were all black and oppressive, which seemed strangely stuffy.

The empty city roads are extraordinarily quiet, and the bustling living people who used to fill the streets seem to have evaporated in an instant, and there is not even a country old man selling vegetables at a roadside stall.

In the corridor without voice-activated lights overhead, there were occasional sounds of the opening and closing of the anti-theft iron door downstairs.

But accompanied by the messy and monotonous footsteps of unknown neighbors, and the clatter of plastic bags in their hands, soon there was no unnecessary movement in the whole place.

"Boom-"

I don't know if the iron gate was blown shut by the wind, or someone pushed it hard, making a loud noise.

It was under such circumstances that Xiaoliang, who was disturbed, heard the movement and ran to his window to watch.

Before that, he got up in the morning, fetched some water, washed his face and brushed his teeth, and after doing two sets of questions at home, he lay on tiptoe outside the iron window of his house and listened to the radio all morning.

Today is already the 26th, and it has been almost two weeks since the lively Spring Festival.

Liang Sheng, who had just come back from Guangzhou to negotiate a deal after a week of agreement, has not yet returned home. At their school, the head teacher, Teacher Wan, has not started school yet.

It is absolutely impossible for this to happen in previous years.

There are still piles of vacation journals and winter vacation homework that have been completed but not handed in in his schoolbag at the moment. Originally, he had already been in school for a week at this time.

But now, it's not just him.

In the whole district and the whole city, most of the junior high school students and high school students like Liang Sheng are still anxiously waiting at home for the school's unknown start notice.

This morning, Jin Ping put on a big mask again, and went out with a few changes of clothes and a thermos bucket filled with ginger hen soup.

Before leaving, she made breakfast for Xiao Liangsheng, and told him to boil the vinegar in the pot again in the afternoon, and to leave without opening the window or going downstairs to play.

Burn vinegar, don't open the windows, don't go downstairs to play casually - these are the most frequent and intensive instructions Xiao Liangsheng heard from Jin Ping in the past two days.

Xiao Liangsheng didn't know where she had been quietly going from time to time in the past two days.

But he vaguely remembered that Uncle Cao was picked up by a 120 in the middle of the night after he received a notice from the neighborhood committee the day before yesterday and had his body checked.

— Temporary isolation.

Xiao Liangsheng also heard this word from the staff of the neighborhood committee wearing armbands. During the period, as a child, he was also asked about his going out during the Spring Festival.

"Have you ever been to another place during Chinese New Year?"

"..."

"Been to Beijing? Oops, when was that? Did you go to any mobile places during the period? Such as hospitals, Internet cafes? Did you get close to anyone with a runny nose and sneezing on the train?"

"..."

"Oh, did you go home before the first lunar month? That's okay, then take two tablets of antipyretics and cough medicine first, pay attention to keep warm recently, improve your immunity, and remember to contact us as soon as possible if you feel unwell, so we can arrange temporary isolation. It's not a big deal, it's the flu, and there have been a lot of people getting the flu these two days."

When the staff who came to the door talked about the reasons for the isolation, they didn't seem to be too nervous.

Whether it is leaflet distribution or voluntary science popularization, it is relatively streamlined.

It seems that apart from saying that people with "flu suspicions" should be placed together for two days for observation, it didn't spread too much anxiety and fear.

But at the same time, Xiao Liangsheng only found out later that his family was not the only one being taken away and temporarily quarantined.

There are also half of the district who have been to other provinces and cities this Spring Festival to visit relatives and do business, including Liang Sheng's little buddy Lin Tong.

The neighborhood committee said it was a notice from the district hospital, and the district hospital said it was a large-scale physical examination arranged by the district government.

——It’s not a big deal, it’s just the flu. People should be quarantined for two days and come back after a few days.

These people include men, women, old and young. The reason given is that the government will arrange a place to live for a period of time. Doctors and nurses will check their bodies every day, but they just cannot move around.

About why her good buddy Lin Tong also appeared among the temporarily isolated crowd.

The reason is that the "influenza" that has not been named has been mentioned in the citizen radio that has been going on for many days.

And, he just went to his mother and stepfather's house during the Spring Festival, which is the neighboring city Z City.

"Hey, Shengsheng, let me tell you quietly, didn't I go to my mother and stepfather's house for a few days during the Chinese New Year, and then came back early, they don't know why there is no one on the street during the Chinese New Year. Not lively, very strange."

"Why is there no one? Don't they go out to play?"

"Yeah, I wondered too. Why didn't everyone come out to play during the Chinese New Year? Then I asked my mother, isn't my mother a nurse? During that time, she stayed in the hospital every day and didn't go home all day, and didn't get along with her. I ate together, and one time I worked overtime until very late, and when she entered the yard, she suddenly coughed and fell to the ground, with blood dripping from a sterile cotton ball in her nose."

"..."

"My mother and I were not very close since we were young. She abandoned my father and remarried me for so many years. I have seen her a few times, but I was scared to death seeing her like that, but my mother insisted on telling me that she It's just that I was tired from work and accidentally caught a cold, and then every two days, they rushed me back to my grandma."

"..."

Xiao Liangsheng actually still had doubts about the strange news about the neighboring city that Lin Tong had heard by chance before.

Later, when Lin Tong was quarantined, the two of them had no chance to see each other again.

But through Jin Ping's mouth, Xiao Liangsheng still learned that Lin Tong was fine at the moment, his grandma had brought him meals several times, this kid was alive and kicking,

But in the cognition of an ordinary teenager, coughing to the ground, and the 'flu' storm that has been quietly spreading in the city for the past few days, it doesn't feel very good.

Even though everyone didn't take it seriously at the moment, this fearful and abnormal atmosphere still made Xiao Liangsheng vaguely uneasy like some kind of small crack gradually expanding under the frozen lake.

But now, firstly, Jin Ping doesn't allow him to go out and walk around casually, so that he can neither go to school nor go to Teacher Peng's house to make up lessons, and secondly, his brother has not come home for the time being.

Therefore, after Xiao Liangsheng thought about it, he had no other choice, but he could only use his time without daring to delay his study progress, and on the other hand, he quietly paid attention to these broadcasts outside.

He has recorded the increase in the number of quarantined patients from the public broadcasting every day as the epidemic prevention station changes.

Probably because of his sensitivity to numbers, Xiao Liangsheng, who had nothing else to do at home except do math problems, made a table to calculate the growth trend of the number of patients in the surrounding districts.

Because he was in a health class before, he heard from the teacher that the level of infectious diseases can actually be divided by the density of the area. Once a disease reaches a dangerous value, it means that a disaster is about to break out.

Xiao Liangsheng, who was still young at the moment, did not expect that his mathematical calculation, which was completely out of coincidence, would save the lives of several innocent people, including his close relatives, on the brink of the next huge disease storm.

But at this moment, the young child just picked up the pen in his hand again, and wrote down such a sentence word by word on the radio through the barred window.

【Woke up this morning, my brother still hasn't come home. 】

[The broadcast said that there seem to be more people who are sick and coughing recently, but I have not actually seen such people on the road. 】

[Aunt Jin Ping said that the prices of all vegetables and pork in the market have suddenly increased in the past two days, and everyone has started to buy vegetables at prices that they don’t care about. 】

【This day is the 26th. I don't know what will happen next, but I hope my brother will go home early, and Uncle Cao and Lin Tong can also return home safely. 】

【——Liang Sheng】