Homo Sapiens

After lunch, Lai Shengli parted ways with Ahaxi and the others.

Besides their dedicated office at the commodity trading center, Zhongliang had also leased a 15-story office building in Yangon. The bottom seven floors were for offices, while the top eight floors were employee dormitories.

Usually, Lai Shengli would switch shifts with the other deputy manager every afternoon. The other manager would go hold down the fort at the commodity trading center, while he returned to the branch office to work.

Many multinational corporations looking to save costs wouldn’t even rent an office building, opting instead to use their dedicated office at the commodity trading center as their base of operations.

After a busy day at the office, Lai Shengli glanced at his watch and saw it was already 5:40 in the evening.

After giving his assistant some instructions, he went straight up to his dorm on the 15th floor. His wife, Wang Lizhu, and daughter, Lai Xiaoni, who had come all the way from home to see him, had also been resting all day.

Lai Shengli changed into a short-sleeved casual outfit, then asked his wife, who was watching TV, ”Want to go for a walk around Yangon?”

Wang Lizhu turned to her daughter. ”Xiaoni, do you want to go shopping?”

Lai Xiaoni, who had just returned this year from studying in Kangaroo Country, tapped away at her laptop with a look of indifference. ”I don’t care. You guys decide.”

Lai Shengli made the decision. ”Then let’s go take a look. Xiaoni, you can also observe Yangon. It might be helpful for your future in finance.”

”I really don’t think there’s anything worth observing in Yangon.” Lai Xiaoni closed her laptop and shrugged contemptuously.

As a master’s graduate in finance, Lai Xiaoni had actually researched Hongsawaddy’s financial system and regulations online before coming to Yangon.

After seeing that Hongsawaddy was implementing a limited gold standard monetary policy, she knew the place had a worrying future.

The gold standard sounds great, but the problem is that gold production is finite, and its industrial value isn’t irreplaceable.

If Hongsawaddy doesn’t abandon the gold standard in the future, the ceiling for its currency issuance would be, at most, two to three times its gold reserves.

This would lead to currency scarcity, which in turn would trigger deflation and hinder economic development.

Of course, Lai Xiaoni also understood Hongsawaddy’s intent. By pegging the currency to gold and superior goods, they could indeed make the Jin yuan very strong, as long as convertibility was guaranteed.

Unfortunately, this model had long become obsolete with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system.

Gold, after all, is finite.

Lai Shengli wasn’t thinking that deeply. He simply handed his wife and daughter several thousand Jin yuan in cash. ”Everything is great here, it’s just a bit of a hassle that you can’t directly exchange for Jin yuan. The company only gives me a spending allowance of 50,000 Jin yuan per month.”

”Dad, do you think they’re idiots? If they allowed direct exchange of foreign currency for Jin yuan, other countries would drain Hongsawaddy’s hundreds of tons of gold in less than a day.” Lai Xiaoni rolled her eyes.

Lai Shengli shook his head with a smile as he closed the door. ”Of course I know that. It’s just that the restrictions are so tight. You have to pinch pennies for every little thing you want to buy.”

They went downstairs.

The sun was setting over Yangon City, casting a golden glow from its last rays across the streets.

The street where the Zhongliang Group office building was located was lined with office buildings of all sizes.

The three of them didn’t take a car, however, choosing instead to stroll in the evening breeze.

As they walked, they found themselves at the intersection of another street.

At the intersection was a large supermarket.

Lai Shengli glanced at the sign and knew instantly that it was a subsidiary of the United Group.

His wife, Wang Lizhu, who loved to browse supermarkets, pulled the father and daughter into the United Supermarket. The moment they stepped inside, a blast of cold air made them break out in goosebumps.

Lai Shengli pushed a shopping cart while Wang Lizhu picked out groceries.

Feeling a little bored, Lai Xiaoni casually picked up a bag of freeze-dried jackfruit. Net weight: one kilogram. Price: 0.5 Jin yuan.

She looked at the other fruits on the shelf.

Seedless durian flesh, one bag (1 kg): 4.5 yuan...

Black Diamond wax apple, one bag (1 kg): 1.5 yuan...

Bananas, one bag (2 kg): 2.3 yuan...

Concubine’s Smile lychee, one bag (1 kg): 2.2 yuan...

The prices astonished Lai Xiaoni. She mentally converted the exchange rate and realized they were incredibly cheap.

”Dad, what’s the median salary in Hongsawaddy?”

Pushing the cart, Lai Shengli paused for a moment. ”Uh... about 3,000 Jin yuan a month, I think.”

”3,000?” Lai Xiaoni quickly moved past the tropical fruit section and into the vegetable aisle.

A quick scan showed that the vegetable prices were also low.

Per kilogram: carrots 0.7 yuan, tomatoes 0.6 yuan, mini cucumbers 0.8 yuan, yellow onions 0.8 yuan, cream cabbage 1 yuan, large cabbage 0.6 yuan, daikon radish 0.6 yuan, luffa 0.9 yuan, water spinach 0.6 yuan...

Then she went to the meat section.

Again, per kilogram: chicken breast 7.2 yuan, chicken legs 8.1 yuan, pork belly 16.6 yuan, pork leg 15.5 yuan, boneless pork ribs 17.5 yuan, pork loin 16.2 yuan, leg of lamb 22 yuan, beef ribeye 38.4 yuan, beef brisket 32.6 yuan, beef short ribs 42 yuan...

”These prices are really cheap!”

Lai Shengli shook his head. ”You get a 25% discount if you use a United Group employee card, and they have big sales on holidays, too.”

”United Group? The one that’s one of Hongsawaddy’s three major conglomerates? If other people can use the employee card to shop, isn’t that a loophole?” Lai Xiaoni instantly spotted the problem.

But Lai Shengli just smiled and explained, ”They intentionally let the employee cards circulate widely. Even with the 25% discount, the three major groups still turn a profit.”

Lai Xiaoni sucked in a sharp breath.

’These prices are just too low.’

”Hongsawaddy has a large population, right?”

”It’s around 57 million right now.” Lai Shengli replied as he picked up a large, two-kilogram pack of boneless beef ribs and put it in his cart.

”That’s almost twice the population of Kangaroo Country. How do they maintain such a massive food supply?”

Lai Shengli shrugged. ”Not only are they self-sufficient, but they also export in massive quantities. In the first two quarters of this year, our country imported 23.25 million tons of coarse feed and 2.8 million tons of rice from Hongsawaddy.”

”...” Lai Xiaoni was stunned.

Her previous impression of Hongsawaddy had been of a backward, chaotic region. Even if things had changed in recent years, the transformation shouldn’t have been this dramatic.

What was she seeing now?

A ”quasi-developed region” with an extremely comprehensive welfare system and incredibly low prices?

If you calculated based on the purchasing power of the currency for food, with Hongsawaddy’s median income at 3,000 a month, then Hongsawaddy had basically already reached the standard of a developed region.

After all, in a developed country like Germany, the median after-tax income for an ordinary person is just over two thousand euros a month, and the prices there are comparable.

Lai Shengli himself had a hard time believing it at first. It was only after living in Yangon for over half a year that he gradually figured out the key:

”There’s no point being envious. After all, Hongsawaddy’s natural conditions are just too favorable for agriculture.”

In truth, Lai Shengli left something unsaid. The key to how Hongsawaddy had been able to rapidly raise its median resident income wasn’t just its agricultural potential, but the pervasive business models of the three major groups.

”Suddenly, I’m a little interested in this place.” A sharp glint of someone seeking the truth appeared in Lai Xiaoni’s eyes.

Meanwhile, her mom, Wang Lizhu, was struggling with choice paralysis, overwhelmed by the cheap produce on the shelves.

Just from browsing the supermarket, the three of them had spent over an hour.