Chapter Thirty-Two: Time to Retire!

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On May 10, Lin Jianlu moved house.

He had not bought the place. Instead, he rented an apartment in a work-unit compound not far from Nanluoguxiang. It was fifty-eight square meters, with two bedrooms and a living room, and cost 240 yuan a month. Water and electricity were included, and there was no property-management fee.

It took about fifteen minutes to ride his bicycle home.

His father and mother both came over to take a look. They did not say much. The family’s old place really was too small, and their son had grown up. Since they were no longer short of a few hundred yuan, they might as well let him rent a place. It was much cheaper than buying.

It would make him more comfortable. In fact, the extra space made life easier for the couple as well, and it did not stop him from coming home for meals.

As for asking them to move in with him, that was out of the question.

“Are you crazy? Our two rooms add up to barely thirty square meters, and we only pay the neighborhood office twelve and a half yuan a month in rent. Where are we going to find another place that cheap? Your father and I have to hold on to this nest! Besides, now that you’ve moved out, your father and I have plenty of room to ourselves!”

He called Zhao Hou’er and the others over, and the brothers gathered around for a housewarming hotpot. With a new bed, new blankets, and new cotton quilts, he had officially established a little home of his own.

He did not have much cash on hand for the moment. Taking value for money and future appreciation into consideration, he still planned to buy a small courtyard house. He was continuing to ask around and had looked at several places, but none had satisfied him. They were either too expensive or too dilapidated.

Then, all at once, good news arrived.

Rock Records was going to pay him.

The company had decided to settle the royalties on the first five hundred thousand records sold in Taiwan. Naturally, they would calculate his share according to the maximum fifteen percent stipulated in the original contract.

It was an absolute windfall.

He would receive 13.5 million New Taiwan dollars before tax, equivalent to a little over 430,000 US dollars.

When he had signed the record contract, Lin Jianlu had not had a management contract at all, so he did not need to split this money with his two managers. That had been agreed upon when he signed with them: they would only receive a share after Lin Jianlu signed another contract.

In fact, Lin Jianlu had earned around 110,000 US dollars from the commercial appearances he had done previously. Ge Fuhong had at least received a share of roughly ten thousand dollars, while Zhang Aijia had yet to earn a single cent from his management contract. At most, under their agreement, Ge Fuhong would give her thirty percent of her own share.

Rock Records was considerate enough to ask whether he wanted them to open a Taiwan-dollar account for him, or transfer the money into his HSBC account in Hong Kong. Should they remit New Taiwan dollars, Hong Kong dollars, or US dollars? Since he had not hired a professional accountant, it did not seem appropriate for the money to pass through his managers. Would he like the company to devise a tax-reporting plan for him?

Lin Jianlu did not particularly care, but after thinking it over, he called Zhang Aijia.

They had already agreed that Zhang Aijia would take the lead on matters concerning Taiwan.

Even if she and Ge Fuhong were not getting a cut of this money, they still had work to do.

As expected, Zhang Aijia had no objections. Her management company had long-standing partnerships with accountants. The money could be transferred directly into his HSBC account, with a copy of the receipt sent to her management company. When tax season arrived, the company would prepare a professional tax plan for Lin Jianlu, and he could settle the taxes then.

So he followed her instructions.

He touched his pocket and did a quick calculation. Once this money arrived, apart from the small amount of yuan he had exchanged and withdrawn earlier but barely spent, his HSBC account would soon contain 530,000 US dollars.

More than four million yuan!

And this was obviously only the beginning.

Which meant he had already achieved financial freedom.

So, gritting his teeth and stamping his foot, he turned around and contacted one of the property brokers whose listings he had seen before.

He bought a house.

The property was somewhat old. It was an old Republican-era residence, and houses from that period were rarely anything else. But it did not leak or threaten to collapse. With some serious money spent on repairs, it could still be an excellent home.

It stood on Lishi Hutong. One kilometer east lay the East Second Ring Road and Chaoyangmen Bridge; three hundred meters south were Dengshikou Avenue and Jinyu Hutong. The straight-line distance to the Forbidden City was less than two kilometers.

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From the roof, one could probably see the corner towers of the Forbidden City.

The courtyard occupied a little over one thousand square meters, roughly one and six-tenths of a Chinese acre. It was 23.5 meters wide from east to west and 45.6 meters long from north to south. It was built as a three-courtyard residence, with thirty-six rooms in total, including the main gate. The property deed registered 581 square meters of floor space.

The house had been unoccupied for years and did indeed look old. The asking price for the whole property was 2.58 million yuan, or approximately 4,440 yuan per square meter of interior space. The covered walkways did not count as interior space.

There was also a fortunate little twist. If he paid in cash US dollars, the seller was willing to accept 280,000 dollars. After doing the math, Lin Jianlu would save a little over 200,000 yuan in the conversion.

There was no need to ask. The seller was clearly desperate to leave the country.

The property was about 3.5 kilometers from Nanluoguxiang, barely more than ten minutes by bicycle. But Lin Jianlu had no intention of telling his parents just yet. He himself could not move in immediately either. Through a chain of personal connections, he found craftsmen who specialized in restoring old residences. He planned to invest a substantial sum, slowly put the house back in order, and then surprise his parents.

The gas lines had to be installed, the drainage repaired, and the entire roof replaced.

Underfloor heating was essential as well. Even if he had to build a boiler room in the courtyard and fire it himself, he absolutely had to have it.

He busied himself, drifting along at an unhurried pace.

After several days of being both busy and idle, the master builder recommended to him had inspected the entire property and taken measurements. After a long and careful discussion, they worked out the cost.

According to Lin Jianlu’s requirements, the renovation would include the roof, walls, beams and columns, drainage, underfloor heating, flooring, lighting, kitchen fixtures, central air-conditioning, and the complete replacement of the doors and windows. It would also include custom-built Ming-style Suzhou-made rosewood furniture, as well as modern toilets and bathtubs.

His standards were high, but not extravagant.

The complete renovation, labor and materials included, would cost 650,000 yuan and take six months.

He did not bargain. After signing the contract, he paid a 250,000-yuan advance.

If life continued on this course, Lin Jianlu sometimes felt as though he had already withdrawn from the world.

He was like a bandit-king in his twilight years, carrying all the wealth he had accumulated in a lifetime back to the countryside, buying several hundred acres of land and building himself a grand estate. He would follow the example of an old landlord, take one principal wife and one concubine, and from then on wash his hands of the jianghu and retire among the trees.

Every so often, he would drop by the New Dadu Hotel and sit for a while, chat with Old Xue, and hear a few stories from the jianghu. They sounded increasingly distant.

He also accompanied Old Zhang while listening to submissions of wildly varying quality. Occasionally, a few singers would come in person to submit their work. If they were polite and not unbearably arrogant, he would offer them a few words of encouragement and perhaps sign an autograph for them.

He radiated the air of a thoroughly retired man.

This continued until Su Huilun suddenly called him one day.

“Brother Lu, my new album sold more than seventy thousand copies in its first week! Everyone says I have a chance of breaking one hundred thousand in the second week! I have to thank you for writing such beautiful lyrics for me! The fans all love the title track, ‘Lemon Tree’! Everyone in Taiwan is praising your lyrics!”

“Mm, you’re welcome. Don’t worry. Even if you don’t sell a hundred thousand, Old Duan will still publicize it that way.”

“Hahaha, you’re awful! Why would you say that? I’ll definitely sell more than that! I want to do it myself!”

“Fine, fine, fine! Confidence is good. Anything else?”

“I’m a person who keeps my promises, you know! I still owe you a kiss… But you have to come and collect it soon! If I fall in love with someone, the offer is canceled. Don’t blame me for breaking my promise!”

Only then did Lin Jianlu suddenly remember.

Oh. Su Huilun still owed him a kiss.

And yet that was only the beginning.

It seemed that, all at once, every imaginable phone call began coming in.

Zhang Aijia asked when he would return to Taiwan. Ge Fuhong asked when he would return to Hong Kong.

Lin Qingxia asked why he had not been seen lately and whether he wanted to go drinking together.

Liang Yongqi said the company had decided to start having her record songs, but Sister Ge had also found her a film called Feel 100%, starring Zheng Yijian and Zheng Xiuwen. She would play the second female lead.

The producers had come under criticism throughout Hong Kong after two consecutive Young and Dangerous films, so they had hurriedly pushed forward this warm, comic-book-style romantic film to correct their market positioning. Sister Ge had recommended Liang Yongqi, and the producers liked her pure appearance and her recent popularity. They had more or less decided to use her.

Guan Zhilin said they had agreed to go out for tea together. Where was he?

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Chen Shuhua said, “I heard you’ve hidden yourself away in the mainland. You promised to write songs for me! Three will do! Don’t hide from me!”

Lin Xilei said, “Brother Lu, I want to go to the capital and find you! I have nothing to do every day and no idea what I should be doing, or what I can do. Being unemployed is so frustrating. I really want a job where I can work like a beast of burden!”

Oh, never mind them.

On May 21, the Grain Full solar term arrived, finally giving him an excuse to eat a proper meal.

He claimed that he had been too busy on the Beginning of Summer and had missed the traditional Beginning of Summer noodles, then invited several brothers over for dinner. He went out early in the morning to buy groceries, came home, and began preparing all the ingredients. After kneading the dough and leaving it to rest, he slowly fried the bean sauce over a low flame.

People in the capital were extraordinarily particular about fried-sauce noodles.

But Lin Jianlu was now a retired old cadre, a former bandit who had washed his hands of the trade, and a little landlord with fields of his own. He had no shortage of this kind of useless free time, so he took his time fussing over the meal.

Before noon, however, Zhang Yang called him of his own accord and then hurried over to freeload on the noodles.

He clearly had an ulterior motive. He ate the noodles—quite a lot of them, too—then wiped his mouth and began complaining about how poor he was.

“Ah, Lu, you know how things are now. Why is it so difficult to make a film? The market is terrible; nothing makes money at the box office. The studio doesn’t have any money either, and it can’t allocate funds. If you chase them for payment, they’ll practically hang themselves in front of you!”

In short, the answer was always that there was no money.

They could not squeeze out a penny. Not a single penny.

Heh. It was a joke, of course. Lin Jianlu was certainly not short of money anymore. But if Zhang Yang wanted him to invest in a film, he could forget it. That money was reserved for his retirement.

If the right opportunity arose, Lin Jianlu was considering investing in Sina, NetEase, or Sohu. Failing that, perhaps Baidu, Tencent, or Alibaba.

Besides, he and Zhang Yang had only shared two meals. Their relationship was nowhere near that close.

At last, Zhang Yang revealed his true purpose.

“Come do a cameo for us. It’s only a small role, just two days, and it absolutely won’t interfere with your retirement! You have to understand—once you show up, I can hang out the sign and make it easier to ask the studio for money. You’re a big name!”

This made Lin Jianlu hesitate. They had shared drinks and passed cups around at banquets before. If it was only this small a favor, refusing did seem a little unreasonable.

He asked what kind of film it was.

Zhang Yang immediately grew excited. He stopped picking his teeth, grabbed his leather briefcase, and pulled out several documents.

The film was called Spicy Love Soup, an urban romance produced by Xi’an Film Studio. Zhang Yang was directing it and responsible for assembling the cast and crew. The preliminary preparations and personnel were more or less in place already—but that was not important.

Then he turned to the cast list, and Lin Jianlu’s eyes widened.

The third female lead was Gao Yuanyuan.

***

I am very happy. I have basically read all the book reviews and chapter comments everyone has posted. Thank you all for enthusiastically acknowledging my post-2000s identity. This fully proves that, in the eyes of the people, I am still regarded as a very innocent young man.

Thank you, everyone.

This innocent young man is currently struggling to make a living, diligently typing away day after day. He needs a few monthly votes now to raise his ranking and earn a little more money to buy instant noodles. Brothers and sisters, could you please support him with some monthly votes?

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