November 9th, 2023
Day 2
Today is the day we attend the marble show as VIPs! Yes, Jinsha provided us with VIP passes to the marble show. That means we don’t get frisked by security and we don’t need to buy tickets in order to get in.
To be completely honest with you, there is nothing new at the show that I haven’t seen before. We just gathered some information before heading out to another store in town for our resupply run.
After resupplying, we went out for lunch! I am using exclamation mark because I think eating food is very exciting, but I digress.
Restaurant Name: 灌口姜母鸭 (水头店) (guàn kǒu jiāng mǔ yā) [Guankou Ginger Female Duck]
Address: 水头厦盛街21号 (水头镇政府正对面) [Shuitou Xiasheng St. #21 (Right Across Shuitou Government)]
The food is called “姜母鸭”, or Ginger Female Duck. It’s not really a stew as most of the soup has evaporated; but it is cooked that way. The main ingredients are ginger, duck, and local soy sauce; but the combination of all of them are very special. The taste of the ginger got blended in the duck completely; and the ginger is edible too.
This restaurant is very focused on serving the ginger duck only. They also have some stew (but the water evaporated too) cabbage and one or two soups, but they are very common so nothing special there.
After lunch, we went on our resupply run again. We were once again invited by Jinsha to dinner. I thought since last time he invited us to a banquet with so many strangers, he wouldn’t do that again. Well, he invited us to a banquet with so many strangers again.
He invited us to a banquet hosted by 山东重工, or Shandong Machinery which primarily sells excavators. It is like a thank you dinner thing, which we all know is just another way to entice people to spend more money. Upon arrival, you have to register with them with your phone number, you will receive a custom tea cup set with Shandong Machinery’s logos printed on them, and you will be entered into a raffle with mystery prizes.
I did not win the prizes, as everything was already decided beforehand. Turns out, the first, second, and third prizes are all maintenance packages offered to a new owner of an excavator that purchased that night. What if the winners of the 1st 2nd and 3rd prizes do not want to buy an excavator you say? Well, that’s how you know the prizes were decided internally already. This is actually a very common tactic in China.
Other than the disappointing and rather ridiculous raffle, Jinsha didn’t sit with us at all. Since he is such an important figure in Shuitou, he was asked to sit at the table in the front, leaving me, our GM, and his mistress at some random table in the back.
Speaking of this mistress, who is the de facto female boss of his entire business empire now, she wanted to set me up with her daughter. I’ve seen pictures, her daughter is indeed extremely beautiful. Our GM is friends with the mistress, so she confirmed that her daughter does look like her pictures. However, our GM told me that her daughter has too high of an EQ, meaning that she is much better than me in her emotional faculties. Didn’t sound like a good match, so I didn’t press forward like I would when I see a pretty girl.
But yeah, that was pretty much it. My parents fly in tonight, and Jinsha sent a driver to pick them up. We met at the hotel, and after me and the GM briefed them of what we have seen during these past two days, we all went to bed, and that concludes the 2nd day.