A foreign city, dear you

After laughing, Ye Lian suddenly remembered the joke Cao Xueqin had told her when he was at Shunda Factory, and asked him, "You said you were a college student, but how come you didn't know the word for ink is 'ink' when you were at Shunda Factory? You even said 'water', and the Korean customer was completely confused by you, haha."

Cao Xueqian couldn't help laughing: "The past is hard to look back on, but I have been moving forward. 'Ink' is no longer important. What's important is that I am 'perfect' now."

"You are narcissistic again, how come you are perfect?"

"I can knead dough, ferment dough, roll dough, and cut dough. I can make dumplings, wontons, steamed buns, and rolls. Isn't that perfect?" Cao Xueqin sounded like he was performing a crosstalk.

Ye Lian laughed and asked, "You've already said everything, why don't you talk about Baozi?"

"I dare not. I'm afraid of being beaten. I'm afraid of taking away my wife's credit. Only my wife can make the buns. My wife is more perfect." Cao Xueqin was afraid, but he took the opportunity to flatter her.

Ye Lian felt very comfortable and amused at the same time.

Cao Xueqin began to knead another piece of dough into long strips. Ye Lian made another bun, and seeing that Cao Xueqin was busy, she put the bun on the steamer herself.

When Cao Xueqin saw this, he took out his free hands and picked up the bun that Ye Lian had just placed and rearranged it.

Ye Lian was puzzled and asked him, "Why do you always rearrange the buns I put in place? Am I not doing it right? I think there is no difference between my arrangement and yours, and the distance between them and the buns next to them is about the same."

Cao Xueqin looked serious and didn't smile. He "questioned" Ye Lian: "Is this a question of whether it is a good arrangement or not? This is a question of power. This is my power. This is the only power I have."

Haha, poor guy.

Cao Xueqin didn't laugh, but Ye Lian laughed so hard that her stomach hurt.

Ye Lian picked up a piece of bun skin at random, but Cao Xueqin asked her to take another one.

"Why do you want me to take a piece?" Ye Lian asked, "Isn't it the same no matter which piece I take?"

Cao Xueqian sighed softly: "Why can't you understand? What I care about is which piece of bun skin you take? What I care about is this little bit of power."

"Haha," Ye Lian laughed again, "You have quite a lot of power."

Cao Xueqian finally laughed out loud, put his thumb on the tip of his index finger, and said jokingly: "Just a little bit, it's just a little bit, so it's very precious."

……

As we chatted and laughed, the bun skins were almost used up and there was not much bun filling left.

At this moment, Ye Lian's cell phone suddenly rang.

Ye Lian checked her phone and saw Uncle Lu, the administrator of the Yuntao Daxia Management Office.

Ye Lian was delighted, wiped her hands quickly, picked up the phone, and thought, this time, it will be good news, right?

Ye Lian had bought the house in Yuntao Building more than two years ago. After Cao Xueqin hired someone to renovate it, he rented it out.

When Ye Lian bought the four-bedroom apartment, she was worried that it would be difficult to rent out, and that turned out to be exactly what happened.

The three-bedroom apartment was rented out very quickly, but the four-bedroom apartment took more than a month to be rented out, and Ye Lian didn't dare to raise the rent too high for fear that the customer would run away.

It wasn't just a family that rented that four-bedroom apartment.

For a family, the most popular house to rent is a two-bedroom or a three-bedroom house. A four-bedroom house is too big and unnecessary, or the rent is not cost-effective.

The four-bedroom apartment owned by Ye Lian was rented by a company as a dormitory for its employees.

Renting a house to a company has both good and bad aspects.

The good thing is: the company’s employees don’t cook in the dormitory, so there is less smoke in the house.

The bad ones are:

If the management is not good, the hygiene will not be good. There will be a situation where "one monk carries water to eat, two monks carry water to eat, and three monks have no water to eat". Employees push each other and no one will do hygiene, especially public hygiene.

Another bad thing is that they are not proactive or timely in paying the rent.

Every month, Ye Lian would call to urge them to pay. Sometimes, when she did, they would say they needed to contact the finance department, as the finance department had not given them the money yet.

Ye Lian has four houses for rent. The rent for the other three is paid before the 5th of every month, but the rent for this four-bedroom house is always delayed, sometimes until the 10th, and sometimes even after the 15th.

Although they were a little dissatisfied, they still paid the rent every month, so Ye Lian continued to let that company rent the house. Moreover, she did not dare to increase the rent for fear that they would move out.

In recent years, the rent has changed every year, and Ye Lian would also adjust the rent upwards according to the market conditions, but for this four-bedroom house, the rent increase is the smallest in proportion each time.

Maybe they felt the rent was more affordable, so the company rented the place until November last year. At the end of November, they canceled the rent, saying that their company was moving.

When Ye Lian took back the house, she found that the hygiene was indeed very poor. Ye Lian even hired a cleaner to clean the house thoroughly.

After cleaning the house, Ye Lian gave the key to Uncle Lu at the Yuntao Daxia Management Office and asked him to help rent it out.

Uncle Lu was of course happy about it, because he could get commissions from both ends by renting out a house. He basically took charge of both the rental and sale of Yuntao Building (but there were very few sales). At the end of the year, the commission alone was considerable.

But Uncle Lu said at the time that it was almost the New Year and it might not be easy to rent it out, and your house has four bedrooms.

Ye Lian said, it’s okay, just let it be, if you can rent it out then rent it out, if you can’t then let’s wait and see after the New Year.

We waited until after the Chinese New Year, and even after such a long time, there was still no suitable tenant.

Ye Lian had been waiting for the news that Uncle Lu's house had been rented out, and sometimes she couldn't help but call Uncle Lu to ask.

Uncle Lu said that some people came to see the house, but they all thought it was too big and the rent was not worth it.

Ye Lian had no choice but to continue waiting.

Anyway, her rent is already very favorable for a four-bedroom apartment, and there is no way she can lower it to the same level as a three-bedroom apartment.

Now, Uncle Lu suddenly called and asked if the house had been rented out or if there was a tenant who liked it.

Ye Lian answered the phone: "Hello, Uncle Lu."

"Boss Ye," Uncle Lu's voice came over, "There is a tenant looking at the house here. He wants to know if the rent can be reduced by 200 yuan. He also wants to know if he can get a bed and a wardrobe?"

"Two hundred less, and it comes with a bed and a wardrobe? This is the price of renting out a vacant room."

"He said he used to rent a three-bedroom apartment and had his own furniture, but if he wanted to rent a four-bedroom apartment, he would need a bed and a wardrobe, so he asked if you could provide them?"

"The rent is already the lowest, and I don't have a bed or wardrobe. If it works, then it works. If not, then forget it."

……

Ye Lian hung up the phone, feeling a little disappointed.

Ye Lian started making dumplings again, muttering, "It's already a vacant room, and they want me to lower the rent and add a bed and wardrobe. How can it be that good?"

Cao Xueqian already knew what was going on from Ye Lian's phone call. He said, "Looking at his request, he doesn't really want to rent a house. He just wants to try his luck and test the landlord's bottom line."

"Yeah, then we won't rent it and keep waiting. I don't believe we won't be able to rent it out."

"Four-bedroom apartments are hard to rent, unless they are for a large family or a company."

"Yeah. It's a pity that the house, with four bedrooms, is so big, so new, and has a master bathroom and a master balcony, is less than 2800. The house we are renting now has two bedrooms, is so small and old, and is also vacant, but it is 4300."

"That's different. This is a school district house, and it's a regular commercial house."

“I know, but for tenants, what difference does the home make if they don’t have special needs?”

"We are not discussing this now, this is not the key point. The main point is that four-bedroom houses are not easy to rent. If it is a four-bedroom house, others will definitely think it is too expensive and there is no need to rent such a large house. If it is a three-bedroom house, we certainly don't want to rent it either."

"There's nothing we can do about it. We can only wait. People who have two or three children, or who live with their children and parents, need a big house like this."

"In a place like Yancheng, such a big family is hard to come by."

"Then what should we do? Tear down the house?" Ye Lian smiled.

"There are two options. One is to wait and see. The other is that we can consider converting it into two apartments. This way it will be easier to rent out, and the rent will be higher."

Ye Lian was stunned for a moment and said, "Change it into two suites? Wouldn't that make it a room within a room?"