Chapter 24 — The Province Is Not Enough
By the summer of 1999, Li Ming's Italian restaurant chain had planted its flag in every major city of the province.
From the port city in the east to the mountainous towns in the west, the red-and-gold signage was as familiar as the old tea shops.
The numbers were beautiful.
Too beautiful.
Every month, the accountants brought him reports that glowed green with profit.
Li Ming frowned at them as if they were bad test results.
"This is not sustainable," he muttered. "At this rate, I'll be a rich man forever."
The Announcement
At the quarterly management meeting, Li Ming cleared his throat.
"We've done well," he said. "Too well. So I've decided we're going to… compete with ourselves."
The room went silent.
"Starting next year, we'll launch a Western-style burger chain," he continued. "Bigger menus, imported grills, custom bread, premium beef patties. And we're not renting locations — we're buying them."
Gasps broke out.
Buying property in the city centers? At above-market rates?
It sounded insane.
Li Ming smiled. "If you're going to lose money, you might as well lose it in style."
The Land Grab
Within weeks, real estate agents across the province were stunned by a new buyer's appetite.
Old tea house on the main street? Bought.
A run-down corner shop with leaking roof? Bought.
Even a half-finished building whose developer had gone bankrupt? Bought.
Li Ming's instructions were clear:
"Pay ten percent above whatever the last offer was. We don't negotiate. We accelerate."
To the public, it looked like a bold business expansion.
To Li Ming, it was a carefully engineered money pit.
Closing the Loop
The burger chain would share cold storage, cheese production, and bread factories with the Italian chain — at least on paper.
In reality, Li Ming was already planning "unnecessary upgrades" to each facility, just to burn cash:
New imported refrigeration systems for warehouses.
A bread factory extension with a glass viewing gallery "for tourists."
An experimental cheese-aging room with climate control "just in case."
A Dangerous Thought
Late one night, Li Ming was flipping through property deeds when the thought struck him:
If the burger chain's suppliers also fed the Italian chain, he could shuffle costs around until the burger brand looked like a bottomless loss.
It was perfect.
Too perfect.
He chuckled to himself. "What could possibly go right?"