Chapter 3

Li Xuan walked to his desk, turned on the Apple computer and the printer. After a few minutes, the Apple II on the desk had booted up. Li Xuan took a cassette tape from the drawer and inserted it into the tape drive connected to the computer. Yes, it was not a floppy disk or a CD, but a cassette tape.

This computer was the only one in Hengtai Company. Before he came to work, the computer had been gathering dust in a corner for a long time. Although Apple's latest release, the Apple II-Plus, had added a floppy disk drive, the Apple II he was using had apparently been bought a year ago and did not come with a floppy drive.

Li Xuan sat in front of the computer and started entering various command codes. The printer, which had already been connected, began to work under the computer's control, the print head making a clicking sound as it moved across the paper.

Soon, a five-page Chinese translation of the VAX-780 computer user manual was printed out. Li Xuan handed the printed document to his boss.

Huo Junming took the document and scanned it, nodding slightly. Then he quickly and carefully read through the entire content. Although a few characters in the blank spaces were not printed, the overall effect was quite good, with clear characters and a clean page.

"How did you manage to fix it?" Huo Junming couldn't help but be impressed by this young man he had hired on a whim. A problem that even professional repairmen couldn't solve had been quietly resolved by him.

"The repairman you hired last time said that the printer has a Japanese character card inside, which causes incompatibility when printing Chinese characters, resulting in garbled text!

But I thought about it carefully. Japanese characters are derived from Chinese characters, and the two character sets are largely the same. So, I thought, could we find a workaround by redesigning a driver to make the computer control the Japanese character card in the printer to print Chinese characters? I've been studying this problem during my free time, and yesterday I finally completed the new driver. I tried it, and it worked!"

"Young people are truly impressive, Ah Xuan. You did a great job!" Huo Junming laughed heartily, very pleased.

"Boss, I actually have another idea!" Li Xuan looked at his boss and said seriously.

"Oh?" Huo Junming noticed the different look in Li Xuan's eyes. "Let's go to my office to talk, so as not to disturb the other employees!"

Li Xuan followed his boss into the manager's office. As soon as the door closed, the employees who had been pretending to work diligently began to whisper to each other.

"The boss is too nice to Vincent. I've never seen him be so kind to me!" Another salesperson, who had been hired around the same time as Li Xuan, said with a hint of resentment.

"Ah Yor, if you could close a million-dollar deal in a month like Ah Xuan, the boss would be kind to you too! You didn't even have the courage to take the college entrance exam, while Vincent got three A's and two B's. That's the difference! You, a full-time employee, earn only a thousand, which is less than what Vincent earned as a summer intern. If you don't work hard, you have no right to complain!"

Li Wenjin, who was sitting next to Ah Yor, glanced at him with a sneer. He was the Ah Jin mentioned by the boss earlier. He frowned, as he was responsible for mentoring the new hire, Ah Yor. He himself was not very proactive in his work and often complained.

Li Xuan's starting salary was 1,200, and he had received a 300 bonus last month, which was nearly half more than Ah Yor's. This was one of the reasons for Ah Yor's dissatisfaction. But the boss didn't hire him to do charity; if he didn't perform and slacked off, his salary would naturally be lower.

Li Xuan was unaware of the gossip among his colleagues. He was in the boss's office, negotiating.

"Boss, when I was writing the driver for this Epson printer, I learned some information. The dot matrix printer you bought is a new product recently launched by Epson, which is selling very well in Japan and North America.

This printer uses dot matrix technology, which is cheaper to manufacture and has lower printing costs than mainstream printers on the market. However, I found out that Epson has not yet launched this printer in the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets.

I speculate that because it is selling so well in Japan and the U.S., Epson is focusing most of its efforts on capturing those two major markets and has not yet had the time to develop the Asian market. After all, just like the problem with our company's printer, Epson's new product must first develop a compatible Chinese character card to enter the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets."

"Chinese character card?" Huo Junming was not very familiar with these technical details. "Didn't you already solve the problem by rewriting the driver?"

"Boss, look, these blank characters are the flaws left by my workaround. The Japanese character card and the Chinese character card have differences in their character sets. To achieve perfect printing, a dedicated Chinese character card must be developed!" Li Xuan said with certainty.

"But what does this have to do with me?" Huo Junming suddenly fixed his sharp gaze on Li Xuan's eyes.

Li Xuan was not intimidated by his boss's sudden change in demeanor. He met his gaze without flinching and said calmly, "I don't know if you see this as an opportunity. If I can design a Chinese character card for you within a month, would you have the courage to negotiate the exclusive distribution rights for this printer in Hong Kong and Taiwan with Epson?"

"You want to collaborate with me?" Huo Junming suddenly laughed, his eyes filled with a deeper meaning.

"I'm just a temporary worker earning a little over a thousand a month. How can I have the capital to talk about collaboration with you, Boss!" Li Xuan said humbly, but with a hint of confidence. "I just hope that when you make big profits, I can follow behind and get a taste of the benefits!"

"Tell me, how do you plan to get your share?" Huo Junming said with interest, his eyes full of curiosity.

"Flat rate, 100,000 Hong Kong dollars! After I design it, the patent rights for the character card will be fully transferred to Hengtai Company!" Li Xuan calmly stated his price.

"That's not a low price. With that money, I could hire a professor from the University of Hong Kong to help me!" Huo Junming said without committing.

"Boss, a knowledgeable professor wouldn't charge less than me. With the exclusive distribution rights, you can earn at least a thousand per printer. 100,000 dollars is just the profit from 100 printers. Given the price of this Epson printer, once the Chinese character printing issue is resolved, even if you can't dominate the market, capturing a significant share is easy. 100 printers are at most a month's sales in the Hong Kong market. My price is not high at all!" Li Xuan said confidently.

"Alright, it's a deal!" A glint of determination flashed in Huo Junming's eyes as he suddenly slapped the table and said.

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