Chapter 926 Time Flies
After lying in the hospital for a few days, Song Chaoyuan felt much better.
"Come, eat some fruit!" Next to the ward, Lin Yan peeled a banana for Song Yuanchao and handed it to his mouth.
"Banana again?" Song Yuanchao looked at the bananas with some disdain. He had eaten a lot of bananas in the past two days, some bought by Lin Yan, and some given to him by other people who came to visit him.
There are some rules for sending fruit to hospitalized patients. Some fruits can be sent, but some cannot. Especially apples and pears, which are fine for visiting relatives and friends, but not for visiting patients in the hospital.
In Shanghai dialect, "apple" means almost the same as "death from illness", and "pear" means similar to "separation". For the sake of good luck and safety, these two most common fruits are rarely seen in hospitals, so the most popular choice is banana.
"Be good and eat it. The doctor said you should eat more fruits. You are a patient now." Lin Yan said softly to Song Yuanchao. Song Yuanchao could only open his mouth and take a bite of the banana. Although the banana was sweet and delicious, after eating it for several days in a row, Song Yuanchao could not stand it no matter how delicious the banana was.
At this moment, there was a knock on the ward door. Song Yuanchao and Lin Yan looked towards the ward door, and then saw Guo Tao and Du Wenting pushing the door and walking in.
"Brother Guo, Sister Du! Why are you here?" Seeing them, Lin Yan stood up quickly.
"I came to see Yuan Chao. I heard that he was sick and in the hospital." Du Wenting took Lin Yan's hand and blamed her, "You are so stupid. You didn't even tell me about this. The Central Hospital is right across from our unit. If I had known earlier, I would have come here earlier."
"It's not a serious illness, just a cold and fever, you didn't tell me because you didn't want to trouble me." Lin Yan smiled and replied. Du Wenting blamed Lin Yan again, saying that she was treating herself as an outsider. Then she and Guo Tao went forward to look at Song Yuanchao. Seeing that Song Yuanchao had already sat up on the bed, and his face looked no different from that of an ordinary person, she was completely relieved.
"What did the doctor say?" Du Wenting asked.
"He's almost recovered. He can go home after one more day of observation. But the doctor said that this time he was overworked, so he needs to pay attention to rest in the future." Lin Yan glanced at Song Yuanchao lying on the bed, and then said to Du Wenting and the others.
"That's good." Du Wenting patted her chest, looking relieved, and then complained to Song Yuanchao: "I said, you are such a big boss now, but you are still so tired? Is making money more important? Or is your health more important? Look how anxious our Yanzi is. She looks so haggard because of taking care of you. Yuanchao, you can make endless money, but your health is your own!"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes..." Song Chaoyuan humbly accepted the criticism from his old classmate. He had no signs of illness this time. He said he got sick suddenly. Moreover, Lin Yan had been running back and forth between home and hospital to take care of him these past few days. She looked much more haggard. Seeing her like this, Song Chaoyuan felt very guilty.
"Okay, Yuan Chao doesn't want this either. Who would want to get sick? Getting sick is not a good thing, so why bother doing it?" Guo Tao, who was standing aside, couldn't help but interrupt when he saw his wife talking endlessly.
Du Wenting rolled her eyes at Guo Tao, as if complaining about his interrupting. But then Du Wenting stopped criticizing him and asked about the doctor's diagnosis and other things, and then talked about how to take care of yourself on a daily basis. For a while, she and Lin Yan had a very good chat.
While the two women were chatting, Guo Tao sat at the other end of Song Yuanchao's bed and asked Song Chaoyuan how he felt now.
Song Chaoyuan smiled and said that he was fine and could go home today. It was just a cold and fever, not a serious illness. If Lin Yan had not insisted that he stay for another day, he would have been able to go back long ago.
As he said that, Song Yuanchao stood up and said he wanted to go downstairs for a walk. He was almost numb from lying in bed all day. Of course, if he wanted to go downstairs for a walk, he had to report to his wife for permission. Lin Yan didn't stop him, probably because of Guo Tao and the others' presence, but she still asked Song Yuanchao to put on his coat. Although it was spring, it was still very cold in Shanghai. He had just recovered from the disease, and it would be troublesome if he caught a cold again.
When he got downstairs, Song Chaoyuan felt that except for his legs and feet being a little weak, everything else was fine. After walking a dozen meters in the garden downstairs with Guo Tao, Song Chaoyuan looked back in the direction of the ward building. He didn't see Lin Yan and Du Wenting, so he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Old Guo, do you have cigarettes? Give me one."
"You started having seizures right after you recovered from this illness?"
"I just have a cold and a fever, but I haven't developed pneumonia. Why can't I smoke? Yan Zi confiscated all my cigarettes. I've been suffocating these days." Song Chaoyuan looked impatient. Although he didn't smoke much, it was difficult to change this habit once it was formed. He hadn't touched a cigarette in the past few days. Although it didn't affect him physically, he was thinking about it psychologically. Guo Tao's coming today gave him an opportunity.
Guo Tao looked around like a thief, then took a cigarette out of his pocket, helped Song Yuanchao light it, and lit one for himself. The two of them hid in a corner of the garden, puffing away.
"How did you get yourself like this?" Guo Tao asked.
Song Yuanchao smiled bitterly: "I don't know either. I should be as tired as the doctor said. In fact, I have been busy these days, but I don't feel too tired. I don't know why I suddenly fell ill."
After looking Song Yuanchao up and down, Guo Tao patted his shoulder and said, "Yuanchao, you are not a young man in your early twenties anymore. You and Wenting are classmates. You are almost 37 this year, right?"
"Almost. After this year's birthday, I will be 37." Song Yuanchao nodded.
Guo Tao said, "Yes, you are almost 30 or 40, not young anymore. I am a few years older than you, but I am already in my 40s. You can't refuse to get old. Once you are over 35, your body functions start to decline. In the early years, I stayed up late to work overtime for two or three days at work and didn't care. But in recent years, if I didn't sleep for a night, I would be exhausted the next day. And your hair, have you seen it? A few years ago, there was not even a single gray hair, but now? Both sides are almost completely gray..."
Song Chaoyuan nodded silently. More than ten years had passed since he returned to this era. In the blink of an eye, he had gone from a young man in his early twenties to entering middle age again.
Looking back on the past, he had experienced all of this, and it was indeed as Guo Tao said, once people are over 35, their physical strength and energy are not as good as before. Even though Song Yuanchao now pays more attention to exercise than in his previous life, some things cannot be reversed.
Song Yuanchao once heard a song called "Time, Please Go Slowly" . The lyrics were as follows.
"How much time is left for me to sing another song for you? I know; you are still there. Among the green mountains and white clouds. You are so beautiful. As clear as the mountain spring water. How I wish I could hold you again and listen to you talk about your thoughts. Time, please go slower... There are too many things left to say. Can time stop... Let me warm your little hands. Time, please go slower... Let me remember those smiles. Can time stop..."
The time passed so quickly that it slipped away from Song Chaoyuan's hands without him noticing, leaving him with deep emotion.
Just like this time, Song Chaoyuan suddenly fell ill, which he himself did not expect. It was also this illness that made Song Chaoyuan feel that his youth had passed away again, and he once again began to enter middle age.
"I understand. I have to be more careful next time." Song Chaoyuan nodded silently and asked Guo Tao, "By the way, I haven't seen you for a while. How is the company now?"
"It's going well." Guo Tao said with a hint of pride, "The factory is now much bigger than it was at the beginning, and our overseas customers are not limited to the few customers we had at the beginning. Our brand is now well-known overseas, and the quality is also very good among similar products. Coupled with certain price advantages, the current market situation is very encouraging."
Guo Tao's factory has developed rapidly in the past few days after Song Yuanchao injected capital, and his product positioning is very accurate. He avoided competition in the mid- and low-end markets and focused on high-end and high-quality products.
As his fame gradually spreads, his products are not well-known in China, but they have already occupied a certain market in the international market. Moreover, the profit of high-end products is much higher than that of mid- and low-end products, which is also the key to Guo Tao's ability to maintain excellent quality and exquisite design and production.
"I heard that you don't plan to continue expanding the scale?" Song Yuanchao asked.
Guo Tao nodded: "Originally, I had the idea of expanding the scale, but this year my mind has changed. The company's products are mainly aimed at the high-end market. The high-end market is originally different from the mid- and low-end markets. It relies on the product itself and brand, not on the output."
"It is easy to expand the scale, it is nothing more than building new factories and adding production lines. But what is the point? The high-end market is very limited. If there are too many products on the market, they will lose their value. Instead of selling at a lower price, it is better to maintain a certain scale and make the products better. Besides, it is troublesome to manage a large scale. The current scale is just right."
Song Yuanchao agreed with what Guo Tao said. Many domestic entrepreneurs now have a misunderstanding in running their businesses. They always think that the bigger the business, the better. No matter what, the bigger the scale of the business and the higher the output, it seems to be a success.
But in fact, this method is not suitable for all enterprises. General OEM enterprises, or labor-intensive enterprises, can do this because the profit of their products is not high. The profit of enterprises mainly comes from two sources: one is the OEM fee, and the second is the difference earned from the labor of the employees of the labor enterprise, which is commonly known as "surplus value".
This type of enterprise is very common, and the most famous one in later generations is probably a certain Sicon .
But Guo Tao's company is different. From the beginning, the products of Guo Tao's company have been aimed at the high-end market, and they are characterized by high-quality products. Although the high-end market is much smaller than the mid- and low-end market in terms of volume, and the customer base is extremely limited, the problem is that the high-end market can maintain higher profits, and at the same time, it does not need to expand its scale like other companies to gain more benefits.
