Material Empire

As soon as Ming Yongbo said this, the little secretary in the office timidly opened the door and entered the meeting room, came to Liu Shuo, and reported in a low voice: "Director Liu, Mayor Mo of the city is here..."

"Oh? Where is he? Who else came with him?" Liu Shuo quickly stood up and asked the little secretary while packing up the things in front of him. The mayor Mo that the little secretary mentioned was the deputy mayor in charge of industry in Quwu City, named Mo Kongchao, and Liu Shuo had dealt with him in the past. Sha Renyuan had a good relationship with Mo Kongchao. Before he died, he asked Mo Kongchao to take care of his brother's ceramic factory. Mo Kongchao was thinking about his old relationship with Sha Renyuan, but he summoned Liu Shuo several times, but he never came to the factory in person.

"A few bureau chiefs from the city came with him, and two foreigners." The little secretary replied.

"Foreigner!" Everyone in the conference room felt their eyes light up. When they got in touch with the question Ming Yongbo raised earlier, a thought flashed through everyone's mind: Could it be that foreign businessmen came to the door?

Liu Shuo didn't bother to ask any more questions, he gave instructions to everyone, and hurried out. Huang Yanling, Ming Yongbo and others also stood up, followed closely behind him, and came outside the office building. In the open space in front of the building, a medium-sized bus was parked, and there were seven or eight people standing under the bus, led by Mo Kongchao.

"Mayor Mo, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Liu Shuo strode forward and stretched out his hands from a distance.

Mo Kongchao smiled slightly, stretched out a hand to shake Liu Shuo, and said, "Director Liu, we are uninvited guests, won't you not welcome us?"

"How dare you, Mayor Mo's boss is something we can't even invite." Liu Shuo smiled all over his face, and then turned his head to greet Mo Kongchao's entourage: "Director Gu, Director Hong... welcome! !"

He shook hands with the officials one by one, and at the end of the handshake, two Westerners with high noses appeared in front of him. He stretched out his hand halfway, and stopped hesitantly. He didn't know whether it was fashionable for foreigners to shake hands, and he didn't know how to greet each other.

"Director Liu, let me introduce you. This is Mr. Mike, the vice president of Roth Company in Belgium. This is Mr. Jolly, Mr. Mike's secretary. This is Xiao Su from the Provincial Foreign Affairs Office. We came together." Mo Kongchao came over and introduced Liu Shuo with a smile.

"Our vice president's name is McClure, and my name is Jolliff." The secretary of the vice president who was introduced by Mo Kongchao as "Mr. Jolly" corrected him in blunt Chinese in a low voice. He said this to Liu Shuo. Before that, he had corrected Mo Kongchao several times, but Mo Kongchao still couldn't figure out the correct way to say their names.

"Welcome, Mr. McClure, Mr. Jolliffe." Liu Shuo stretched out his hand and shook hands with the two Belgians respectively. If the other party has someone who can speak Chinese, it will be easy to handle, and the communication will save a lot of trouble.

After exchanging greetings, Liu Shuo called everyone to the meeting room for discussion. He, Mo Kongchao, McClure, and Jolliff walked in the front side by side, and Huang Yanling and Ming Yongbo accompanied other officials to follow. Cheng Huaping did not go back to the meeting room with them, but trotted to the cafeteria, and ordered the purchasers in the cafeteria to go to the market to buy meat and fish to prepare for a sumptuous feast at noon.

Taking advantage of this short time, the meeting room has been cleaned up. Everyone entered the conference room, and the guests and hosts sat down separately. Mokong sat in the middle of the host's side without hesitation, let Liu Shuo sit next to him, and McClure and Jolliff were arranged to sit opposite them . As for the several government officials, they sat on both sides according to their identities. Some played the role of Mokongchao's entourage, and some played the role of foreign guests' escorts.

"Let me say a few words first." Mo Kongchao said, "Mr. Mike and Mr. Jolly made a special trip to our Quwu City to inspect the ceramic industry. According to their own introduction, the Belgian Roth Company they work for is the third largest ceramic company in Europe. Product sellers have always maintained good cooperative relations with our Chinese ceramic enterprises. This time, they came to Quwu to learn about a kind of ceramic knife produced by us. Director Liu, you know the situation ?"

The production of ceramic knives by Brother Ceramics Factory is a typical example of flowers blooming inside the wall and fragrant outside the wall. Due to the press conference organized by Qin Hai, foreign newspapers have already made a lot of noise about this matter, but the Quwu City Government itself has no knowledge of this matter. Early this morning, Xiao Su from the Foreign Affairs Office came to Quwu suddenly with McClure and Jolliff, and caught Mo Kongchao by surprise.

During the meeting in the city, the other party repeatedly said that he wanted to know what happened to the ceramic knives produced by Quwu. Mo Kongchao called all the people from the Economic Committee and the Second Light Industry Bureau, but no one could tell the truth. In fact, it is also the fault of those media reporters who cut corners when reporting. They only mentioned that this magical ceramic knife came from a city called Quwu in China, but they did not mention the name of Brother Ceramics Factory. There are several ceramic factories in Quwu. Brother Ceramics Factory has always been engaged in industrial ceramics and is a private enterprise, so city officials don't know much about it.

The two sides talked for a long time but did not come up with a name. Finally, Mo Kongchao couldn't bear it anymore and asked McClure how he knew the name Qu Wu. McClure took out a photocopy of a newspaper and showed it to everyone. They couldn't understand the Dutch language on it, but they recognized a blurry figure in the scene photo accompanying the news report. That was Liu. large. The matter of Liu Shuo's going abroad was reported in the city. By linking this matter, Mo Kongchao can be sure that what McClure is looking for must be the Brother Ceramics Factory.

According to Mo Kongchao's thoughts, he planned to have someone call Liu Shuo to come to the municipal government to meet with foreign businessmen. But McClure suggested that they would rather go to the factory to take a look in order to understand the reality of ceramic knives. Naturally, Mo Kongchao couldn't refuse the request from the foreign guests. In this way, he brought two foreign guests and a group of officials directly to Brother Ceramics Factory.

Liu Shuo didn't know the twists and turns in the middle, but when he heard Mo Kongchao talking about ceramic knives, he knew that McClure must have come to find him, because let alone Quwu's other companies, even in the world, they are currently able to produce For ceramic knives, there is only Brother Ceramics Factory. He nodded with a slight smile, and said: "Mayor Mo, ceramic knives are indeed products of our factory. This time, Xiao Huang and I went to Brazil to participate in the Agricultural Machinery Expo with a delegation from the Ministry of Agriculture. By the way, we showed our ceramic knives." Dao, these two foreign guests should have come here after reading the reports at the venue."

"Yes, yes, they brought a newspaper with your photo on it. Director Liu, why didn't you report such a big event to the city?" Mo Kongchao asked slightly reproachfully. In the eyes of Quwu's officials, it is definitely something to be proud of that Quwu's company can be featured in foreign newspapers. Liu Shuo had such a glorious thing, but he didn't report it to the city government. This is a typical example of being organized and undisciplined.

"Yan Ling and I just came back, and we haven't had time to report the results to the city yet." Liu Shuo quickly explained.

"Okay, let's not talk about this matter. Since the ceramic knife is your product, then you can introduce it to Mr. McClure." Mo Kongchao ordered.

The little Su from the Foreign Affairs Office had already selectively translated the conversation between Mo Kongchao and Liu Shuo to McClure. McClure coughed lightly and said impatiently to Liu Shuo: "Mr. Liu, we It is through the newspapers that I learned that your factory has produced a very magical ceramic knife, but so far, we have not seen the actual sample. We came here from Belgium, hoping to learn more about this ceramic knife If possible, we hope to become the agent of your ceramic knives in Europe.”

Liu Shuo nodded after listening to the translation, and said to Ming Yongbo: "Yongbo, go and get some sets of our newly produced ceramic knives, and ask the two foreign guests, Mayor Mo and the leaders to appraise them. "

Ming Yongbo agreed, left the conference room, and soon led two workers back with more than a dozen bags. Each bag contained a box containing a set of 6 ceramic knives. After obtaining Liu Shuo's permission, Ming Yongbo sent these bags to McClure and other officials, each with one bag, without omission. According to the rules, when these officials leave, these ceramic knives can be taken away with them. You must know that it is the official's obligation... and right to condescend to "trial" products for the company.

"It's really a ceramic knife!"

"beautiful!"

"Can this knife really cut vegetables?"

"I think it's fine. The blade is quite sharp. At least it's no problem to cut fruit."

The officials opened the packing box, took out the knives, and all made a fuss about it. As the deputy mayor, Mo Kongchao naturally had to pretend to be reserved, and it was inconvenient for him to open the packing box himself. Liu Shuo took the packing box and opened it, put the knives one by one in front of Mo Kongchao, and introduced the functions of each knives and the characteristics of ceramic knives in detail. Mo Kongchao listened quite seriously, with surprise in his eyes.

It is McClure who can really see the way. As soon as he got the bag, he unceremoniously opened the box, took out the knife and held it in front of his eyes to appreciate it carefully. Jolliff also leaned his head closer, exchanging views with McClure in a low voice as he watched. During the discussion, the two of them did not speak English, but Dutch, which even the translator Xiao Su could not understand.

After muttering for a while, McClure raised his head and said to Liu Shuo: "Mr. Liu, these ceramic knives are very beautifully made, and the cutting edges are very sharp to the touch, but I don't know how the cutting effect will be. If you don't mind, can you Ask your people to get us some samples for cutting, we want to try it out."