Vivian Zhao's Choice Between Love and Wealth Chapter 7

Leo Chen glanced at the cigarette in his hand and said with a smile: "Second brother, are you rich?"

Lucas Shen took a puff of his cigarette and patted the bag under his arm: "This is all money."

Leo Chen laughed: "Drinking again at noon?"

Jason Zhou laughed: "I didn't drink, but I don't know what happened today, I kept bragging to me for a long time."

Lucas Shen rolled his eyes and said to Leo Chen: "What time is it? The store is closed?"

"No!" Leo Chen said, "I chased you out only after I saw you."

"Is there something wrong?" Lucas Shen asked after taking a puff of cigarette.

Leo Chen looked around and said stealthily, "I have something good to show you."

"What good stuff?" Jason Zhou was very curious.

"Let's go!" Leo Chen waved his hand, "Let's go to my shop."

The three of them turned around and walked back. When they reached the entrance of the alley and turned right, the third store was Leo Chen's store. It was called a store, but in fact it was a residence on the roadside.

With a "click", Leo Chen pulled open the deformed wooden door and lifted the thick door curtain that had revealed the cotton. The three of them walked in. It was a little dark inside, so Leo Chen turned on the light.

This is a typical rural house in Northeast China. There is a stove in the outer room, with a big pot burning wood. The walls, plastered with white lime, have been blackened by the smoke.

The three of them walked around the stove and entered another door, which led to the bedroom. It was about 17 or 18 square meters, and the floor against the north wall was filled with cardboard boxes, all filled with tapes. Next to the south window was a kang less than one meter high, and from the east wall to the west wall, it could accommodate about five or six people.

At this time, under the eaves of the kang, there was an earthen stove connected to the kang hole, and the coal fire was burning vigorously. The temperature in the room was not low. Lucas Shen took off his cotton coat as soon as he entered the room, took out a cigarette from his pocket, squatted in front of the stove, put the cigarette on the red-hot stove lid to heat it, and then threw the cigarette box to Leo Chen.

Leo Chen threw the cigarette box to Jason Zhou again, "I'll smoke it later. Let me show you something good first." After that, he walked to the cardboard boxes, moved the largest one on the top to the kang, opened it, and poured all the tapes onto the kang with a loud noise. Then he looked at Lucas Shen and Jason Zhou with pride.

"Look, these are all good stuff."

Jason Zhou picked up a cassette and yelled, "Fcuk, Brady?" He didn't know English, but he had seen Brady's photo in a magazine before, so he recognized him at a glance.

"Brady?" Leo Chen picked up two tapes after sifting through them. "Look at this. Battlefield Rose and Ava Gill."

"Hey!" Jason Zhou snatched the tape from Leo Chen's hand, "What's wrong? Why is the tape damaged? There are gaps all over it."

Leo Chen chuckled, picked up the cigarette and put it in his mouth, with a very proud expression on his face: "Want to know? Light it up for me."

Lucas Shen was warming himself by the fire. When he heard the conversation between the two, he looked up and said, "It's a pirated tape!"

"What is a pirated tape?" Jason Zhou asked while fiddling with the tape in his hand.

Lucas Shen lowered his head to warm his hands. The cigarette in his mouth had a flickering red light and smoke kept coming out from the corners of his mouth.

"The pirated tapes are a way for foreign record companies to protect their own interests. When their record companies sign a record contract with an artist, there will be a clause that the company guarantees to sell a certain number of records, and then pay royalties based on the records sold. However, no one can calculate the market so accurately, so the record company can only estimate a rough number when processing the record. For example, it is estimated that 10 million copies can be sold, but in fact only 9.9 million copies are sold. At this time, the record company will settle royalties with the artist based on the actual sales figures. The remaining 100,000 copies cannot be settled, but the artist must be informed that these records will no longer be sold on the market, so the company will destroy these products in public.

But Americans are always greedy. They will not miss any opportunity to make money. Even if it is just a pile of Sh!t, they will try every means to create some profit. If it is destroyed by a steamroller, it will have no value. So they use machines to cut and pierce the eyes to cause limited damage, so as not to affect people's hearing. Then they sell it to developing third world countries in the name of waste plastic. "

Lucas Shen stood up, took the cigarette in his hand and flicked the ash, "To put it bluntly, these things are essentially foreign garbage. But they are indeed genuine products from Europe and the United States, so the sound quality is unmatched by any domestic audio and video products."

Leo Chen opened his mouth in disbelief and said, "Second brother, how did you know this? My friend in the south called me and told me about this. I only found out after I went there."

Lucas Shen did not answer him, but said: "This thing should have entered the Chinese market at the end of last year. It has been a year. Why did your friend inform you only now?"

Leo Chen scratched his head and said with some regret: "He called me last year and said he had a batch of lossy tapes from abroad and asked me if I wanted them. I said they were all bad and I couldn't sell them, so why would I want them. It wasn't until this summer that someone asked me if I had pirated tapes. I didn't pay much attention at first, but as more and more people asked, I contacted my friends in the south, and then I learned that pirated tapes were the lossy tapes he was talking about. So I went there a while ago and got these."

Dakou audio and video products entered the Chinese market at the end of 1992. Chaozhou and Shantou were the origins of Dakou. Trendsetters from all over the country went there to buy goods, and they quickly occupied the market of young artists. At that time, there was an urgent need for some different voices. It didn't take long for Dakou culture and Dakou youth to appear. Anyone who had anything to do with Dakou was like wearing the red scarf of young artists. Dakou was the main food for those born in the 1970s and 1980s who pursued non-mainstream music in the 1990s.

Lucas Shen took the tape from Jason Zhou's hand. He was not like these two guys. After all, he had attended college in his previous life. Although it was a third-rate university, he still knew some English.

"Scott Brady!" Lucas Shen said, "Is this guy awesome?"

Jason Zhou rolled his eyes: "You don't even know Scott Brady? He is a world leader in rock music. He is the one who brought rock music to its peak. More importantly, he brought marginalized rock music into the mainstream, making it known to the public, and brought about innovations in the behavior and concepts of pop music."

Lucas Shen nodded and looked at the tape in his hand. This should be another world, an existence like Elvis. Thinking about it, he picked up another tape at random. The cover was in traditional Chinese characters, with the words "Four Heavenly Kings" written on it, but the names didn't match any of the people in his memory. Moreover, he had never heard any of the songs on it.

Leo Chen slapped his head and said to Jason Zhou, "I almost forgot that the Aurora album you asked me to get has arrived. Let's listen to it first."