"We're all so close, don't say I'm disloyal. I'll introduce you to a company in the United States that sells wig-making machines. I guarantee your factory will be the first in Hong Kong to get the machines if you want to make wigs."
Tang Boqi was taken aback by these words. He looked up at Song Tianyao, but Song Tianyao had just lowered his head to drink tea, avoiding eye contact with him. Tang Boqi vaguely felt that there was something special in Song Tianyao's words, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
His factory was the first to receive the machines, and being the first to receive them naturally meant being the first to start making money. It seemed like they were indeed taking advantage of him, so where did things go wrong? Why did he feel uneasy about it?
Chapter 238 Not as Good as Friends
Bo Ming held a crying baby in his arms and gently soothed him. At that moment, he chewed a mouthful of rice and then wiped the chewed rice paste around the baby's mouth.
Song Chengqi turned his head away, somewhat annoyed, and exhaled a breath of stale air.
This is the eleventh child abandoned outside the Elderly Home this month. Since the Elderly Home was renovated, there have been more and more homeless elderly people, children, and disabled people. Originally, the Elderly Home only had six small rooms, with two elderly people living in each room. After the expansion and renovation, the number of rooms increased to twenty. However, as a result, each small room, which is no more than 60 square feet, is now crammed with at least four people, and some rooms are even crammed with five or six people.
This Kowloon Elderly Home had been abandoned during the Japanese occupation. It was only after the war that Song Chengqi and a few homeless old men managed to repair it with great difficulty. Neither the Hong Kong Colonial Government's Chinese Affairs Office nor the Social Welfare Department provided the Elderly Home with a single penny of assistance or subsidies. Charitable organizations such as Po Leung Kuk Tung Wah Group of Hospitals of Hospitals were more interested in building new primary schools, Elderly Homes, welfare homes, etc., and completely ignored this Elderly Home in Kowloon Walled City, which should no longer exist. Over the years, the Elderly Home's expenses have been covered by the tuition fees that Song Chengqi earned from teaching, and the meager income that a few old men, such as Bo Ming, made by collecting garbage or doing whatever little work they could to make ends meet.
Song Chengqi received Hong Kong dollars 100,000 from Ge Zhaohuang, but not a single penny was left.
In fact, if Hong Kong dollars 100,000 had been used sparingly, it would have been enough for Song Chengqi and the dozen or so old folks in the Elderly Home to have a peaceful end. However, the old men led by Song Chengqi used the money to renovate Longjin Charity School and the Elderly Home, repair houses for impoverished families in the neighborhood, and even donated a small clinic and pharmacy to Kowloon Walled City. They also paid for two Chinese medicine practitioners without licenses in Hong Kong to prescribe medicine and treat patients for free for the residents of the Walled City. In just one instance, they took Hong Kong dollars 40,000 from the pharmacy, clinic, and two Chinese medicine practitioners.
In Kowloon Walled City today, the prestige of old fellows like Song Chengqi and Bo Ming is at its zenith, yet they are once again penniless.
Being broke wasn't a big deal for Song Chengqi and the others; they had been poor before anyway, and continuing their old lifestyle was fine. However, outsiders all thought that Song Advisor had now made a fortune and was a great philanthropist, so of course everyone would turn to him for help when they were in trouble.
So initially, people lined up at his door hoping to borrow money. Song Chengqi, with a hard face and no pockets, scolded and drove away several people. Then, homeless elderly people and homeless children started coming to his door asking the Elderly Home to take them in. Just like this morning, when Bo Ming opened the door, he saw a cardboard box outside the door with a crying baby lying inside.
"Big Brother, if this keeps up, I don't think we'll be able to build a skyscraper and still not have enough people to live in it. We shouldn't have been so kind in the first place. We old folks could have just left the money and lived a life of luxury." After the baby, who was only a few months old, stopped crying, Bo Ming deliberately made a bitter face and spoke to Song Chengqi.
Unlike other elderly people in Elderly Homes, Bo Ming was Song Tianyao's brother of several decades. When Song Chengqi first came to Hong Kong, Bo Ming was by his side. Although he hadn't experienced the life-and-death struggles with Song Chengqi on the Mainland, the two had always been through thick and thin together in Hong Kong. Song Chengqi's wife passed away from illness not long after arriving in Hong Kong. Crippled Bo Ming, who had been single all his life, had contributed a lot to Song Chengqi's ability to raise his three sons to marriage and have children, almost like a steward for Song Chengqi. Crippled Ming also played a part in Song Chengqi's third son becoming Bo Ming foreman. The only time Song Chengqi used his Bo Ming identity to stand up for someone after coming to Hong Kong was to save Bo Ming's life, even though half of his foot had been cut off.
The joke about not being kind enough to keep the money for himself was only half-jokingly said by Bo Ming, who had a close relationship with Song Chengqi. Anyone else would have been glared at and scolded by Song Chengqi.
"The food and vegetables are free now; A-Yao had them delivered. Everyone should save a few bites of food. Why don't we build some more tin shacks next to the Elderly Home?" Song Chengqi's face was cold and hard, but he couldn't bear to see the misery and couldn't bring himself to kick out the elderly people who had already moved in or the babies he had found, leaving them to fend for themselves.
"Does A-Yao not need money to buy food and vegetables? Do you think they'll just fall from the sky? If you build a tin shack... what if even more people come? Hong Kong lacks everything, but it doesn't lack poor people." When Bo Ming heard that Song Chengqi was planning to build a tin shack, he was startled and hurriedly tried to dissuade Song Chengqi from the idea.
Once the gates are opened, Kowloon Walled City will instantly become a new squatter area. All sorts of illegally constructed wooden and tin shacks will spring up overnight, and most of them will be occupied by elderly people and children who have no means of livelihood and are just looking to freeload. Even if it's just about food, hundreds of mouths could bankrupt Song Chengqi in an instant.
Song Chengqi took out a small jar of tobacco he had grown himself and rolled a cigarette. "We can't just stand by and watch these old people and children starve to death in peacetime, since the Japan can't kill them."
"Last month, didn't some social worker from a welfare home come to the Elderly Home and say they could send the elderly and children who couldn't fit there to their place? The old folks didn't want to go, and in the end, only a dozen or so children went with the social worker. I think we should go this time, even if we don't want to. We should send half of the old folks from the Elderly Home to that welfare home." Bo Ming said, holding the baby in his arms, "I'll personally take them there. I'll lead the way, and no one else will object."
"You're going?" Song Chengqi looked at the Bo Ming and asked with a frown.