Sun Market

Wang Ye held a stack of passports, turned, and walked back. "All right, let's go."

Everyone stared at him stupidly. It was resolved just like that?

Zhou Yuan glanced at the two Greyhounds in disbelief and asked cautiously, "Did they say we can leave? They won't come after us again, will they?"

Wang Ye raised the little card in his hand and smiled. "Here. At least for today, we'll be fine around the market. If we run into something like this again, just show them this card and it'll be settled. Think of it as spending two thousand rubles on a pass."

Everyone let out a long breath, finally settling their racing hearts.

Once they came back to their senses, they were all clearly a little angry.

Liu Xiaojie did not dare speak loudly either. He complained in a low voice, "How can it be like this here? Back home, when we ran into police officers, we only felt safe. We never had to worry about anything else. But here, we have to avoid them!"

The girls complained as well, and their favorable impression of Moscow was instantly cut in half.

Losing two hundred and fifty rubles each was a small matter. The main thing was that it completely ruined their mood!

Zhou Yuan was doing better. He comforted them, "It can't be helped. That's just how it is here. Their salaries are low and prices are high, so they can only use methods like this to earn some off-the-books income. Otherwise, supporting a family would be difficult. Oh, and you should prepare yourselves mentally. I heard from the upperclassmen that some teachers at the school are the same. During annual exams, if you don't grease the wheels a little, it's basically impossible to pass."

Everyone naturally understood what he meant by greasing the wheels.

Exams here were different from those in China.

In China, all the students sat in a classroom, completed written papers, and then the teachers graded them.

But here, the teachers basically interviewed you one-on-one!

As for your grade, that depended entirely on the teacher's mood...

After the one-on-one exam, the teacher would write the result in your gradebook. Five was the highest score, while three was a passing grade.

Of course, if you scored below three, the teacher would not write anything down. Instead, they would give you a chance to retake the exam.

With this kind of exam system, it was naturally easy for a teacher to hold you back if they wanted to.

Given the Russian level of most Chinese international students, as long as the teacher made the questions a little more complicated, you would not even understand the questions!

Then failing the exam would be perfectly normal.

If you knew how to handle people and gave the teacher a small gift—or even directly handed over some big bills—then once the teacher was in a good mood, they might give you two very simple questions. Getting a high score would be perfectly reasonable then...

It had to be said that studying abroad here, never mind how much you actually learned.

You could certainly sharpen your social skills and ability to get things done...

After complaining for a while, everyone pulled themselves together and continued toward the market.

They had already come all this way, and they had already spent the money, so naturally they could not give up!

Besides, Wang Ye had said that with that little card, they would not be checked again around the market today, so there was nothing to worry about.

The rest of the journey went smoothly. After walking for less than ten minutes, they arrived in front of the main market.

The first thing they saw was an enormous fenced-off construction site. Machinery roared within it, though it was impossible to tell what they were building.

Zhou Yuan explained, "I heard they're going to build a new market here. The old main market is too run-down. But supposedly, this new market and the old one are not being developed by the same owner, so no one knows whether it can actually be finished. We'll go around this way. The main market we're going to is on the other side of the site."

Wang Ye looked at the massive fenced-off construction site thoughtfully.

If he had not come to the market today, he would not have remembered this.

Perhaps once the main market was completed, he could do something there...

But first, by then, he would need enough capital in hand. Otherwise, this was not a game he could participate in!

What people commonly called One Ant Market was originally named "Sun Market."

The moment they entered, a wave of heat rushed over them. The entire market was bustling, packed shoulder to shoulder with people.

It was as though everyone in Moscow had come here!

The shops here were not brick-and-mortar buildings, but rows upon rows of shipping containers. Every container was a shop.

Inside the containers were large cardboard boxes or unopened bundles of merchandise, piled high.

Various samples were displayed outside the doors, with every imaginable category available.

This market had clearly been around for quite some time. Its walkways were rather narrow, and with the shops on both sides displaying samples that took up part of the space, the passages for pedestrians became even tighter.

From time to time, they saw a Russian uncle or auntie striding ahead with their heads held high, followed by one or two dark-haired young men pulling carts piled with bundles of goods. They were clearly here to stock up.

There was one advantage to doing business here: cash on delivery, no credit!

Do not underestimate these dirty, inconspicuous container shops. Behind nearly every one of them was a fairly sizable factory back in China!

Many wholesalers only did business for three to five months a year. Before coming, they would contact a freight company to ship over a huge batch of goods, then rent a shop and start selling. Once the goods were sold out, they returned to China.

Also, outside every container shop, aside from someone who looked like the owner, there would definitely be a young person in their twenties who looked like a refined college student.

There was no need to wonder. They were international students working part-time as translators.

This kind of work was fairly exhausting too. You basically had to leave home at five in the morning and arrive at the market around six.

You would work until two or three in the afternoon before you could head back.

You could earn anywhere from six hundred to one thousand US dollars a month, depending mainly on your Russian proficiency.

In his previous life, Wang Ye had worked here for a time as well. He worked two or three months a year, which was basically enough to earn his living expenses for the entire year. It was not bad.

As they wandered around in a daze, Zhou Yuan suddenly reminded everyone, "Oh, right. Didn't you want to buy phone cards? That man sells them. I'll stop him, and you can buy some."

He pointed at a thin, small middle-aged man.

He was Chinese too, wrapped in a thick down jacket and carrying a crossbody bag stuffed full of things that looked like magazines.

But Wang Ye knew that he sold newspapers and phone cards. The newspaper was naturally the Moscow Chinese Newspaper, while the phone cards were IP cards for international long-distance calls.

There were quite a few people like him inside the market.

Whenever people bought newspapers or phone cards, they went to people like them.

After stopping the middle-aged newspaper seller, everyone bought a phone card. Most of the boys bought cards worth twenty US dollars, while the girls generally started at fifty US dollars, with some even buying one-hundred-dollar cards.

Besides a phone card, Wang Ye also bought that day's copy of the Moscow Chinese Newspaper. It was very cheap, only ten rubles.