Chapter 31: The secretary's speech
Binhe Road was a famous dining district. Many of Xiahai City's well-known restaurants were clustered there. Lanting Chinese Restaurant was renowned throughout the area, serving refined home-style cooking, and was very popular in Xiahai.
Quite a few cars were parked outside the restaurant, but one black Buick was enough to surprise anyone who knew what to look for.
It was the car of Wang Bu, Xiahai City's current Municipal Party Committee secretary. When he took office, the city's finance department had planned to get him a new one, but he had politely declined, so he was still using his predecessor Liu Lan's car. Wang Bu knew his tenure as secretary was no comfortable one. The opposing faction in the province had already begun making moves. As things stood, his transfer to Xiahai as secretary could be considered a sign that his side had lost ground in this clash between two provincial forces. But given his family background and latent influence, expecting the other side to underestimate him would be underestimating their intelligence.
That was why Wang Bu had to act even more cautiously much of the time. Xiahai's leadership bore too many traces of his predecessor Liu Lan, and Mayor Hong Xiaotian was someone he urgently needed to win over. From the looks of things, that provincial faction had plenty of tentacles in Xiahai as well. They might well use them to deal him a heavy blow.
He arrived at the private dining room with these concerns on his mind. Zhong Jianjun, Su Licheng, Zeng He, and Su Can had arrived fifteen minutes early. Seeing everyone already there, Wang Bu smiled. "I'm treating, yet you all got here before me. Old Zhong, you never used to stand on ceremony with me like this."
Zhong Jianjun