Chapter 67: Not qualified
Yi Lihuan's family had not been well-off when he was little. Back then, his father had been an ordinary worker at a large state-owned factory, without any substantial family wealth behind him. They had known material deprivation and poverty. There had even been days when they ate at the canteen and his father had only a few dozen yuan in his pocket, which had to cover their living expenses for the next ten-odd days. Yi Lihuan had loved candy as a child, but his family could not afford much of it. When they visited other people's homes, he would often fix his eyes on their candy and eat it. His father had frequently lost his temper and scolded him for being a "greedy little glutton."
He had liked cars, so he tore pages featuring them out of Hong Kong magazines at the book rental shop and pasted them up in his bedroom. He had also stood watching the traffic on the main road facing their old home, imagining what it would be like to ride in one of those sedans someday, and whether its seats would be more comfortable than the sofas in the factory offices.
After Yi Jiashun went into business, he had built the Zhongfan Group step by step over twenty years. These were the thirty years since reform and opening-up in which China's private and family-owned businesses had developed most rapidly. Private enterprises had risen swiftly across the country, and the concept of the family business had gradually taken shape.
As the head of a prominent family-owned private business giant in Southwest China, standing at the very top, Yi Jiashun could also feel the enormous transformation from his family having nothing to attracting newspaper and media attention.
At some point, Yi Lihuan no