Chen Fan smiled without answering.
But when the clerk finished taking his measurements and handed him the order slip, Chen Fan realized the man really had not been exaggerating.
The suits here were expensive, expensive, and nothing but expensive...
Two suits, along with the shirts and waistcoats, came to eighty yuan in legal tender.
A single suit cost twenty-eight yuan. At the time, one yuan could buy thirty to forty jin of rice.
A rickshaw puller in Shanghai earned only about one yuan a day, before deducting the rickshaw rental and the middleman's fees.
People said rickshaw pullers were high earners, but that was not really true.
Even pulling a rickshaw in this era required some backing.
To pull a rickshaw in Shanghai, you first needed a business guarantor and a personal guarantor before the police would issue you a permit.
Only with a permit could you rent a rickshaw from a rental company.
Never mind the rental fees-the business and personal guarantors alone were enough to turn away ninety-nine percent of the poor.
But that was getting off track. Chen Fan opened his wallet, counted out twenty yuan in legal tender, and slapped it on the table.
The clerk thanked him repeatedly, hurriedly took a form from beneath the counter, wrote him a deposit receipt, and asked Chen Fan to sign it for confirmation.
Chen Fan signed his name, then asked, "Do you have any ready-made clothes? I'd like an outfit."
The clerk hurried into the back and brought out several ready-made Western suits for Chen Fan to choose from one by one. He also called the tailor over to stand by and make any alterations on the spot if anything was unsatisfactory.
After more than an hour of fussing about, Chen Fan finally found clothes he liked. He paid another few dozen yuan and left with them.
His next destination was a shop selling handcrafted leather goods, run by an Italian.
Leather shoes, a belt, a wallet-these were all part of the ensemble too...
With those purchases finished, Chen Fan headed to his final stop, a luxury goods firm run by a Swiss merchant.
The goods sold here included men's cologne, watches, lighters, cigars, red wine, and more...
Chen Fan pushed the door open and stepped inside. The first things he saw were the Longines, Rolex, and other luxury watches displayed in the showcase before him.
Beside each watch lay its original manufacturer's certificate and an English instruction booklet printed on coated paper.
Chen Fan could not help feeling a flutter of excitement. Even at this point, Longines was already a century-old brand.
Longines had been founded in 1832, and it was now 1937.
Rolex was different, though. It had been founded in 1905, and only formally applied to register the trademark "Rolex" in 1908!
It was not until 1922 that the first batch of handmade Rolex wristwatches had reached the East.
In his previous life, although Chen Fan had become a director earning 350,000 yuan a year after tax, buying a luxury watch costing over a hundred thousand yuan had clearly been out of the question.
As for antique watches like these, all he could do was admire them from afar.
Things like these were something you either had at birth or probably would never have in your lifetime.
But while he had never had the chance in his previous life, this limited twentieth-anniversary edition was now within easy reach.
The price, however, was indeed rather steep. An ordinary model cost eighty silver dollars.
Another model with finely crafted complications actually cost eighty US dollars, or two hundred and sixty silver dollars...
Still, Chen Fan did not mind. This limited twentieth-anniversary edition was the first complicated wristwatch designed in 1928 and was highly collectible...
After buying a watch, he also bought a lighter and a box of Havana cigars.
Having spent several hundred yuan in legal tender, Chen Fan left carrying a pile of purchases, hailed a rickshaw, and headed for Hongkou.
Hongkou was where Japanese expatriates and Japanese troops were concentrated.
On Wusong Road, North Sichuan Road, and Dixwell Road, Japanese shops stood one after another...
Their signs were written in Japanese, and family crests were printed on their entrance curtains.
These Japanese shops mainly sold Japanese specialties.
Not that those specialties were anything particularly good-just local fare such as sake, kimonos, wooden clogs, and miso.
Among the pedestrians were women in kimonos and Japanese ronin in short jackets, while military police jeeps roared down the middle of the road from time to time...
At first glance, this part of Hongkou looked to Chen Fan more like an entire neighborhood of Tokyo had been transplanted to Shanghai and forcibly wedged into this land belonging to the Chinese.
Chen Fan first went to the Nara Inn to check out, then found a barbershop to trim his sideburns and shave.
Afterward, he went to a swimming pool to wash up. By the time he had finished all that, it was already noon.
After hastily eating a few mouthfuls, Chen Fan walked from North Sichuan Road to Wusong Road.
Military Police Headquarters was on North Sichuan Road.
The Songhu Garrison Command, which was responsible for public security in Shanghai, was located on Wusong Road.
Although this stretch of Wusong Road was not as bustling as Avenue Joffre, it had a constant stream of pedestrians and a strong commercial atmosphere.
Most of the shops along the street were open. There were also several small commercial firms and trading houses in the middle section, with bilingual Japanese and Chinese signs hanging outside.
Chen Fan slowly walked north along Wusong Road, his gaze continually moving between the storefronts lining the street.
A few caught his eye, but he was in no hurry to go inside any of them.
Good things were worth waiting for. Some of the memories in Chen Fan's mind belonged to the body's original owner, while others were his own.
Now that both sets of memories had merged perfectly, he understood this era's business practices and the rules merchants followed very well.
When he reached the middle section of Wusong Road, Chen Fan slowed his steps.
His gaze settled on a storefront beside the road.
The premises faced the street, with a frontage roughly two zhang wide and a room on either side. The whole building had three stories...
A wooden sign hung outside, bearing the Japanese words "Yamada Store"...
To its left was a Japanese pharmacy, and to its right was a tea shop run by a Formosan, specializing in high-mountain tea and sorghum liquor...
Chen Fan found it rather strange. With this location and this size, the shop should never have gone out of business.
Chen Fan stepped forward and peered inside through the entrance.
It had indeed housed a trading business. There were all sorts of shelves and glass cabinets, everything one could need, and they were quite new.
After looking for a while, Chen Fan turned and entered the neighboring tea shop. Only after spending a good while chatting up the owner did he learn what had happened.
Yamada Otsu, the owner of Yamada Store, had gambled with the owner of Inoue Cuisine at the Wusong Road intersection.
He had run up a huge debt and had no choice but to hand over his shop to the other man to settle it.
Seeing Chen Fan dressed in a crisp suit, the owner quietly suggested that he go to Inoue Cuisine to speak to its owner.
He should be prepared, though. The man had no intention of renting the shop out; he wanted to sell it.
After hearing this, Chen Fan thanked him and followed the tea shop owner's directions to Inoue Cuisine at the intersection of Wusong Road and North Sichuan Road.
It was a two-story Japanese-style building occupying a fairly large plot, which looked to be over four hundred square meters.
A sign hung outside, bearing the four large characters for "Inoue Cuisine" in black against a white background.
Chen Fan stepped forward, slid the door open, and walked inside.
The moment he entered, Chen Fan heard a clear, lovely voice say, "Welcome."
"Sir, we're not open yet. I'm afraid you'll have to come back after five..."