"Well..." Su Xueting looked troubled. Her seventh younger brother was capable, but she was not particularly close to him, after all. In earlier years, they had only seen each other during holidays and festivals, and in recent years, they had gone four or five years without meeting even once. How much say could she possibly have?
Still, her father had given her an idea. Over the past few days, she and her husband had been trying to think of a company to start using the family fund, but they had been completely at a loss. Why not start a construction company?
Her father-in-law had mentioned that Li Rui had bought 2,000 mu of industrial land in the county seat, covering as much as 1.3 million square meters. Developing such a vast area would involve an equally enormous amount of construction work.
With her seventh younger brother's resources and her father's twenty years of construction experience, she and her husband could certainly achieve twice the results with half the effort by starting a construction company. They could also subcontract some of the projects they received from her seventh younger brother to her father. A perfect plan flashed through Chen Xueting's mind.
At this thought, Su Xueting's troubled expression turned into a delighted smile. "Dad, I've decided to start a construction company with Li Cong. Once we get projects from my seventh younger brother, we can subcontract some of them to you."
"Does your seventh younger brother have other construction projects besides this ancestral hall?" Su Yinshan looked puzzled.
"He has over 2,000 mu of industrial land in the county seat that he's going to develop."
"What? Over 2,000 mu?" Su Yinshan looked shocked. Developing an area that vast would easily cost several billion, perhaps even over ten billion. If he could fish out even a tiny share of the construction work, he might earn more than he had in twenty years.
He had known that this seventh younger brother of his daughter's was a golden thigh, but he had never imagined the thigh would be this big. No matter what, he had to cling tightly to it and never let go, even in death.
"Xiaoxue, if you and Xiao Li start a construction company, could your dad buy a small stake?" Su Yinshan was no fool. A company with such powerful backing was guaranteed to make money, not lose it. If he could get a stake, he would naturally earn even more.
"Well... I'm afraid that won't work. We'll be using the family fund to start the company, so one hundred percent of its shares will belong to the family. We only have the right to receive dividends, not to buy or sell shares. Outsiders absolutely aren't allowed to invest," Su Xueting told her father truthfully.
"All right." If he could not buy a stake, so be it. At worst, he would earn a little less. Once his daughter's company was established, he could take on projects through her. Either way, he would be better off than before.
Afterward, Su Yinshan also decided to participate in the bidding the next day. Whether he succeeded or not, winning would of course be better, but losing would cost him nothing.
After going back to exchange a few more pleasantries with Li Yongjin, Su Yinshan drove away.
At noon the next day, dozens of people gathered on an open patch of ground in front of Li Family Village. They all represented construction companies bidding to build the Li family ancestral hall and Li Rui's new home, and Su Yinshan was among them.
More than ten construction companies submitted their designs and estimated costs. Several were fairly large companies-after all, this was a seventy-million-yuan project-and some had even come from Star City.
Faced with competition like this, Su Yinshan, who had originally been brimming with confidence, instantly hung his head in dejection. He had only received the news yesterday. Although he had made his employees produce a design overnight, it had been thrown together in a rush. How could it compare to the polished work of those large companies?
Sure enough, in the end, the Li family unanimously agreed to adopt the design and quotation from a construction company in Star City.
With a floor area of 3,800 square meters, it was a magnificent three-story structure with three successive courtyards. The entire building featured red walls and yellow tiles, its colors vivid and its appearance splendid and imposing.
The two enormous stone lions at the ancestral hall's entrance stood three meters tall and weighed eight tons. Those two great lions alone cost over one million yuan.
Yet even more eye-catching than the stone lions was a large drum on the ancestral hall's third floor. The drum was enormous, nearly four meters in diameter. Its sheer size required highly specialized, expensive materials, bringing its total cost to nearly one million yuan as well.
Many clan members had initially opposed building such an expensive drum, since it had little practical use. In the end, Li Rui settled the matter with a single stroke: the drum symbolized the clan's unity, and its sound carried a special meaning, making it worth spending a little more.
Three beats of the clan drum meant gathering in the hall to discuss matters; six meant offering sacrifices to Heaven and the ancestors; nine meant drawing red and white lots. Those who drew red lots would receive the clan's incense offerings, and their wives, daughters, and parents would be supported by the entire clan. This was the special significance Li Rui gave the drum.
The final quotation for the entire ancestral hall was forty-six million yuan, four million short of the fifty-million-yuan budget. The whole project was expected to take about half a year.
Li Rui felt that was too long, however, and offered the remaining four million yuan as a bonus. As long as the construction company completed the project within two months, it would receive the four-million-yuan reward.
The construction company naturally thumped its chest and guaranteed that it would finish within two months. At worst, it could offer the workers one million yuan in bonuses, hire more people, and have them work in shifts day and night. This was not a city, either. As long as the people of Li Family Village had no objections, construction could continue twenty-four hours a day, naturally cutting the construction time in half.
They could also use newer techniques to shorten the schedule, such as modular construction, building sections elsewhere and then transporting them over for direct assembly.
There was one difficulty with building this way, however: the road had to meet certain width requirements. Prefabricated building modules were generally quite large and required heavy trucks to transport them. If the road was too narrow, the trucks naturally would not be able to get in.
Although the construction company considered this a major problem, it was no great trouble for Li Rui. He put up another four million yuan to more than double the width of the eight-hundred-meter road into the village, expanding it from 3.5 meters to eight meters. At eight meters wide, it fully met national highway width standards, so accommodating heavy trucks was naturally no problem.
For Li Rui's new home, he chose the design and quotation from a local construction company in Chuning County. Its quote was not the cheapest-in fact, it could be called the most expensive-but Li Rui still chose it. The reason, naturally, was that he was not short of money, and this company's design suited his tastes best.
The company's owner also understood people very well. He knew that when a wealthy man like Li Rui built his own house, he would not care how much it cost as long as he liked it. Thus, the design disregarded cost and focused only on appearance and practicality. The final quote was twenty-two million yuan.
The house had a clean, modern style. The main building stood in the center with four stories, plus a basement for parking vehicles. Two smaller buildings were built on either side of the main building, primarily to house bodyguards and servants. The interior decor was also extremely luxurious, using only the finest materials.
In the end, the villa, which occupied one thousand square meters, actually cost nearly half as much as the ancestral hall with its 3,800 square meters of floor area. This also demonstrated how expensive the materials used in the design were.
Once everything was settled, the construction companies left one after another. Those that had won the bids were naturally delighted, while those that had not remained perfectly cordial, coming forward to shake hands with the Li family members and expressing their willingness to work together on future projects. None flew into a rage over losing their bids as Li Rui had imagined. Li Rui marveled that these people who knew how to do business also knew how to conduct themselves.