I'm back in 1990

Chapter 141: Going out is really not easy

After leaving the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Huang Xiaochuan wanted to visit the legendary Chung Ying Street, but when he told the taxi driver the address, the driver asked him if he had a pass.

Huang Xiaochuan doesn't have one of these!

Fortunately, the driver was a nice guy and told Huang Xiaochuan about the permit.

During this period, for border security reasons, Guangdong Province implemented an entry and exit management system for ports of entry and exit between the mainland and Hong Kong, requiring border passes to be obtained in Shenzhen in order to enter and exit the ports between the mainland and Hong Kong.

In other words, Huang Xiaochuan needs this border pass to go to Chung Ying Street; otherwise, he cannot go. The border pass obtained in Shanghai can only guarantee his smooth entry and exit from Shenzhen, but it is useless at the border.

Huang Xiaochuan knew that these taxi drivers were local bigwigs with many connections, so he simply gave the driver two hundred yuan and asked him to find a place to stop so he could ask him for more details.

For example, if Huang Xiaochuan wants to go to Hong Kong, what methods would he need? Of course, it certainly wouldn't be smuggling.

The driver seemed to know quite a bit. He told Huang Xiaochuan that there are currently two ways for people from the mainland to go to Hong Kong: one is to visit relatives, and the other is to travel.

However, both methods require a visa. The application process for these two visas is self-explanatory. Visiting relatives means having relatives in Hong Kong, which Huang Xiaochuan certainly doesn't have, so he needs a tourist visa. However, the driver told Huang Xiaochuan that tourist visas require queuing.

In other words, it's not a matter of "register and go" immediately. After registering with Yuehai Travel Company, you have to wait for a while before the trip is arranged. This is out of necessity, because there are just too many people who want to travel to Hong Kong, so they can only arrange the trips one by one in a row.

Huang Xiaochuan was dumbfounded. Damn it, is it really that difficult to go out?

However, some good news offset much of the unpleasantness: the driver said he knew scalpers who could get him a border pass for a small fee, which would at least allow Huang Xiaochuan to visit Chung Ying Street.

Upon hearing that such a way was available, Huang Xiaochuan was no problem spending a little money. He immediately asked his driver to help him with the matter. The driver was quite arrogant. He first took Huang Xiaochuan to have his photos taken, and then they arranged to meet the next afternoon at Huang Xiaochuan's hotel to exchange money and collect the border pass.

The weather was sunny on July 6th.

Since arriving in Shenzhen, the weather here is completely different from that in Shanghai. Shanghai is still experiencing the rainy season, while Shenzhen is sunny and clear. Although there are occasional light showers, the weather is hot, but it is cool in the shade.

Unlike Shanghai in the summer, where even if you hide under the shade of a tree, you'll still feel so hot that you'll want to stick your tongue out because the air humidity is too high, making you feel like you're in a steamer.

The afternoon before, Huang Xiaochuan received the border pass with his photo on it from the taxi driver as promised. He didn't know if it was real or fake, but it didn't look fake. The embossed seal and the big red stamp were very clear.

Moreover, this morning a taxi driver was supposed to pick him up from the hotel to go to Chung Ying Street in Sha Tau Kok. At nine o'clock in the morning, the taxi driver arrived at the hotel on time and picked up Huang Xiaochuan.

With my border pass, I passed through the checkpoint smoothly and arrived at Chung Ying Street. This street is only about 200 meters long and 3 or 4 meters wide. A boundary stone in the middle divides Chung Ying Street in two, with Shenzhen on one side and Hong Kong on the other.

The architectural styles on both sides are also different. In Hong Kong, there are mostly single-story houses, while in Shenzhen, there are mostly five- or six-story multi-story buildings.

Don't let the small size of this street fool you, it's incredibly crowded. According to the driver, the daily foot traffic can reach up to 100,000 people. Huang Xiaochuan didn't think much of it when he heard that, but when he arrived at the scene, he was like, "Holy crap!"

The scene was packed with people, making it difficult to move around. Judging from their accents, most of them were tourists from the mainland, and they were buying gold the most because gold is much cheaper in Hong Kong than on the mainland.

Therefore, the most common shops on this street are gold shops, selling all kinds of gold jewelry.

That year, the price of gold in mainland China was around 60 or 70 yuan per gram, while the price of gold in Chung Ying Street was only around 50 yuan. It seemed like there wasn't much difference, but the large volume made the difference significant.

After visiting several gold shops, Huang Xiaochuan decided to buy some for his maternal grandmother, aunt, mother, and mother-in-law. Women all like gold, though he didn't know why.

So Huang Xiaochuan quickly bought four large gold bracelets, each weighing about 80 grams. In addition, he bought a necklace and ring for Yu Xiang, spending nearly 20,000 yuan in total.

Huang Xiaochuan knew that as long as Yu Xiang told his mother Zeng Lijuan about buying a house, she would also know about the business commissions his uncle had given him last year. He had kept it from her for so long, and who knew how angry he had made his mother. No one knows a mother better than her son!

Buy her a big gold bracelet to appease her; women, no matter their age, are easy to please!

Buy her a big gold bracelet to appease her; women, no matter their age, are easy to please!

While browsing and shopping, Huang Xiaochuan also noticed that electronic products and cassette tapes were selling particularly well on Chung Ying Street, which are the top choices for tourists from the mainland.

Huang Xiaochuan noticed that many of the people there were actually there to buy goods, carrying large and small bags, and they didn't look like tourists at all.

You can also exchange Hong Kong dollars here, but Huang Xiaochuan didn't bring much cash; he mostly bought gold.

Furthermore, Huang Xiaochuan specifically inquired about the current official exchange rate: HK$100 can be exchanged for RMB66, while in Chung Ying Street, the exchange rate is HK$100 to RMB82, which is the black market price, and cash is required for exchange.

If the amount is small, exchanging a little is fine, but if it involves hundreds of thousands or millions, it's not worth it. Huang Xiaochuan certainly wouldn't do something so foolish, as it would put him in unknown danger. Money can be a powerful motivator, and if the other party has bad intentions when they see so much cash, Huang Xiaochuan, who is unfamiliar with the area, would definitely be in trouble.

Huang Xiaochuan only realized how difficult it was to travel abroad after arriving here. Before coming, he thought it would be easy to go to Hong Kong across the river. He didn't expect that while it was possible to go, it would take time. Huang Xiaochuan didn't have that much time.

However, the border pass is valid for half a month, which means that Huang Xiaochuan can come here to shop and play every day for the next two weeks. Although he still can't go to Hong Kong, coming here to stroll around is better than nothing.

However, since he was already there, Huang Xiaochuan wanted to wander around. He had already been to Chung Ying Street, but he couldn't go to the other side of the river for the time being. Then Huang Xiaochuan thought of something else.

He immediately made a phone call to Huang Boyi, a Hong Kong resident in Shekou.

Huang Boyi, whom I met by chance on the plane that day, mentioned that there are many garment factories in Shekou now, but most of them are OEM for foreign brands and are basically not sold to the mainland. However, the consumption power in the mainland has risen, especially young people who are very willing to buy this and that for themselves, and branded clothing is also slowly entering the mainland.

However, their prices make them more like luxury goods than consumer goods, and they are not something that ordinary Chinese people can afford.

So Huang Xiaochuan wanted to go and take a look, investigate and learn about the garment manufacturing industry.

Before going, Huang Xiaochuan contacted Huang Boyi, but unexpectedly, Huang Boyi was also worried about how to contact Huang Xiaochuan!

When they parted at the airport, Huang Boyi gave Huang Xiaochuan his business card, but Huang Xiaochuan didn't have one. Besides, he just thought it was a chance encounter during his trip. However, Huang Boyi regretted it after returning to the factory.

As a Hong Kong resident, Wong Pak-yee's sensitivity to stocks far surpasses that of mainlanders today. In his eyes, Shenzhen-listed stocks, which mainland investors avoid like the plague, are a gold mine, but unfortunately, as a Hong Kong resident, he cannot buy them.

Although Huang Xiaochuan revealed to him that B shares might be opened up in the second half of this year, it might not be possible to buy at the bottom by then. The stock market is all about quietly buying when others are looking down and waiting for a big rise. The development of anything always follows a continuous parabola shape, with both peaks and troughs.

Now is the lowest point for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and this is the best time to enter the market.