Gao Yi said goodbye to Keswick at one o'clock. As the carriage drove away from the gates of the Shanghai General Assembly, he glanced back at the brick and timber building behind him, and if he thought its three-story Greek temple-like porch was too pompous, then he fully understood the metaphor at this time. Just as the temples of ancient Greece were not only places of sacrifice and ceremonies, but also the banks and treasury of the entire city-state, Shanghai was always the place where the city's money and power accumulated.

The board of directors of the Ministry of Industry may be the issuing authority in the city, but all of its decrees were conceived here, and they were all on the list of members who could enter and leave the building.

Whether it's an English-like Scotsman like Keswick, or a native Scots like Anderson and Prandis, or even the French and Germans in the city, whether they like it or not, the Shanghai General Assembly is more called the British General Assembly than the place where they are called, and they all have to come here to register to get a ticket to the ruling class.

So if Gao Yi wants to officially become a member of the ruling class, he will inevitably have to come here to knock on a chapter - even if he asks himself to be a member of the top circle, the procedure to go through is inevitable.

In fact, it is not too difficult to become one of the rulers of Shanghai Tang, as long as you meet the four conditions. First and foremost, it must be the Western diaspora; secondly, one hundred and twenty-five dollars of spare money is required to pay the membership dues, in addition to seven dollars a month for this; Third, there should be two referrals from old members; Fourth, the applicant's name will be displayed on a blackboard with five club rules, and after three months, the members will vote on whether to accept it.

From these conditions, it can be seen that the Western society in Shanghai has a clear understanding of the basis of its own rule, and their group of rulers wants to rule not their own people, but dozens of times more Chinese in the city.

Therefore, they need to lay as good a foundation as possible. If you can get more than a hundred dollars, it means that this person is at least middle-class; Willing to use this money as a membership fee, rather than saving it up and taking it back to his hometown, means that he does not see himself as a passerby, but has a desire to actively participate in local political and social life. In other words, when a person is willing and able to come up with more than 100 dollars for membership dues, it means that he is a person who wants to be responsible and has the ability to do so. Such a person should be accepted as a member of the ruling class as long as he is proven to be innocent – recommended by old members and accepted by the majority of the population in terms of conduct – and voted after three months.

It can be seen that becoming a member of the Shanghai Federation does not prove how good a person is, but only shows that he is a qualified member of the Western society in Shanghai.

However, because this membership is only a standard score line, it is even more necessary for Gao Yi to get his hands on it as soon as possible, and he, a guy who mixes with people like Keswick and Anderson who get full marks all day long, if he can't even pass the standard exam, doesn't that mean that he is not worthy of staying in a circle with these people at all?

And, realistically, he needs it badly. Because there is always a very strange rule in Shanghai, Westerners who are not members can enter the club for entertainment and dinner, but there is a rule: this offer cannot be enjoyed more than three times in a year, and each time cannot be more than 14 days.

Gao Yi had just eaten a chance with Keswick at this meal. If he doesn't make it to membership, he'll only have two chances left to enter the building this year. While that didn't stop him from meeting up with Anderson and Brandis, who spent most of their time at the Scottish Club or golf club, Keswick, John Rida and Bain, who were more important to him, were all members of the club's committee. That is to say, most of their social activities, except for the board of directors of the company and the Ministry of Industry, will be carried out in this building, in the exclusive suite of their respective directors - just like this meal just now.

Gao Yi sat in the carriage, his arms folded on his chest, calculating his shortfall in money. He is not worried about the introduction of old members, voting after publicity, etc., there are many people who can recommend him, and there are three at the director level; And as he became more and more involved with this Western society, he was confident that he would become more and more popular.

Now it seems that all the problems have converged on one point, and that is money. He did the math, including the rent to be paid at the end of the month, a set of Scottish dresses, a hundred yuan bonus for female students, Ah Jin's salary, the purchase cost of pear paste candy, plus the one hundred and twenty-five yuan membership fee, without five hundred yuan, he couldn't think he could do it.

It's really a 500 yuan hero who can't die, and he really doesn't know where to earn this money, so he can only count on those pear paste candy, and I hope that the people introduced by Li Deli can be more reliable.

*****

Gao Yi's three-piece suit caused a small commotion in the classroom, but the girls of this era were still more reserved, at most whispering below for a while, and no one stood up and whistled at him.

The experiment that Gao Yi brought today was homemade Dutch water, that is, homemade soda with granulated sugar, baking soda, and citric acid. The experimental courses that are easy to choose are generally related to eating, and they are easy and simple to learn and have fun, so they are well received. As for the real knowledge of chemistry, he felt that there was no need to teach it at all, these girls were going to marry after a while, and in 1903 it was still early before the women's liberation movement, and the more advanced the knowledge, the more painful it might be for them, and it was better to learn some useful life knowledge, which could help them in their daily life in the future.

Halfway through the first class, Gao Yi suddenly found that there was a grandma dangling there outside the window, he opened the door and asked, but it was a note sent to him by Ma Han, and when he opened it, he saw that it was Li Deli, saying that Ding Ganren had been contacted, and Gao Yi could make an appointment with him at any time. Below the note is the address and phone number.

Gao Yi took advantage of the time after class to go to the principal's office to make a call, Ding Ganren spoke Changzhou dialect, although Gao Yi, who was used to hearing Suzhou dialect recently, was a scumbag, but there was not much obstacle to communication between the two. Gao Yi originally planned to make an appointment tomorrow, but the other party said that he would go to the clinic tomorrow and the next two days. So Gao Yi asked him if he was free today, and after receiving a positive answer, Gao Yi simply set the meeting time for an hour.

The place where Ding Ganren sat was on Hankou Road, known as Beidayjinli. Gao Yi took a carriage to search all the way, and found this lane between Shanxi Road and Shandong Road. Next door to the alley is the foreign tomb on Shandong Road, the earliest foreigner cemetery in Shanghai. opened the hospital next door to the cemetery, Gao Yi not only admired this person for not talking about superstition and not avoiding taboos, but also felt that the future of pear paste candy was even more slim.

Ding Ganren is about thirty-seven or eight years old, of medium stature, and has an ordinary appearance, but his forehead tattoos are deep and dense and impressive.

"I've found someone to try the pear paste candy, but it is quite effective, but the medicinal materials in it don't seem to be used much." Ding Ganren is a straight temper, and before the two could say a few words of greeting, he turned the topic on track. However, he did things with great efficiency, and the samples that Gao Yi left on Li Deli's side were estimated to be delivered to him in no more than three hours. But in this short period of time, he has not only found patients available for testing, conducted tests, but has already come to conclusions.

"I pay attention to the combination of Chinese and Western medicine, and the use of more Chinese medicine will clash with each other, which is counterproductive, and it is enough to use pear paste."

Ding Ganren nodded when he heard this, and seemed to approve of this answer.

"If this medicine is to be sold in our store, Mr. Gao needs to agree to two conditions for me."

The speed of the conversation once again exceeded Gao Yi's expectations. Gao Yi originally thought that Ding Ganren was just a doctor, and his role should be to be responsible for matching himself with shops to introduce him, but he didn't expect that he was going to sell this medicine in person. However, this is not a bad thing for Gao Yi, so he said, "Please speak." ”

"Mr. Gao can't ask how much this medicine sells."

Seeing that Gao Yi did not object, he continued: "I need to decide how much I want to pay Mr. Gao and how much we want to take a percentage of the store. With that, he looked at Gao Yi.

"I agree to both of these conditions, I don't know how many catties Mr. Ding is going to ask for the first batch of medicines?"

Gao Yi's answer is also very simple, it is still a problem whether this sugar can be sold or not, why not do it now that someone is helping him to market it for free? As for earning more or less, you can't know until you have tried the water. Anyway, the supply is in your own hands, and when the situation opens, if you feel that you have made less money, you can change the seller, or simply sell it yourself.

The two simple people decided the matter by dividing it by two, Gao Yi first took out a thousand catties of sugar to test sell Ding Ganren, and how to divide the more and less money will be determined later.

Coming out of Ding Ganren, it was only a quarter of an hour before Gao Yi entered. He took out his pocket watch and looked at it, and it was only a quarter past three.

McPherson made an appointment to go directly to his house at six o'clock, with a gap of two hours in between. Gao Yi thought about it, it was not much time to say that it was too much, it was not interesting to go back to school and Yaxian Residence, so it was better to simply go to the fishing room and pick up McPherson to go with him.

McPherson is affiliated with the Old Gate Trap. The old gate catcher is at the junction of Nanjing Road and Guizhou Road, and it is only five minutes before the carriage passes.

The Indian patrols in the public concession are all stationed in the Laozha Fishing House, because most of them are Sikhs, and their heads are wrapped in red cloth, so the Shanghainese also call this fishing house "Red Head Fishing House".

Since it is called "red-headed fishing room", the gate of the old gate fishing room is naturally full of red-headed Ah San. Gao Yi's carriage drove to the gate and stopped for a moment, and after Ma Han said a few words in a haughty manner, it restarted again, and stopped all the way to the porch.

When passing by the group of red-headed Ah San, Gao Yi happened to glance out the window, and suddenly found that among these many faces, there was the first face he saw when he woke up at the door of the welfare company after being knocked unconscious. The face was so impressive, with a thick black beard growing all the way under the eyes.

But what Gao Yi didn't know was that there was an old acquaintance of his in the vicinity. This old acquaintance was squatting at the door of the vegetable market diagonally opposite the old gate fishing house, with a pair of flat poles and two baskets in front of him, and the baskets were full of pears. But his mind was not on these pears, but on the various people who came in and out of the fishing room. He is Guanghefeng's little buddy Ah Sheng, and among the many guys, he is the only one who is most familiar with Gao Yi's face. But his attention was on the people on foot or in the rickshaw, and he didn't even bother to glance at the carriage, especially the private one.