at the initial stage of factory construction, dongyue adopted the sales patter that customers use the product first, and pay for it if they find the quality good, which aimed to make customers accept the township enterprise, and the products. at that time, this sales pattern was the most common way for township enterprises. when the market was broaden, the debt was becoming bigger and bigger. pressing for payment of debt became a real problem.
during the summer of 1990,
on that same day, they went to beishu graphite mine, and it was a big customer and owed lots of money. on that night, people form beishu arranged a banquet for yao and liu. people form jiaodong(the region where beishu belong to ) are known as strong drinkers. it’s impossible for the guest to not drink along. yao and liu knew that they must drink along with them, otherwise they couldn’t ask them to pay back the debt.
liu and yao didn’t show a slice of fear. after several cups of alcohol, they all got a little bit of drunk. probably, this is what beishu wanted, and easily sent yao and liu away when they were drunk.
when the banquet was approaching the end, director of beishu graphite mine showed up and asked them their intention of this visit.
they answered, ‘ want our money back’
director asked, ‘how much?’
they all argued about the debt issue for a while.
knowing they really needed money, director finally said to them, ‘let’s try this, if you two drink up a bowl of liquor in front of me, i will give u 50 thousand yuan for each bowl.’
‘do you mean it?’ asked yao benzhao, and he took off his coat in the meantime.
‘of course.’ said the director.
someone brought up a bowl and filled it up with white spirit. the bowl is ceramic, and can hold half a bottler of liquor. the smell of alcohol filled the room, and the atmosphere was tense. people at the banquet all stared at these two desperate people.
yao benzhong drank up three bowls of alcohol at once, and so did liu chuanqi. the fourth time they filled up the bowl, the director ran away in fear.
afterwards, they were sent to the dormitory, and yao threw up. then he tottered to the building where the director lived, and he yelled, ‘i drank four bowls of liquor, and give me 200 thousand...’ carrying yao benzhong, liu staggered back to the dorm.
the next day, the director gave them 200 thousand yuan, and said, ‘i learned that how awesome you huantai citizen are.’
today we talk about this thing like a joke, but it reflected the selfless spirit of the pioneers of dongyue. the staggering figures and crooked footprints become the guidepost of the descendants. dongyue gradually build up its sales team that is represented by yao benzhong, wang qiang, rong qingjin, zhang zuotao, rong youchang and others. and they are called 18 pines.