He rented a similar kind of room close to Gongzhufen, installed a telephone and bought himself a pager. At that time, you needed at least 100,000 yuan of registered capital to start a company. But how could Degui come up with that kind of money? So he didn't register his company at the local department of commerce and industry, and dared not hang a sign. He just had 3,000 flyers printed out at a specialist place in Fuchengmen, and called himself the "business executive of Dazhong Decorating Company." All this he did in secret; he dared not tell his father or his old friends from back home.
Degui distributed his flyers while working. In the beginning he dared not hand out too many, just several a day. Some he pasted on telegraph poles, others he placed inside bike baskets. About a week later, his pager rang while he was making some furniture. He hurried to return the call from a telephone booth; once he got through, the person on the other side asked, "Is that Dazhong Decorating Company? Why is your office always empty? I can never get hold of anyone but you, the business executive." Degui was prudent this time: he stammered that the company had been very busy recently and that he was sorry for the inconvenience. The person replied that he wanted to make three bookshelves and asked him if he could do it. Degui heartily agreed, took his address, and arranged to meet him at ten the next morning.
As soon as Degui entered his customer's house he was struck by the number of books he had, and thought that he must be a teacher. After a short conversation, the customer said, "Aren't you the business executive that answered the phone yesterday? How come it is you that has come to work?" Degui had been found out, and he felt ashamed. Blushing from ear to ear, he steeled himself to explain: "Our company is a small one and has been very busy lately, and so all the other workers are not available at the moment. The customer then told Degui that he did not like the bookshelves typical of furniture stores, and since he had some wood lying around, he would like to have a bookshelf unit made according to his own design. Degui assured him that they would do exactly as he wished. This said, Degui made measurements and agreed on a price before finally getting to work.
Two days passed and the work was half finished. Then Degui's pager rang again, this time someone else also asking for the Dazhong Decorating Company. The caller said that the floor tiles in his house were of poor quality, and that he wanted to have them changed. He also asked Degui to send workers the very next day. Without much thinking, Degui agreed. But after hanging up, he realized that he was out of his depth. Firstly, he was just a woodworker with no experience of laying floors. Secondly, he hadn't finished his current job, and he certainly couldn't be in two places at once. The only solution was to find someone else to do the job. That day after work, Degui went to find an old friend who was a builder. He happened to be looking for work and quickly accepted the job offer. Degui told him that his only request was that when he saw the customer, he should tell him that he was from Dazhong Decorating Company.
After this, various customers would page him every now and then. The good thing was that Degui had a lot of old friends who were decorators, so he could cope with the extra workload. However, only later did it suddenly dawn on him that he had been handing out work on a plate. He was delivering a service free of charge! After this realization, Degui vouched that from now on, he would do things differently. Whenever there was a new customer, he would first go and meet him/her himself to assess the job and negotiate costs. Then he would outsource the work to a friend, from whose wage he would deduct a certain percentage of "management costs."
By now, Degui did not do the work himself; his job was to hand out flyers, and liaise between customers and workers. Before long he had become a small labor contractor.
Of course, it was a great improvement. Degui's income nearly doubled, but he also had more responsibility. Everything went through him, and he had to deal with many problems. For example, if a customer wasn't satisfied with the workers he sent to him, Degui would have to deal with the consequences. Once or twice he even had to put up with a good scolding.
Degui said, "During those years, I contracted out a lot of projects near the Ministry of Water Resources and the Xinhua News Agency. Most of them involved house renovation, and I earned just short of 30,000 yuan."
One morning, two men in uniform, one taller than the other, came to Degui's office. They claimed they were officials from the local bureau of commerce and industry. Degui welcomed them warmly, and even offered tea and cigarettes. Expressionless, the taller one looked around and said, "Are you the person in charge of Dazhong Decorating Company? Show me your business license!"
"Um… business license… oh…"
The taller one sneered, "Zhang Degui, stop playing dumb. We have already investigated your company; it was never registered at our bureau."
Degui broke down, "It, it, it was never registered… back then I didn't know how to register it…"
The taller one became more aggressive, "You've opened up a company, how can you possibly not know? You just want to evade tax—it's that simple! Our country has laws, just like our families have rules, and according to the relevant regulations of the commercial and industrial administration, you'll be fined 100,000 yuan and shall also take legal responsibility for your actions."
Degui panicked, "This is no company, officer; it's just a way of getting some work. How do you expect me to come up with 100,000 yuan?"
The tall guy turned to the shorter guy, who until then had stayed silent, "Commissioner Liu, what do you think we should do?"