Chapter Seventy Coffee

  The welcome dinner for the mainland delegation is scheduled two days later, and it's so tight because the opening time of the Olympic Games is just three days later. After the opening, the mainland delegation will not allow athletes to participate in such activities again.

  Jie Si also promised Qin Shu Yan, and went with her a day in advance to set up the venue.

  And he also learned about Qin Shuyan's identity from his own grandfather, and Jester was indeed somewhat surprised, although he had expected it earlier. After all, in this era, those who could study abroad were either academic tyrants or the privileged class.

  Although he didn't feel any arrogance of mainland nobles from Qin Shu Yan.

  But also just thinking about it, Jester somewhat understood that now is not the era when the mainland can be called G2 with the United States thirty years later. The mainland is still a newly opened country that has not shared the benefits of industrial construction. In order to introduce foreign capital, the leader even went to Japan in person to visit Konosuke Matsushita and ask for advice on the development path of enterprises from this Japanese management god.

  To know that the great leader is a national leader, a generation of heroes who abolished the crown prince and established himself, while Matsushita Konosuke, no matter how high his achievements are, is just an entrepreneur.

  The current mainland dignitaries are not worth mentioning in the whole world, they come to the United States and see the prosperity and advancement of the United States, compared with the backwardness and poverty of the mainland, it is impossible to produce any pride.

  Now Jester still remembers a photo he saw before his rebirth vividly.

  In that photo, a certain general in his eighties came to visit the United States in the early 1980s. On the deck of an aircraft carrier, he looked at the US military's helicopters with wide eyes and raised feet. In his eyes, apart from longing, there was still longing. This general was later called the "Father of China's Aircraft Carriers" by many netizens. After having its first aircraft carrier on the mainland, the Military Commission set its hull number as 016. It is unknown whether this was intentional or not. The birth year of this general, known as the "Father of China's Aircraft Carriers", was indeed 1916.

  Furthermore, Qin Shu Yan herself wasn't the type to have a princess-like personality, and Jester hadn't spent much time with her either, so it was normal that he couldn't sense anything.

  Every time he comes to Los Angeles, he has to stay in a hotel. Jester is also tired of it and has the idea of buying a house in Los Angeles. After all, he will definitely come often in the future.

  The house doesn't need to be too big, one apartment is enough, preferably in the city center, so it's convenient for business. As for the price, Jester didn't care much about it. After all, an apartment, even in a place like Los Angeles where land is gold, as long as it's not in Beverly Hills, the price won't be too outrageous.

  But now is not the time to consider this.

  Jester received a call from Qin Shuyi before he came, asking him to go to school to pick her up, because Jester's grandfather's hotel was still some distance away from USC.

  Driving that cool Ferrari, Jester arrived at the place where Qin Shuyi said, a coffee shop near USC. In front of this coffee shop, Qin Shuyi stood with several other international students.

  As for why we didn't wait at the front gate of the school, well, USC is an open university and doesn't have a gate.

  Apart from Qin Shu Yan, the others saw a sports car that they had never heard of before, and it was so beautiful that it stopped in front of them. The faces of these people all showed an expression of surprise.

  At the same time, there is also a kind of vigilance, a vigilance that Jest is very familiar with, a natural vigilance of living things against those who are not their own kind.

  After seeing these five people, Jester became worried.

  He only knew that Qin Shu let him pick her up, but it wasn't just her, it was also her four classmates, all of whom were helping to prepare for the welcome party. The problem was that his sports car couldn't possibly fit six people.

  "Why didn't you make it clear on the phone?" Jester said angrily to Qin Shuyan.

  Qin Shu realized that she seemed to have forgotten to clarify things earlier and felt a bit embarrassed, sticking out her tongue slightly and apologizing softly: "I forgot."

  Jester could only sigh helplessly at such a response.

  Looked around and didn't see any taxis, so had to get off the bus and go into a coffee shop, asked the waiter for a phone and called Carrie.

  However, the person who answered the phone was an unfamiliar female voice, apparently Carrie's secretary, who told Jester that company CEO Ms. Carrie had left for Portland, Oregon yesterday to attend the flagship store of a popular game publishing company that had just been prepared and was about to open, and was not in the company.

  Then Jester remembered that he had indeed received a call from Carly a few days ago, asking if he was free to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a new flagship store with her. After all, Jester hadn't been able to make it to the opening of the first flagship store in Los Angeles because something came up, so he should definitely go this time.

  However, at that time, Jie was busy rushing the progress of "City of Fierce Battle" and preparing to establish a "Game" magazine, so he really couldn't spare the time, so he politely declined.

  Jester, who was still not quite dead, asked again: "What about Adam Edgar?"

  This time he got a definite answer from the female voice on the phone, Adam Edgar was accompanying a customer at the Los Angeles flagship store for a gaming experience. It wasn't until then that Jester realized he didn't even know the phone number of his own publishing company's Los Angeles flagship store. After asking the woman on the phone and getting an answer, Jester dialed the phone number of his own Los Angeles flagship store again.

  After a brief introduction of his identity, the store staff in the flagship store notified Adam Edgar, and Jest waited for less than a minute before hearing Adam Edgar's voice on the other end of the phone.

  His voice was somewhat excited, and he said to Jester over the phone: "Even if you didn't call me, I would have called you in a while. I just met with a major client from the UK. Originally, they wanted to cooperate with us to release our game in Europe, but we had already given Sega the European agency rights for four of our games. So I wanted to politely decline, but their manager said that wouldn't be an issue, and she wants to cooperate with us on something other than those four games."

  "She?" Jester also noticed that Adam Edgar used the third person singular feminine pronoun, so he asked curiously.

  Adam Edgar was about to explain in detail, but Jester didn't have time to listen to his lengthy introduction now, only knowing that the young British noblewoman who wanted to cooperate with them this time seemed to have a good background.

  But Jester didn't have time to worry about these things now either.

  Jester explained the situation over the phone to Adam Edgar and asked him to send a car to pick up several people near USC and take them to a hotel.

  After hearing Adam Edgar's affirmative response, Jester hung up the phone and thanked the waiter who lent him the phone again, ordered six cups of Blue Mountain coffee, and gave the waiter a small tip to show his gratitude.

  The life of mainland students in this era is actually very difficult, with only a little foreign exchange to be used on the blade, and also need to work part-time during holidays to make up for daily expenses. However, these are all just drops in the bucket. From Qin Shu's reluctance to spend money on a book she likes, it can be seen that this is the general situation.

  Jest read bits and pieces of Chen Chong's memoir about her life studying in Los Angeles in the early 80s, so I have some understanding of their difficult situation.

  Basically, these international students won't have any spare money to drink coffee.

  Apart from Qin Shu Yan being familiar with Jester, it was the first time they had met each other. Especially for these mainland students, they were still a bit reserved when facing Jester, to be precise, distant or on guard.

  In response, Jester could only laugh and introduce himself first.

  "Li Jie, English name Jest Li."

  But without getting a formal response from these four people, Qin Shu also felt a bit embarrassed, after all, Jester was called by her.

  However, Jester didn't mind this much. He took the initiative to greet them because he saw the kindness of the Chinese people, and whether they accepted it or not was none of his business.

  These overseas students are obviously wary of Jester, after all, they have all experienced the era of class struggle, and from Jester's clothes and car, it can be seen that the person in front of them, who is younger than themselves, is a capitalist.

  Capitalists are all evil and must be overthrown, this is the education they have received since childhood.

  Facing the coffee that Jester had called for them, the four overseas students, two males and two females, excluding Qin Shuyan, were clearly at a loss as to how to react.

  On one hand, he wanted to decline politely, but on the other hand, he was curious about the taste of Blue Mountain coffee that he had only heard of before. Jester saw a subtle struggle in their eyes.

  Especially the performance of the youngest man was the most obvious, Jester was also somewhat puzzled at first, why this foreign student who had never met before would look at him with a gaze that seemed to be looking at an enemy, his eyes were very different from the other three, the other three only had a normal vigilant attitude.

  When he saw him looking at Qin Shuyan, Jester knew.

  It turned out that I had regarded myself as a love rival all along.

  However, Jester observed carefully for a while and found that Qin Shu seemed to have no special expression towards this overseas student whose name he didn't even know, and was just the same as his attitude towards the other three people. And this overseas student also had no other specific expressions except for occasionally revealing an adoring look in his eyes that he tried his best to cover up when looking at Qin Shu.

  It's just unrequited love. Jester made his own judgment on this.

  Facing the Blue Mountain Coffee, Qin Shu was not surprised. Her identity was special, her grandfather was a founding general, and on the mainland, she belonged to the privileged class. Some things that were hard to see domestically, although rare for her, were not unfamiliar either.

  For example, Blue Mountain coffee was given as a gift by the Japanese delegation when they came to China in previous years. In fact, her grandfather was one of the recipients.

  But when she saw that her four friends were not drinking, she herself did not dare to drink either.

  She could only look at Jester awkwardly, then look at her friends awkwardly again, unsure of what to say.

  She even resented Jester for showing off in front of her friends.

  Actually, Jester didn't have that idea at all. He just wanted to drink a cup of coffee and wait for Adam Edgar's car to arrive, but with so many people here, he couldn't possibly do it alone, could he?

  Finally, perhaps unable to bear the awkwardness any longer, a graduate student who appeared to be the oldest, around thirty years old, took the initiative to pick up the coffee cup filled with coffee and smiled at Jester.

  At the same time, he also said thank you from his mouth.

  Jester also nodded with a smile.

  The other three people saw that someone had taken the lead in drinking, so their expressions were no longer so difficult to decide. Almost at the same time, the three of them also picked up their coffee cups.