Russian

About one month later, Ruslan called me, he proposed that he would like to work with me like we were with Sasha. He had a project, selling car mats, with a minimum of 2 million dollars a year guaranteed.

Receiving his sample car mat, I set off to factories. God was always helping me, I found 3 factories, whose sample quality was good, and the price is reasonable. Ruslan flew to me immediately, when he saw the factory’s samples, he was delighted, “Ohuyeno(Incredibly good)!”

We signed the big contract then, ordering car mats in about 1 million dollars in amount.

We both laughed, but the cure for the headache is still urgent: Ruslan had to find some manufacturers. He brought me to his room, opening his suitcase, full of all kinds of metal and plastic parts.”Look, Anatoliy, I have to find factories producing all these parts, but in the exhibition, I found a few of them, do you have any idea?”

“Yes, Ruslan, you know, when I searched motor parts for Sasha, I found that there are many factories of auto parts in Wenzhou, far more than motor parts. Maybe we should go there to take a try?” I answered, showing him some web pages of factories.

After the lapse of six months, Sasha told me that one of his friends in Kharkiv would like to visit the Auto-parts exhibition in Guangzhou, and asked me if I could help him translate.

Of course, I could. But the next day Sasha told me that his friend would not need my help.

Okay, fine.

Shaolin called me too, asking if I was available the next week in working as an interpreter for a customer from Russia, in the very exhibition. Of course, I could. I would enjoy the moonlight.

I phoned every factory, with which we signed a contract, and I caught a fish too. The first carburetor factory was willing to “thank” me. I got paid about 2,500 dollars, that was my 5 months' salary.

A month later, Sasha called me, he asked me if I could help him organize all his orders in China, collect them from a variety of his suppliers and send them to Ukraine.

I hadn’t been sleeping well since the visit to Shaolin, wondering why I was working hard and had to save every penny to pay for a shared room. I quitted from the Ukrainian company, staying in my room thinking about life. I even didn’t think about looking for another job, because a job with about 1000 dollars could not save me from this situation, let alone 500 dollars.

I went through the harsh week, and celebrated the first salary with my roommate, inviting him to hotpot. On the weekend, I went to a school classmate, who was living not far from my apartment. By the way, she was a fascinating girl, and I missed her, I missed her. At the end of the visit(which was the last time we met), she introduced, that her neighbor speaks Russian too, and maybe we would like to know each other. We knocked on the door but were not answered. So I left him my name card.

In 2006, I got a job in a Ukrainian trading company in Shanghai, and graduated from Shanghai International Studies University, with a Bachelor’s degree in the Russian language. If my memory doesn’t cheat me, I earned 3,000 Yuan per month(about 500 dollars), without any social or medical insurance. With that money, I had to pay for the accommodation, transport, food, and telephone in Shanghai.