Reborn in 1996: My Empire of Premium Seafood

After waking from a single night’s sleep, Chen Yuanhang finds himself back in 1996, the owner of a dried seafood shop on Yide Road that’s on the verge of closing down.

Three months behind on rent, a warehouse full of unsold stock, and next door, Liang Kun is just waiting to laugh at him.

In his previous life, he was a failed businessman who was swindled into bankruptcy. This time around, he has awakened the “Five Senses Compendium.”

Are these dried scallops sulfur-smoked or naturally sun-dried? One look at the texture tells him.

What country did this bird’s nest come from? One touch, and he can name its origin.

What others see as worthless “yellow-skin goods” are, in his hands, all prized old glue worth a fortune in the future.

His rivals try to ruin his reputation with defective goods, but he turns the tables with a public appraisal, leaving them thoroughly disgraced.

But Chen Yuanhang knows that if he spends his whole life behind a market stall, he’ll always be at other people’s mercy.

So he heads into the countryside with cash in hand, bypasses the layers of middlemen, signs exclusive agreements with fishermen, and moves upstream to secure the source regions. At the same time, he builds his own distribution channels downstream. From restaurants in the Pearl River Delta to gift markets in the Yangtze River Delta, he expands across the country one step at a time.

Chen Yuanhang carefully develops his own brand. While the rest of the industry still sells bulk mixed-grade goods, he’s the first to introduce standardized grading, individual packaging, and the “Yuanhang” label.

From a tiny stall on Yide Road to his own factories and brand, with a seafood empire reaching across the country: fish maw, sea cucumber, dried scallops, dried shrimp... Every kind of dried seafood is a money-printing machine.

By the time China joins the WTO, his goods are already packed into containers and ready to sail overseas.

The business tycoons and century-old brands may be dragons, but in front of me, the “Seafood Champion,” even they have to keep their heads down.

[Keywords] Reborn, business rivalry, treasure appraisal, period piece, underdog’s rise