Chapter 1 The Start

After a long period of preparation, the construction of Emperor Crab Island officially commenced on April 7th, 2004.

The land reclamation team had experience building the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. In the entire project, the land reclamation phase, which seemed rather troublesome, wasn't actually that difficult. All the work proceeded in an orderly manner.

On the day construction began.

From afar, Su Yehao stood on the top deck of his super yacht, coffee cup in hand, watching a dredger continuously spraying a mixture of mud and sea sand towards the planned location of the seawall.

Another ship was constantly piling large stones around the outside of the seawall for shaping, preventing the sea sand and mud, which were sucked up from several kilometers away, from being quickly eroded by the seawater.

During the preparatory phase, the design team had conducted extensive exploration and research on the sea area near Casino. They supposedly had a method to minimize the turbidity of the seawater outside the seawall through sedimentation.

When the main island in the shape of a giant crab was completed, the clarity of the seawater wouldn't be comparable to Tahiti or the Maldives, but it wouldn't be particularly murky either.

There was no way around it.

Casino was located near the mouth of the Pearl River, which carries a large amount of sediment into the sea year-round.

If they didn't put in some effort to improve the seawater quality, future tourist photos of the seaside would all look dirty, discouraging people from swimming in the sea.

This could potentially lead to a loss of millions of tourists each year, resulting in significant long-term losses.

Since it was an island, tourists would first focus on the beaches, sea views, and weather, followed by the hotel environment and the interestingness of the attractions.

Therefore, the designers designed valves on the seawall. During the day, the valves would be closed to slow down the flow of seawater inside the seawall, allowing sediment to settle. At night, the valves would be opened to allow seawater to flow in, preventing the stagnant water from breeding algae and odors.

This also created a problem.

As silt accumulated, it would need to be cleared every two or three years.

Su Yehao figured that the cost would ultimately be borne by the tourists. They could earn more money from them and use dredgers to clear the silt during the off-season. It wouldn't be too much trouble.

His father, who had come to join the fun today, had some experience in land reclamation and was now explaining:

"These self-propelled cutter suction dredgers are incredibly powerful. They directly suck up mud and sand from other places and spray it here to the designated location, making several trips back and forth each day. They're really fast. If we had a few more, we could probably fill everything in a month or two. It's much easier than when I filled in the muddy beach for the Pengcheng Tourism City. I had to haul soil from other places truckload by truckload. The trucks going back and forth and the labor and fuel costs made my eyelids twitch. I almost died of heartache."

Nearby, his friend Uncle Qiu laughed:

"What were your family's conditions back then, and what are they now? Your asset scale has increased dozens of times. The Emperor Crab Island project, worth tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars, was invested in without hesitation. Yehao, you must help me and reserve a well-located mansion for me. I originally planned to retire in New Zealand, but now I see that your island is even more suitable. I can even enjoy a little gambling at my doorstep."

"Haha, it's all settled. Just let me know in advance what style of architecture Uncle Qiu wants."

Su Yehao didn't particularly like the pretentious Qiu Yaohuo, but he had a good impression of his father, Uncle Qiu.

Mainly because when he was still studying at Donghuang Rose Middle School, Uncle Qiu would give him pocket money in handfuls while playing cards at his house, sometimes as much as twenty or thirty thousand Hong Kong dollars.

Now, even two or three hundred million Hong Kong dollars was hard to catch Su Yehao's eye. Plenty of people were begging to give him money, but the situation was different back then, which left a deep impression on him.

Speaking of self-propelled cutter suction dredgers.

Su Yehao suddenly thought of the future "island-building神器" (shénqì - magic weapon), the Tiankun. These days, many Southeast Asian countries were busy developing islands and building offshore oil drilling platforms in the South Sea, clearly taking advantage of the fact that the mainland was temporarily unable to attend to it.

This matter was too thorny, and Su Yehao didn't intend to get involved. Anyway, in the future, when a certain rabbit had mastered its divine skills, those people would have to spit out everything they had swallowed.

Making things too big now would obviously be detrimental to the need for stealthy rise.

So he simply thought that it would be great if there was a Tiankun now, which could probably save a lot of money. He also had his eye on developing islands in the Xisha and Nansha Islands for domestic island tourism.

Jiang Shiye had also mentioned to Su Yehao before that the company didn't earn much money taking tourists to Phuket in Thailand and Bali, with most of the expenses going towards air tickets and hotels.

Some of the natural islands in the South Sea were no less beautiful than the Maldives, and it was a bit of a waste to leave them idle.

If he could figure out a way to develop a few islands, the sheer number of mainland tourists would probably flatten the beaches. Maybe he could ask about it when he had the chance.

Su Yehao was distracted for a moment, and then he heard Uncle Qiu continue:

"Sure enough, the richer you are, the more money you make. You're filling in such a large island all at once, equivalent to a quarter of the total area of Casino. Everyone around me seems to have the idea of buying a house there. I even talked about it with someone over dinner last time. I estimate that when this Emperor Crab Island is completed, the villas on Bishop's Hill will be deserted."

Su Yehao told him:

"The cost of living on the island is high, and the house prices aren't cheap either. It's true that a lot of houses can be built, but when more people are attracted in the future, house prices in other places will still rise."

Always hoping that his son would save some money through fixed assets, Su's father had been very supportive of the Emperor Crab Island project from the beginning. He now said with a laugh:

"It's just a gimmick. In the end, it's still a tourism city. If I had the idea of building an island earlier, I wouldn't have spent so much money to acquire land on Taipa Island when bidding for the gambling license. Isn't that screwing over your dad? It would have been better to build the casino directly on the crab shell."

"It doesn't matter. Anyway, fixed assets in Casino won't depreciate. I'm making more money now to invest in other places in the future through mortgages. I've been thinking about whether to invest in a car company and seize the market in the mainland."

As soon as Su Yehao finished speaking, Uncle Qiu said:

"Oh, mainlanders have money now, and the automobile industry is a good business. I see that industrial countries like Japan and South Korea all like to develop in the automobile industry, which shows that this thing must be very profitable. It doesn't seem particularly difficult for you. Just say hello to the people above, and you'll definitely get the green light all the way."

Su's father had just learned that his son had the idea of getting involved in the automobile industry. He sighed with emotion that his son had indeed grown up, with investment projects one after another, leaving him overwhelmed.

He said to Su Yehao:

"Starting a car manufacturing project will cost at least ten billion Hong Kong dollars. This business isn't that simple. The market is basically dominated by German, Japanese, and American cars. There are also a few British brands that are more high-end. You have no technology and no market. What are you going to compete with them with?"

Su Yehao had been thinking about it for three or four days, and of course he knew that this business wasn't that easy to do. The major joint venture brands were very tacitly working together to prevent mainland car companies from developing.

Therefore, attempts to exchange technology for the market in the form of joint ventures had been repeatedly unsuccessful.

This meant that even if he was willing to spend a lot of money to acquire an existing car company, other forces would probably not easily let Su Yehao succeed and would likely interfere.

It was likely that even if the acquisition was completed, he wouldn't be able to transfer the technology, talent, and production line to the mainland. Wouldn't that be equivalent to acquiring nothing?

Just as Su's father said.

The market had already been divided up, and no one was willing to share the cake with new forces.

Looking at it, it seemed that he could only try to lay out a new track, starting with trying to develop electric vehicles...