Shih Chung Branch School: 小小商店

There was a section at the back of the classroom we called 小小商店 or "Little Store". It's mainly set up to get little kids interested in maths, business and commodity trading in years to come. The store is actually made up of six desks, where we'd place empty boxes, cans and bottles of daily items such as toothpaste, Milo, beer, cigarettes, etc.

The teacher would set the cost and price for each item and two or three students would be appointed shopkeepers and the rest are customers. We'd buy the items and the shopkeepers would record the sales and calculate the net profit when the shop was closed.

We abandoned this concept very soon. Firstly, no physical money was involved – imagine playing Monopoly without the fake notes. And we had to return the merchandise (even though they were just empty containers) at the end of each role-playing session, boo!

Me, on the other hand, was the 小小商人, or Budding Entrepreneur. I used to have lots of children's comic books, mainly 儿童乐园. I remember bringing stacks of them to school in my bag and during recess I'd rent them out at 10 cents per read (strictly no sharing). I even made library cards for overnight loans (20 cents each). But I couldn't keep up with demand and soon ran out of comics to rent. It was good business while it lasted.

This is not the actual comic I had but from the same series. This was published in 1954, way before I was born. I think my mum threw away all my 儿童乐园 *sobs*.

Source: swift