Chapter Thirty-Five Charity Auction

  As soon as they entered the hall, they saw several waiters bustling about. Under Mack's lead, Ju An took Emma into the elevator. When they came out of the elevator, they saw a huge rooftop garden with a small band playing and a female singer singing some song.

  What caught the eye was people dressed up everywhere, in groups of three or five, chatting about something. On the other side of the garden, there were several dining tables, filled with food. Next to the dining table, there was a small bar, inside which there were three or four bartenders busy at work. There were also some waiters holding trays loaded with various wines and walking around.

  He turned his face slightly and saw Philips walking over with a smile, then gave Ju An a hug: "An, my friend, I just mentioned you earlier."

  For this old friend Philip, who had only met once, Ju An was a little surprised in his heart, but he didn't show it on his face. He warmly hugged Philip and said, "It took a lot of time to get dressed like this." After finishing, he shrugged his shoulders.

  Then Philips let Ju An not be so restrained and have more fun, and called out to a guy who had just come up below.

  Mike introduced several people to Ju An, such as company directors and New York state senators. Everyone chatted and laughed, making Ju An's face ache. Finally, he found a chance to get away from Mike, shook off the girl named Emma, held his glass of red wine, and walked to the railing, looking at the lights of thousands of families around him.

  In just a few minutes, I suddenly heard someone behind me say: "Excuse me, are you Chinese?"

  As he turned his head, he saw a man in his thirties of Asian descent standing beside him, holding a glass of wine.

  "I am," replied Ju An with a smile, "I haven't been in America for long."

  "Hello, I'm Zhang Yonghe from Shaanxi Province in China. I've been in the US for over five years."

  "You're too early."

  Zhang Yonghe continued: "Just saw you alone here, looking like a compatriot, came up to ask, and introduced you to a few friends."

  As he spoke, he led a few groups of people and walked into a group of people with black hair and yellow skin. After introducing each other in a circle, they only knew that these people were basically from the mainland of their hometown, the earliest ones had been there for more than ten years, and the latest one was Ju An, just a few months ago.

  "My name is Duan Bin, I'm from Hei Province in China, and now I run a venture capital firm," said the short, chubby man with a round face in his thirties.

  "My name is Li Yannian, I'm from Jiangsu Province, and I've been in the US for over three years. Now I'm doing import and export business." Another man, about 1.7 meters tall, smiled as he introduced himself.

  "Then we can be considered old friends, my hometown is also in Jiangsu Province, Si County, Jiangsu Province. Now I have a ranch in Montana."

  "That's really a fellow countryman, my hometown is in Xuxian County, Jiangsu Province." Li Yannian replied with a smile.

  "Well then, I'll be off. I'm from Sichuan Province and my name is Ma Chaohan. I manage a private financial company here." said the tall middle-aged man.

  A few people started chatting in Chinese and it felt more lively.

  "Xiaoju, who has just arrived from China not long ago, may not be familiar with the Chinese Americans yet. Now we have over 4 million Chinese Americans with voting rights, which is an indispensable source of votes in American politics. In recent years, more and more Chinese Americans are entering politics, and the number of Chinese American voters is also increasing, but the voter turnout rate is still very low, only around 30%. I am now doing some work at the Chinese United Association to encourage everyone to cast their votes, regardless of who they vote for," said Duan Bin with a round face.

  "We Chinese are still too honest, many older people don't care about politics at all, just focus on their own family and that's it. Fortunately, the voting rate of the new generation of Chinese is getting higher and higher, which is a big progress." Li Yannian said with a smile.

  Ma Zhenhua smiled and said, "The older generation doesn't care about politics because they don't know what the ballot in their hand represents. Now, among Chinese Americans of this generation, it's much better. In today's two-party election, if you don't show off your Chinese name a bit, you'd be embarrassed to call yourself a presidential candidate."

  "That's the Chinese Americans are getting more and more, I estimate that in a decade or so, there will be 7 million Chinese Americans with voting rights, no matter which party can't ignore the votes in the hands of Chinese Americans now, the new Chinese Americans have slowly become an unstoppable political force within the United States" Zhang Yonghe said.

  By listening to the conversation of several people, Ju An roughly understood the living conditions of Chinese Americans. Zhang Yonghe also organized a Chinese-American Mutual Aid Association to help some Chinese Americans who were having difficulty making ends meet. After hearing this, Ju An also promised to donate some money.

  The next auction was simple, everyone entered a large hall, the hall had rows of chairs, in front of a slightly higher platform. On it was placed a microphone, and Emma, a brown-haired beauty, sat down with some newly acquainted fellow villagers.

  Next, I saw Old Fly Philips come on stage and first hold a meeting with the domestic side which was nothing special. First, he thanked everyone for welcoming him and other nonsense like that.

  The auction is about to begin, and the items being auctioned off are small trinkets with the Democratic Party logo printed on them. They're probably just cheap junk, only worth a few bucks, and they're still soft girls.

  Then the auction began, and everyone was still quite enthusiastic. The small items were basically all sold for several thousand to tens of thousands of a good price.

  Among them, Ju An also took two small things, front and back, which cost more than $20,000. After taking the photos, he asked Zhang Yonghe next to him where to pay the money.

  Zhang Yonghe smiled and said: "After the auction is over, just write a check directly. Someone will contact you at that time."

  "Then how much money does your Democratic Party spend on elections every year?"

  Zhang Yong asked strangely: "How much money did you spend on the election, is someone using the Democratic Party's flag to cheat people out of their money? This is rarely seen."

  " No, a friend of mine wanted me to get close to the Democratic Party, I thought it would be tens or hundreds of millions."

  "You think you can spend that much money? You could join the action committee for the election! You need to understand the American legal mechanism. Most of the funds for US elections come from free donors, who are ordinary people. The maximum donation amount per person per election is $2,300. For example, 90% of Obama's campaign funds came from these people, many of whom donated $20, $50, or $100, which added up to hundreds of millions of dollars. In contrast, McCain's donations under $2,000 accounted for only 66%. This is called 'hard money.' The regulations are very strict, and there is a special election website where you can enter your name and address to find out how much you or someone you know has donated and to whom. Even if there is leftover money, the recipient cannot take it away; it must be left there as funds for the next election. For example, Hillary has a special account with money from her failed Democratic primary campaign, but she cannot use it for anything else."

  "Would it be okay if I wanted to give someone around 1.8 million in support?"

  "Are you kidding me? That's called bribery and it will bring big trouble. None of the candidates dare to accept your money, the supervision here is very strict. Even if you have a large sum of illegal money, you can't spend it out, that's why there's a saying about money laundering in American gangs."

  "Living comfortably, he scratched his head and said: 'It's a bit different from what I thought, I thought all this money came from rich people.'"

  Zhang Yonghe smiled and shook his head: "Rich people are all sponsoring political parties, and there's bribery, you say? Of course, there is. The law can't cover every corner. Last time, an American mayor was bribed with $25,000, known as the largest bribery case since the founding of the United States. And you're confusing the internal free donors of the financial group with the financial group itself. These free donors are indeed from within the financial group, but they are individual donors representing themselves, not the rich people. So you'll find that among these free donors, both parties have supporters. Even if you donate to a political party every year, it's not more than $100,000, or it's against the law. Another part of the funding comes from what is called soft money, through the action committee of the election campaign. This part of the funds cannot directly participate in the election and is largely uncontrollable. However, you can't use this money to speak well of yourself; you can only speak ill of others. This money won't appear on the account books. There's also government funding of tens of millions of dollars, the candidate's own property, and party-provided funds."

  Zhang Yonghe's words made Ju An think for a while.

  After the auction ended, I parted ways with several newly acquainted fellow townspeople. I followed Mike for a while, and Mike introduced himself to a Montana senator, exchanged compliments, and then bid farewell to Mike.

  On the way back, since Mike's house was not far from here, Mike asked the driver to take himself home first and then take Ju An to the hotel.

  After Mike got off the bus, Ju An asked Emma, the brown-haired beauty, where she lived and sent her home first. The several flirtatious words in Emma's speech were all dodged by Ju An, not that Ju An didn't like beauties, nor was it because Ju An was too noble, but simply because he didn't like girls who were separated from him by the car window, thinking it was awkward.

  After sending Emma off, when they were almost at the hotel, at a red light, Ju An got out of the car and told the driver to go back, she would walk the rest of the way.

  Undo the tie, put it in his pocket, and unbutton his shirt to breathe more smoothly. He stood under a bright streetlight and walked towards the hotel along the main road.

  After walking for a while, I found a bar by the road. Actually, I don't like bars, but today I wanted to have a few drinks, so I pushed open the door and went in.

  There are a lot of people in the bar, the lights are somewhat dim, and many people sit together drinking and chatting.

  He sat down at the bar next to a bartender who was clearly of Latin descent and said, "A whiskey."

  The bartender looked at Ju An, handed him a cup, poured a small amount of wine into it, and smiled: "Sir, is this your first time here?"

  "How did you know it was my first time?" Ju An asked, raising his wine cup.

  "A person wearing a Patek Philippe watch and a tailored suit doesn't usually show up in this kind of bar, if he did I would definitely remember." The bartender shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  "Maybe I'm wearing fake goods, who knows?" He downed the liquor in one gulp, and a warm current flowed down his throat into his stomach. "Let's have another cup."

  "Wow, I can only praise you, your fake goods are made just like the real ones." The bartender glanced around and said: "So, it will be known soon whether yours is a fake or not, the appraiser has arrived."