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she was way overcharging us. The way I found out was this: One day a little man came into my office, a typical Bugis-Makassarese type in beat up clothes and carrying one of those awful beat-up old suitcases. He said to me, 'I hear you have been buying silk from Princess _x_ _. Well, she is overcharging you and I can sell you good, silk at a much cheaper price.' So I said to myself 'I'm busy, but let's have a look inside the suitcase, because we were there to help' Well he did have a whole load of beautiful silks and he gave them to us at a much better price, so we switched out orders to him. Then one day, a few months later (?) he was just leaving [[strikethrough]] whe [[/strikethrough]] my office when the head of x province, the district where they make the silk, came in and said he was the head of x province and from now on we should buy all our silk from him. I said 'do you see that little man over there whose just leaving with the beat-up 

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suitcase. Well, I just bought 142,000 Rp worth of silk from him, and we won't be needing any more right away, thank you.' Well, his mouth dropped open + he went away and he never came back." 
Many, but not all of the intermediaries were Chinese, like an old Chinese women from Pekalongan, who sold them beautiful bright colored batik sarongs with a special almost modern-looking border design- "We tried and tried to find out where she bought those sarongs so we could buy them directly. She obviously didn't design them herself, since you could tell from her clothes and the way she dressed that she had no taste herself. Although we tried to find out where she got the sarongs, she had her Chinese Mafia and was able to keep it a secret from us."
Sergio dislikes the term cottage industry or the type of "sociological" definitions the Dept. of Industry uses in terms of no. of