When the tea is ready, they can have it if they want, or they can sell it to her for money; either way, it's a source of income.

When they arrived at the village chief's house, they told him about it, and he immediately agreed that everyone should go together. And so, the three families set off into the mountains to pick tea leaves.

Chen Hong led them to the small tea grove, letting the two families rest and pick tea while she continued walking deeper into the mountains.

There are still two valleys of toon sprouts and wild aralia sprouts that haven't been picked yet! Chen Hong is quick on her feet. Once she was out of sight of the old men, she put the bamboo basket back into her spatial storage and quickly ran into the deep mountains.

I had already explored the area yesterday and found my way through. Around 8 a.m., I arrived at the valley where Chinese toon and aralia trees grow.

In the deserted valley, only the crisp, melodious sound of Chen Hong snapping wild vegetables echoed.

After picking all the plump and tender buds of the fragrant buds and wild thorn buds growing in the two valleys, more than 300 catties of each of the two kinds of wild vegetables were harvested.

Chunhong then transplanted a few azaleas and forsythias into the space before hurrying back.

When she returned to the small tea grove, the village chief and the others had already finished picking tea leaves and were eating and resting while waiting for her.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, everyone hurriedly went down the mountain. Once home, they set up a pot at Uncle Village Chief's house and started frying tea leaves. This time, they fried about six catties of tea leaves in total.

Uncle Village Chief wanted to keep some tea leaves to drink. He had been drinking the tea that Chen Hong had given him since last year and had gotten used to it. Now, it was just the two of them living at home, and they weren't short of money.

Uncle Erhu's family didn't want the tea. Their children are still young, and they need to buy a house, send their grandson to school, and get married in the future.

There were still many things to spend money on, and besides, his family didn't usually drink tea, so they decided to ask for money. The village chief's family took half a jin of tea leaves, and the remaining five and a half jin went to Chen Hong.

Chen Hong felt embarrassed because she had agreed to give Uncle Erhu's family another two thousand yuan. She didn't touch the tea this time, but instead shared the large basket of over 100 jin of wild vegetables she had carried with the two families.

Three copies were made, one for each of the three families. They do have toon sprouts in their area.

Only a few families in the village grow one in front of or behind their houses. Not every family has one, so it's considered a rare vegetable. It sells for at least six or seven yuan per kilogram at the market.

They had never eaten prickly ash shoots before. Chen Hong said that they tasted even better than toon shoots and were especially suitable for elderly people living by the sea because their main medicinal value was that they could treat rheumatoid arthritis.

This disease is one of the most common chronic illnesses among coastal fishermen.

Spicy sprouts are also delicious, especially the tender sprouts that grow deep in the mountains, which have a particularly fragrant and rich flavor.

We had a very fruitful day on the mountain, and that evening, everyone decided to have dinner together at the village chief's house.

Aunt Erhu came home and brought out a bowl of steamed buns and a piece of cured meat weighing three pounds.

Chen Hong went home and brought back two large fish, two lobsters, and two bottles of wine; the village chief's family paid for everything else.

Eight dishes were prepared in total for the evening. Chen Hong made three new dishes: stir-fried aralia shoots with eggs, deep-fried aralia shoots, and stir-fried aralia shoots with cured meat. She also taught Aunt Guo and Aunt Erhu how to cook and process aralia shoots.

Both elderly people had cooked their whole lives, and the preparation of prickly ash shoots was incredibly simple; they could learn it at a glance. Once they tasted the prickly ash shoots, they quickly developed various ways to cook them.

I tried all sorts of cooking methods: pan-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying, mixing, and even using tender shoots of wild thorn as filling. I made vegetable pancakes, dumplings, and large steamed buns.

Just after finishing dinner and returning home, Chen Hong received a call from Director Guan of the Beijing branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Director Guan told Chen Hong that he and Fang Yitong had found several courtyard houses for her.

They had seen all the houses and were quite satisfied with them. They asked Chen Hong when she would have time to go to Beijing as soon as possible to find a suitable place and finalize the deal.

He also told Chen Hong that these houses were all auctioned off last year but failed to sell. They are located in the inner city of the east and west, in very good locations, but the prices are not low.

Upon hearing his words, Chen Hong suddenly remembered that in her previous life, a batch of courtyard houses had been auctioned in Beijing in 2006, but for various reasons, they all failed to sell, and not a single one was sold.

Is this the batch of houses that Director Guan mentioned?

Chen Hong inquired carefully with Director Guan over the phone, and it turned out to be quite a coincidence. According to Director Guan, it really was one of the houses that failed to sell at auction last year.

However, the real reason for the failed auction is different from what is circulating in society. There are inside stories that ordinary people do not know.

There are many other complex reasons involved, as most of the buyers participating in the auction were foreign businessmen and Hong Kong residents, whose family backgrounds and political circumstances were quite complicated.

Considering security concerns, government departments worried that if people like them bought houses in the inner city of the capital, it could become a source of instability. Therefore, they significantly increased the prices of all auctioned houses at the last minute.

Because the price adjustment was too high, the buyers were definitely unwilling to suffer a loss, so not a single unit was sold and all went unsold.

The house itself is not problematic; it's just that the national security department has used this incident to impose many restrictions on home purchases.