Chapter 255 Solving the Problem with Rosa Band-Aid
With the most important matter in Nanyang City resolved, Cheng Wanwan felt much more relaxed.
On the afternoon of the third day, the merchant ship was about to return home. She got up early in the morning and took her two sons to stroll around Nanyang City. Since she had made money, she wanted to buy more things. There were so many people in the family waiting eagerly, and she wanted to bring back at least one gift for each of them.
Nanyang City is truly bustling; people from all over the country gather here, and you can find all sorts of things here.
Cheng Wanwan bought a pipe for Old Man Zhao. His pipe was probably at least twenty years old and looked terrible. It was time to buy a new one. These things weren't expensive in Nanyang City. She bought a brand new one for three hundred coins. It looked very sturdy.
I bought a forehead band for Grandma Zhao. Older women usually use these to block the wind, and with the weather getting colder, it's time for her to use one too.
As for the group of children, a bag of snacks was enough to satisfy them.
Zhao Youyin and Zhao Youcai each bought a pair of shoes, while Wen and Sun each bought a suit.
With his newly received wages tucked in his hand, Zhao Dawang said, "When I came to Nanyang, Xia Hua asked me to look for colored embroidery thread. There are only twenty-four colors in Hekou County, and she wants more red. I can't tell the difference between these colors at all. Aunt, please help me..."
He was completely dumbfounded that a single shade of red could be divided into thirty or forty different shades of red.
Cheng Wanwan chuckled. Zhao Dawang, a simple-minded country bumpkin, would never be able to distinguish these colors. Xia Hua hadn't even chosen the right person.
She stepped into the embroidery workshop and found the place where the embroidery threads were kept. When she saw hundreds of colors of embroidery threads, Cheng Wanwan was stunned. There were dozens of reds in front of her, but she couldn't tell them apart. Oh well, she was just a country bumpkin herself... In the end, she decided to buy them all.
Because Xia Hua was embroidering ordinary handkerchiefs, she also bought ordinary embroidery thread. The total cost of all the thread was more than 500 coins. Zhao Dawang rushed to pay the money, and he spent all the wages he had worked so hard to earn.
As Zhao Ergou looked at the lines arranged in order of light and dark color, something suddenly flashed through his mind.
"Should we bring some embroidery thread back for Yingying too?" Cheng Wanwan teased her second son secretly, a hint of gossip in her eyes. In fact, she was very curious about how far things had progressed between her second son and Yingying.
Zhao Ergou didn't understand at all. He asked slowly, "It looks beautiful when so many colors are embroidered into flowers, so why does a garment look bad when there are too many colors?"
“Who says clothes with too many colors don’t look good?” Cheng Wanwan shook her head. “It’s all about how you match the colors.”
These days, weaving and dyeing techniques are quite advanced. Wealthy families' clothes have embroidered patterns and color blocking, but poor people's clothes are made from a single piece of cloth and are only one color. Poor families don't have the time to embroider flowers on their clothes, so the colors are very monotonous and dull, and they are not very attractive.
“I met someone at the inn yesterday. He should be from Hekou County, so we’re practically from the same hometown,” Zhao Ergou said. “He has a batch of gauze fabric that has some problems with the dyeing process. This batch is stuck with him and he can’t sell it. Mother, do you think this batch can be salvaged?”
Cheng Wanwan turned her head and looked at him seriously: "Ergou, you don't mean to buy this batch of silk gauze, do you?"
Zhao Ergou quickly shook his head: "Of course not, I was just asking casually."
Having suffered setbacks in business, he dared not act rashly again.
Furthermore, the soap business can't keep his mother busy all day long; he needs to learn to share her burdens instead of making her worry.
Cheng Wanwan touched her chin.
In the summer, mosquitoes would buzz around her ears every night. She tried mosquito repellent spray, but it didn't work. A mosquito net was the best solution.
Gauze is a type of gauze fabric, and it's too expensive to buy it specifically. These ruined pieces of fabric are perfect for making mosquito nets.
She smiled and said, "Since we're from the same hometown, let's help each other minimize our losses. If the price is right, I'll buy two or three. Let's go take a look."
The three returned to the inn. As soon as they entered, they saw a chubby man eating in the lobby, while the waiter brought up two jugs of wine.
Zhao Ergou quickly stepped forward: "Uncle, don't drink yet!"
This person got drunk after drinking and couldn't discuss anything.
He asked, "Does the gauze you have still left, sir?"
"How did you know I had gauze?" The man stared at Zhao Ergou for a while, and finally remembered where he had seen him before. He stood up and laughed loudly, "So it was you. I'm so sorry you had to laugh at me that day. Come, let me treat you to a drink."
Zhao Ergou shook his head: "No, no, no, I don't drink."
He had drunk it once, and the feeling of being drunk was awful; his head was spinning, and he couldn't remember what happened.
He began, "This is my mother. She wants to buy two bolts of gauze."
The man stared at Cheng Wanwan, somewhat incredulous: "Your mother is so young, how could she have given birth to such a big son..."
Cheng Wanwan asked with a faint smile, "Is there any more silk gauze?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" The man nodded, forgetting all about drinking, and led Cheng Wanwan and Zhao Ergou to the back warehouse. "They're all in here. There might be some fabrics that haven't been dyed properly. You'll have to find them yourselves. If you find them, it's luck. If you don't, there's nothing I can do."
Cheng Wanwan casually tore open two pieces of cloth. The colors were indeed unpleasant, some dark and some light, with no discernible pattern.
These are clothes sold to the upper class. They are gauze garments worn as the outermost layer, designed to be flowing and elegant. If the color is too dark, they lose this charm, no wonder they don't sell.
There's no need to choose colors when making mosquito nets; she just grabbed two at random and went to pay.
"It's fate that we met, how could I take money?" The man picked up four or five more horses from the ground and stuffed them into Zhao Ergou's arms. "Take them all, no money required."
Zhao Ergou quickly waved his hand: "How can that be? My mother said that we can't take advantage of anyone. We have to name a price."
"To be honest, I plan to sell this batch of fabric as waste textiles, sold by weight as scrap. Taking money from you would be ripping you off." The man's face was scrunched up, looking like he was about to cry. "These things make my heart ache. If you can take even a little bit, that would be a huge help to me."
He wasn't bothered by his own loss, but the main problem was that other family members had also invested a total of 20,000 taels. He didn't know how to explain this to them. Just thinking about it gave him a headache, and all he wanted to do was drink. He wanted to drown his sorrows in alcohol so he wouldn't have to think about these troubling things when he was drunk.
Cheng Wanwan didn't want to get involved, but the man refused to take the money no matter what, and she wasn't the type to take advantage of others.
She stared at the fabrics and said slowly, "Perhaps there is a way to reduce the losses, but it would require a large investment. Would you like to hear about it?"
The man's eyes lit up.
He was away from home for more than a month. At first, he was doing other business, and then he went to pick up Luo Sha. He then transported her by water to Nanyang to sell her. When he was about to sell her, he found out that he had been cheated. He couldn't even go to find the other party to cause trouble, because he knew that the group of people must have already taken the money and run away.
For the past two weeks in Nanyang, he had been begging and pleading, but no one wanted this batch of silk gauze.
Finally, this morning, he decided to give up.
Instead of wasting time in Nanyang, it would be better to pick yourself up and do something else.
Cao Defu is quite talented in business.
Cheng Wanwan didn't speak, but instead asked Zhao Ergou to spread out all the cloth.
Finally, they found a piece of sky-blue silk that hadn't been destroyed.
She placed the pure-colored gauze on the outermost layer, the second layer was the dyed blue cloth, the bottom layer was a piece of water-red cloth, which took some effort to find suitable, and the fourth layer was pure sky-blue gauze, making a total of four layers.
She smiled and said, "The morning chill is light beyond the green willows, and spring is in full bloom on the red apricot branches. Doesn't this poem suit you perfectly?"
Green and red shrouded in a sky-blue gauze curtain, the green like smoke and the red spreading out in large swaths, it is just like green willows and red apricots, with a unique charm in the cold mist.
Cheng Wanwan changed the color again: "The garden is full of shades, reflected in the green waves. Or, the river flowers at sunrise are redder than fire, and the river water in spring is greener than blue..."
Cao Defu was completely dumbfounded.
The silk gauze, which was clearly destroyed and had become a waste, suddenly became elegant and classy when paired with such a poem, even making him, a vulgar man, shamefully feel moved.
If it were scholars or young ladies from wealthy families, they would probably compete to buy it, just to show off their own taste and aesthetic sense.
What he needs to do is buy a large quantity of solid-color gauze and combine it with the currently damaged gauze to make gauze skirts or blouses. He's not selling fabric, but ready-made garments.
A garment is a poem, making it a unique piece of clothing in this world.
By the time Cao Defu came to his senses, Cheng Wanwan and Zhao Ergou had already left with the cloth.
He said breathlessly, "Arrange a boat to return to Hekou County!"
This time, he wanted to find a familiar shopkeeper to make solid-color gauze; he absolutely couldn't be ripped off a second time!
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