Chapter 100 Small Business
The children encouraged each other with smiles, but were also waiting for Xia Daohua's judgment with nervousness and excitement.
Xia Daohua adopted all these ideas with a smile, and took this opportunity to expand several other snacks. For example, from steamed cakes and jujube paste cakes, with a little association, they expanded to jujube cakes, mung bean cakes, and chestnut cakes.
However, some improvements were made due to seasonal restrictions.
Xia Daohua also came up with a plan for making fancy pickles.
However, everyone thinks that the cost of pickled vegetables is too high. Because pickling pickles first requires a lot of salt, and salt is expensive and hard to buy. Although Beiguan Town is adjacent to Bohai County, it is relatively convenient to buy salt.
Xia Daohua did not insist and put the pickled vegetables project at the end.
The enthusiastic money-making team enthusiastically counted the revenue from bamboo tube rice.
In just over two months, they had earned nearly sixteen taels of silver.
Of course, this is mainly due to Erlang's big orders. You can't make so much money just by setting up a stall and selling goods.
It’s not that the sales are bad, the sales of the stalls are actually very good.
However, it costs too much for them to go into the city.
To enter the town, you have to pay an entry fee; if you bring goods, you have to pay taxes on them; if you set up a stall, you have to pay a stall fee; if you close the stall, you have to pay a street cleaning fee...
If you happen to see a patrol officer who takes a fancy to something on your stall, you must pay him due respect, or he may take away your entire stall.
If you run into the sons of powerful and wealthy people, they will be riding horses, laughing and playing, and they may knock over your stall, or even injure you or your customers. The few copper coins you earn from setting up the stall will not be enough to pay for the medicine!
Fortunately, the children choose the location carefully every time.
After several observations, we deliberately chose corners where vehicles and horses would not easily collide.
This kind of land is not a very good location for a small food stall.
So no one competed with them.
It was not until later, when there were several incidents of dandy young men riding horses, that the benefits of their stall became apparent.
However, because Xia Daohua and his men had always stayed in that corner before, they had become almost familiar with the patrolling officers.
None of these small vendors dared to bully them because they were children. Occasionally, an adult who came along was a lame man on crutches (Erlang), who would try to grab that spot.
Xia Daohua and her friends continued to set up stalls at market days to sell fancy bamboo tube rice, and at the same time they also gradually added new products - of course they couldn't release all the new products at once.
Instead, either add some new varieties and colors during festivals, or release some fresh food when followers appear in large numbers.
As the profits kept accumulating, Xia Daohua discovered that their small business was making quite a bit of profit.
Without considering labor, and only counting materials and expenses, on average, basically for every one tael of silver that costs, one can earn back about five taels of silver in revenue.
Except for some special festival days, there are markets in the first, middle and last ten days of every month.
Even if they set up a stall at every market, it wouldn't take up too much effort considering the early preparations and the later cleanup.
However, although the money-making team was enthusiastic and motivated, Xia Daohua felt that the street stall business, making money penny by penny, was too slow.
The income that everyone deserves is currently in Xia Daohua's hands.
Because it was best hidden in her hands, and no one in the family could find it. She didn't have to worry about her parents finding out about the money and taking it away without saying anything. She might even get beaten for hiding it.
In fact, the children are worrying too much.
Since the family members knew that they went to set up stalls happily every time there was a market and came back happily, how could they not know that they were making money?
It’s just that the adults looked down on these small businesses. They thought that no matter how hard the kids tried, they wouldn’t be able to make anything big, so they deliberately didn’t ask about their income.
They also kept an account book to tell each person how much income they should get, and Goro was the one who kept it.
Because all correspondence between Xia Daohua and Li Gan was done in drawings, and Li Gan's letters had to be read by Old Man Xia himself, Old Man Xia had already begun to teach Wu Lang.
Of course, boys from other rooms who want to learn to read can learn from Grandpa Xia.
Although Mr. Xia only had a few years of education, he had a solid foundation and could write beautiful handwriting.
As for skills such as literacy, letter writing, and account keeping, they are also very proficient.
The fact that the Xia family was able to acquire so much land and raise so many children was also related to the fact that Old Man Xia was good at writing and calculating.
It's a pity that Grandpa Xia may have learned the lesson of the first wife. Although he is willing to give his children an education, he is unwilling (of course, it may also be that he really does not have the ability) to send any of his grandchildren to school.
When Sanlang and Silang heard that they had to continue working, they lost interest in learning to read.
However, Erlang, Wulang and Liulang were all very excited.
But Liu Lang was still young, and after learning just two words he found it boring and quickly ran out to play.
Only the adult Erlang, the middle-aged Wulang, and the shameless Xia Daohua were left. They insisted on listening to Grandpa Xia's lectures every five days, teaching them how to read, write and use an abacus.
At first, Old Master Xia was reluctant to teach Daohua. He felt that it was inappropriate for a young lady to study the books of sages.
Xia Daohua, however, said shamelessly:
"Master, I'm not going to take the imperial examination, but I can't be a blind man, right?
It would be fine if we didn't have a ready-made husband like you in our family, but now that you are here, let me take advantage of the situation!
Anyway, I won’t show off to outsiders!
Since no one else knows about it, how can it be considered inappropriate? "
It was not known whether Mr. Xia was frightened by her pestering or moved by her calling him "Sir", but in any case, he actually agreed with Xia Daohua's theory of "driving one sheep is the same as letting two sheep go" and decided to accept her as his non-curricular student.
Xia Daohua happily brought a gift of "supply money" to Grandpa Xia - two pheasants that she had "hunted" herself in the mountains.
Grandpa Xia's literacy class had been going on for a while, and Xia Daohua had never missed a class.
Although Mr. Xia was somewhat helpless about her "rebellious" enthusiasm, he secretly praised Xia Daohua's tenacity to Zhou.
Xia Daohua didn't know what Grandpa Xia thought of her, nor did she care much about it.
The fact that she and Old Man Xia could read was just a pretense. In fact, the writing system of Da Chu was not much different from the ancient traditional Chinese characters. Although Xia Daohua was not very skilled in writing, she had no pressure in recognizing them.
She was more focused on the small business of the money-making team.
After considering for a few days, Xia Daohua decided to let Xiao Xiancai out.
But it is not convenient for her to go there by herself.
Hey, it’s the 100th chapter! Sprinkle flowers! There is expected to be one more chapter, but the next one will be very late, so everyone can read it tomorrow and don’t stay up late. Love you, (づ￣ 3￣)づ!
(End of this chapter)
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