3. The Pig-driving Girl
The next morning, Fan Changyu left Changning with Aunt Zhao and went out with the three hundred coins and a silver hairpin in his pocket.
The hairpin was bought for her by her parents when she came of age, and it cost more than two taels of silver.
If I pawn this hairpin, I should be able to get enough money to sell the pig.
She entered the pawnshop, but to her surprise the shopkeeper took her hairpin and looked at it for a long time, then held up three fingers and said, "Three hundred coins."
Fan Changyu was almost out of breath. She widened her eyes and said, "This hairpin is made of pure silver, but it's only worth three hundred coins?"
The shopkeeper said, "Although the hairpin is made of silver, it is not heavy and the style is outdated. I know your family is in financial difficulty, so I will give you 500 coins, no more."
"One or two. I won't accept it if I don't have one cent less."
The shopkeeper put the hairpin on the counter and said, "Then you should take it back."
Fan Changyu had been hoping to pawn the hairpin to buy a pig, but she had not expected the black-hearted shopkeeper to bargain so hard. She did not waste any more words with the shopkeeper, just put away the hairpin and walked out.
The shopkeeper had not expected that the girl would be so stubborn. She refused to bargain, so he could only shout, "Come back, come back. One ounce is one ounce. Just think of it as your uncle taking pity on you and paying you for this hairpin. It's so early in the morning, and doing this business with you is like opening a new business..."
After leaving the pawnshop, Fan Changyu had an extra tael of silver on him.
In order to find out the price of brined pork in the market, she first went to the street where cooked food was sold.
Today is the market day. Although it is still early, the market is already quite lively. Many farmers from the countryside bring mountain products to the market to sell, exchange them for money and buy New Year goods to take back.
Fan Changyu took a walk around and found that the shops selling cooked meat mainly sold roast chicken and roast goose. The most popular parts of halved pork were pig heads and pig ears, while offal was the least popular.
A fat lady saw Fan Changyu looking at the food she had placed outside the store and called out, "Miss, would you like to buy some roast chicken?"
Fan Changyu asked: "How do you sell this pork head meat?"
The fat lady said, "Miss, you have a good eye. This pork head was just brine last night. It was brine all night long. It smells delicious! Five cents for an ounce. How much do you want, young lady?"
That is fifty cents per pound, but many times merchants will deliberately raise the price to leave room for bargaining.
In order to test the other party, Fan Changyu deliberately said: "It's so expensive..."
The fat lady immediately said, "It's New Year's Day, what kind of meat has not increased in price in the market? The ones I sell here are the most affordable. If you really want to buy, I'll charge you nine cents for two taels."
Fan Changyu guessed that it was sold at this price most of the time, so the price of brined pork head meat was about 45 wen per pound.
She followed this method and then went to different butcher shops to inquire about the prices of halved pig ears and offal. Halved pig ears were the most expensive, at 60 wen per pound, but only two ears were produced from a pig, so she guessed that scarcity made them more valuable.
In comparison, salted fish is not so worthless, costing twenty cents per pound.
Originally, not many people eat pig offal. Rich people don't like to eat it, and poor people don't know how to prepare it, so if it's not prepared well, it will leave a strong smell.
This stuff is not sold in butcher shops. If you really want to buy it, you can take home a big bucket for less than ten cents.
Fan Changyu had an idea in mind. Beyond the street where cooked food was sold was the meat market, and further to the side was a tile market where livestock was sold.
The meat market is busier than the street selling cooked food. Fan Changyu's family owns a pork shop here in a prime location. Right now, all the other pork shops are open, with chopping boards and hooks full of pork. Only her shop's door is closed, as the space at the door has been taken by other stalls.
Fan Changyu felt a little unhappy when she saw this. She stood still and stared at her closed pork shop for a while, thinking that she would reopen the shop soon.
She turned around and took the money to go to the livestock market.
It's much more chaotic here in Wa City, with pigs, sheep, cows and horses all being sold here. If you're not careful you'll step on a pile of feces from some unknown animal, and the smell is also very unpleasant.
Most of the stall owners are middle-aged men in short brown clothes, with a few pigs or sheep tied to them. When bargaining, they shout out jargon that is difficult for outsiders to understand.
She was a pretty young woman, and she stood out here.
Some livestock dealers shouted and asked her what she wanted to buy, but Fan Changyu ignored them. She had come here with her father to buy pigs before, and she knew that it would usually be a bad deal if she bought things from livestock dealers.
There are many farmers who raise pigs today and are unwilling to sell them to pig dealers at low prices, so they rush to the market to sell their pigs. The price they offer is cheaper than that of livestock dealers.
However, Fan Changyu didn't find any pigs she liked after looking around. Her father had been slaughtering pigs for more than ten years and had learned from experience that one should choose pigs with round buttocks and short, thick tails. Such pigs have thick skin and fat, and only top-quality meat can be produced from them.
When Fan Changyu was about to look somewhere else, he saw a thin and dark old man in the corner.
At the old man's feet stood a fat pig with ropes tied around its front legs and neck, as if it was waiting to be sold. However, the pig was dirty, and it was still early in the morning, so there were not many buyers in Wa City and almost no one came forward to ask the price.
The old man looked eagerly at the people passing by, but he didn't dare to open his mouth to shout, looking like a man who is not good at speaking.
Fan Changyu stepped forward and asked, "Old man, how do you sell this pig?"
Finally someone came to ask for the price. The old man was a little nervous and said, "My family is waiting to sell this pig for the New Year. The pig dealer went to the countryside to buy pigs and asked for ten cents a pound. I, an old man, brought the pig to the town myself. If you want to buy it, I'll give you twelve cents a pound."
Fan Changyu had not expected that the pig traders would bargain the price so low when they went to collect the pigs. The pig traders in front of him had already asked for 18 or 19 cents per pound for a live pig, and it took a lot of effort for Fan Changyu to bargain with them down to 15 cents.
The price the old man gave was truly a steal.
Fortunately, there were not many people in Wa City at this time, otherwise the pig would have been bought by someone long ago. Fan Changyu hurriedly said, "I'll buy it!"
There was a large scale in Tashi that was used to weigh animals. When the pig was weighed, it weighed 90 kilograms. Fan Changyu gave the old man one or two taels of silver and eighty coins, and hurriedly took the pig back to his home in the west of the city.
The meat market had already opened, so she could only kill the pigs and sell them at the end of the market. Not only were there not many people, but she also had to force the price down.
It would be better to go back and prepare everything today, and then kill the pig and sell it tomorrow morning.
After leaving the tile market, Fan Changyu drove a pig along the road, which looked quite ostentatious and attracted many people to look at him.
Thanks to Fan Changyu's thick skin, when someone she knew asked her about it, she would still openly attract a customer for herself, saying that the pig would be slaughtered tomorrow and sold in the butcher shop, and she should remember to come and take care of the business then.
By chance, she ran into the restaurant chef who used to buy meat from her father's shop and was bringing back ingredients. When he heard that her family's pork shop would reopen the next day and saw that the pig she brought back was very fat, he ordered 20 kilograms from her on the spot and gave her a deposit of 200 coins.
Fan Changyu's face was flushed when she returned home. The alley was narrow, and she was chasing the pigs with a bamboo stick. Her shouts and the pigs' grunts could be heard throughout the alley.
A gyrfalcon with almost snow-white feathers flew out from the house and soared high into the sky. Fan Changyu looked up and felt a little surprised.
In winter, when the ground is covered with snow, it is common to see falcons stealing chickens and rabbits from farmers in the countryside. However, no one in this town raises these, so why would the falcon land so close to home?
The houses on both sides of this alley are crowded. They were built uniformly by the government in the early years, and every household has two floors.
At this moment, in an attic at the end of the alley, a man was half-sitting on the bed by the window, wearing a gray, old coat, which still couldn't hide his noble air. A long, extinguished charcoal stick was placed next to the charcoal basin at the foot of the bed.
The shirt he had put on the bed had a corner torn off.
The window was half open, and cold wind blew in, ruffling the man's clothes and long hair.
That face as clear as the moon and fresh snow, who else could it be but the man rescued by Fan Changyu.
The noisy sound coming from the alley made him look sideways. A pretty woman was walking in the narrow alley where the ice and snow had melted with a smile on her face. She was wearing the apricot-colored double-breasted short jacket that he had seen last night. She was like a bean of warm light that suddenly appeared in the silent and ancient painting.
But what she was chasing with the bamboo stick was... a pig?
The pig's cry once again verified its identity.
The man's expression became a little subtle.
He had seen ladies from noble families who were well-versed in poetry and literature, as well as heroic daughters of generals. This was indeed the first time he had ever seen a woman chasing a pig.
The woman had already walked over here, and he could no longer see her from the window, but he could hear her sister's joyful exclamation as she came out to greet him, "Sister, where did you get such a big pig?"
The woman's voice was full of smile and vitality: "Of course I bought it!"
There was a lot of noise outside, and it seemed that the lady from the family had also come over to help herd the pigs.
The man stopped listening to the noisy voices and closed his eyes for a nap. He needed to heal his injuries as soon as possible.
-
Fan Changyu knew nothing about all this. After she drove the pig into the side shed behind her house and locked it up, she took the bucket of pig water that she had sent to the Chen family yesterday and went to the well outside the alley to fetch water and wash the pig again.
Pork is fresh only when it is slaughtered that day. The pig she brought back has to be kept until tomorrow morning, and it will be too late to make brine. She will brine the bucket of pig tonight. It will not be sold separately tomorrow, but only as a bonus for the pork she buys.
If you bought a pound of fresh pork from her, she would give you one or two ounces of halved offal.
Fan Changyu walked around the market today and saw many shops selling cooked food. The large number of shops means that there are many buyers, but the diners also have more choices.
She started selling cooked meat without hesitation, but not everyone was willing to spend the money to try her brine. After all, the price was there.
Fan Changyu thought about it and decided that pig offal was cheap, so it would be perfect to use it as a gift to attract customers. Although not everyone would buy this thing even if they paid for it, many people would probably be happy to take it if it was given for free.
This way, the shop can reopen to attract people to buy pork and also build momentum for selling brine later.
After tasting the free brine, you will know whether her brine is good or not. If she starts selling brine meat in the future, those who like it will come back to buy it.
After washing the pig, Fan Changyu went home, rolled up his sleeves and started to light a fire. He added water to the pot, found a variety of spices, put them into a clean cloth bag, and threw them in along with ginger and garlic to cook and make brine.
The things on the stove in her house are very complete. Her mother is a very particular person and has always been meticulous about food. In the past, the family was well-off, so it was not difficult for them to prepare these things.
Fan Changyu learned many dishes from her mother, but she was not very good at cooking them all except for this brine. Perhaps it was because she liked to eat brine pig's trotters since she was a child, so she learned it particularly well.
When she picked up the knife to cut the brine, she moved it in a rather vigorous manner because she was used to cutting bones when killing pigs. The knife hit the chopping board heavily, and the movement was so frightening that even a thief would run away.
An hour later, the rich aroma of brined meat wafted out of the Fan family's kitchen. Neighbors all sniffed the aroma at home, wondering whose stew could smell so good.
The fragrance floated upwards, and the Zhao and Fan families' houses were next to each other, so the man smelled an especially strong scent in the attic.
He rolled his Adam's apple and closed his eyes heavily.
It's because he is too weak. He hasn't had a decent meal since he was injured.
The author has something to say:
Author: No, you are greedy!
This chapter continues to drop red envelopes~
I'm very sorry for the unstable update of the first two chapters. Now I've adjusted it. If nothing unexpected happens, I'll update it every day at 0:00. I probably encountered a creative bottleneck when writing this book. Every word and sentence I wrote made me very entangled. I kept overturning it to achieve the best effect. However, the beginning has already cut to the best point in my mind. There is a tens of thousands of words of outline to protect the rest of the story. My dears, don't worry! Pick up a muah!
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