Chapter 19: Seduction
Old Zhou was reluctant to move. "What's the point of weaving that little basket? It's not for eating or drinking."
"We can make flower baskets and earn money," Manbao told her father about her plan, omitting only the sugar part. She said confidently, "When I make money, I can give Dad some hard work compensation."
Old Zhou touched the tobacco on his waist and was reluctant to smoke it. He had decided to sell all the cigarettes at home. Although they were not worth much, he could still get some medicine for his wife.
Old Zhou glanced at his daughter and shook his head, saying, "Dad doesn't care about the hard work fee, so I'm not going to do it anymore."
He didn't want to mess around with a bunch of kids.
Everyone's face showed disappointment. Manbao went to her mother for support. Qian couldn't stand Manbao's coquettishness and could only say to Old Zhou, "It's not a big deal. You have nothing to do anyway, so why not weave a few for the children? It's not difficult."
With his wife giving the order and his daughter and a group of grandchildren looking on eagerly, Old Zhou had no choice but to go to the shack and drag out his second son to weave bamboo baskets for them with the used bamboo strips.
Seeing Datou and Ertou squatting down to watch the fun, he pulled them over and said, "Come, let grandpa teach you. You are not young anymore, it's time to learn some skills."
There are not many people in the village who can weave bamboo, but there are not too few either. However, this craft is not something you can master just by learning it. At least among all the villagers, young and old, Zhou Erlang is the only one who can sell bamboo weavings to the market or the county town.
The bamboo baskets he wove were so strong and dense that even wheat could not leak out. However, some people's bamboo baskets were just for show. They looked no different from those sold in the market, but after a few uses, the bamboo strips would bend and holes would appear, making the baskets useless.
Old Zhou's craftsmanship belongs to the latter category.
However, he couldn't weave a big bamboo basket, but wasn't the bamboo basket in the little girl's hand, which was only as big as her little head, difficult to weave?
It's just a showpiece. At most, you can put ten eggs in it. Old Zhou thinks it won't go bad even if you carry it for ten years.
Because he didn't take this thing seriously and the bamboo sticks he used were all Erlang's discarded ones, he didn't feel bad about letting his grandsons get involved in the trouble.
Manbao was also very excited after seeing it, so he took a bamboo stick and wanted to learn, and also asked Daya and Erya to join him.
Old Zhou glanced at his two granddaughters. This kind of craft is not something girls should learn. But when he looked at the bamboo sticks on the ground, he thought, let's learn it. Once the bamboo sticks are used once, it will be difficult to use them again. He is not the second son, so he can't break them back.
Once the bamboo strips are used up, there is no need to weave them again.
Manbao didn't know about his father's conspiracy, and he stared at his actions with his big eyes seriously.
Old Zhou was weaving slowly while he said to her, "You little kid, you can't even bend a bamboo stick, why are you joining in the fun? Be careful not to hurt your hands."
Qian was sitting on a stool basking in the sun. Seeing Manbao, she smiled and waved to him, saying, "Manbao, come here, mother will teach you."
Manbao ran over happily holding the bamboo strips, "Mom, can you weave bamboo?"
"I've been watching it all my life, so even if I've never tried it myself, I have a general idea of it." Qian was ill and couldn't do heavy work, but she had no problem sitting and bending the bamboo sticks.
She just sat there, weaving and explaining to Manbao that this kind of small bamboo weaving was not difficult and could be done quickly. Qian's first finished product came out soon.
Manbao took it and compared it with the two her father had already made. She wrinkled her nose and said, "Mom, yours is so ugly."
Old Zhou laughed proudly, "After all, your father has made a lot of bamboo weavings, so of course they are better looking than your mother's."
Qian was not discouraged. She waved to Manbao and said, "Give me a few more and I'll make another one."
She smiled and said, "Practice makes perfect. If you learn something you don't know a few times, you'll get it right."
Manbao felt that what her mother said made sense, so she dragged another handful of bamboo sticks to her mother.
The four children, who had originally moved from their grandfather's place to their grandmother's place to learn, felt that their grandmother's weaving was ugly, and had just moved back to their grandfather's place, looked left and right, not knowing who to learn from.
Manbao despised them and said, "You two can't be so indecisive. Forget it, Datou and Ertou, just follow your father and Daya and Erya, come and learn from your mother."
The four children finally settled down and stopped wandering around.
Qian looked at them with a smile, feeling that her daughter was the one who made the decision.
The most idle person in the whole place was Manbao. That was just on the surface. In fact, she was also very busy. As soon as the bamboo basket was made, Manbao took it and discussed with Keke, "Do you think the bamboo basket made by my mother is good enough?"
The system said: "There is nothing in this world that cannot be turned into a commodity. You can perform secondary processing."
Manbao: "Then I will give it the most beautiful flower."
Manbao began to pick out the most beautiful flowers from the pile, and then put them into her mother's basket. The flowers were mixed together in a colorful pile, but she liked it very much and was very happy. "This basket looks beautiful at first glance."
Koko was silent for a long time before saying, "There may not be many people in this world who share the same aesthetic taste as the host."
Manbao repeated this sentence over and over again, then realized it belatedly, "Koko, you said my flower basket is ugly?"
"That's not what a flower basket looks like." The system couldn't help but search the encyclopedia for some pictures, then showed them to Manbao. "That's what you call a flower basket. Yours is, um, a bamboo trash can for flowers. And it's a failed trash can."
Manbao could no longer hear what Koko was saying. She stared at the pictures with bright eyes, almost rolling on the ground with joy. "So beautiful, so beautiful, Koko, can you give them to me?"
Old Zhou and Qian saw their daughter holding her broken bamboo basket and laughing so hard that her saliva was about to flow out.
The couple was silent for a moment, then looked at the messy flowers she had put in the bamboo basket, and felt that they had to pay attention to their child's education on beauty and ugliness. Really, how could she be so happy with such an ugly bamboo basket?
The four children with big heads lowered their heads, as if they wanted to bury themselves in the bamboo sticks. The young lady must be thinking about their money-making plan again, but can such an ugly bamboo basket really be sold?
The system glanced at Manbao's points and said, "Host, your points are enough to buy a bamboo basket, but they don't reach the permission to open the mall, so I can't buy it for you."
This was the first time Manbao had heard of a mall, so he asked, "What is a mall?"
"It's just like your market. The host can buy all kinds of things there, including flower baskets."
"Then when can I open the mall?" Manbao thought that if the mall could be opened, then she could go shopping at the market whenever she wanted in the future.
"When the host's accumulated points reach 1,000 and he has no historical debts, then you can."
Manbao slumped her shoulders and tried to bargain like her second brother, "It's a lot, can't you give it a little cheaper?"
Koko rejected her mercilessly, "No!"
A long time later, Manbao had grown up a little and was smarter. One day, she saw the candy that Koko often bought her in the mall. Then she remembered what happened today and belatedly realized, "Koko, you fooled me!"
Keke: If I don’t fool you, are you willing to move forward?
When it comes to who is the best at deceiving people, it is not Koko, but Lin Qingwan from the next door. Yes, it is Lin Qingwan in "The Glory of the Lin Family". She relied on her sincerity and goodwill in deceiving people to contribute to the unification of the world. Book friends who haven't read it yet can go and take a look, it is already finished.
(End of this chapter)
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