The children encouraged each other with smiles, but were also nervously and excitedly waiting for Xia Daohua's judgment.
Xia Daohua accepted all these ideas with a smile, and also took the opportunity to expand the range of snacks. For example, from steamed cakes and jujube paste cakes, with a little imagination, she 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 felt that the cost of making pickled vegetables was too high. This was because pickling vegetables required a lot of salt, which was expensive and hard to come by. Although Beiguan Town was adjacent to Bohai County, buying salt was relatively convenient.
Xia Daohua did not insist and put the pickled vegetables project at the end.
The enthusiastic money-making team enthusiastically calculated 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. He couldn't make so much money just by selling things at a street stall.
It’s not that the sales are bad, the sales at the stall 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 entrance 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; and when you close your stall, you have to pay a street cleaning fee...
If you happen to meet a patrol officer who takes a fancy to something on your stall, you must pay him a proper tribute, or he might take away your entire stall.
If you run into the sons of powerful 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 their locations carefully every time.
After several observations, we deliberately chose corners where vehicles and horses would not easily collide.
This kind of place 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 the others had almost always stayed in that remote corner before, they had become 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, selling fancy bamboo rice, and gradually added new products—of course, they couldn't release all of them 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 continued to accumulate, Xia Daohua discovered that their small business was making quite a good profit.
Without considering labor, and only counting materials and expenses, on average, basically the cost of one tael of silver can earn back about five taels of silver.
Except for some special festivals, 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 time, 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, no one in the family could find it. She didn't have to worry about her parents discovering the money and taking it away without saying a word. She might even get a beating for hiding it.
In fact, the children are worrying too much about this.
Since their family members knew that they happily set up stalls at every 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, thinking that no matter how hard the children 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 record how much each person's income should be distributed, and Goro was the one who kept it.
Because Xia Daohua and Li Gan communicated entirely in drawings, Li Gan's letters had to be read by Old Man Xia himself. Old Man Xia had already begun to enlighten 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 schooling, he had a very 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 enlightenment, 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 Saburo and Silang heard that they had to continue working, they lost interest in learning to read.
On the other hand, Erlang, Wulang and Liulang were all very excited.
However, Liu Lang was young after all, and he found it too boring after learning two words, so he 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 in a shameless way:
"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 Old Master 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 extra-curricular student.
Xia Daohua happily brought a gift of "Shuxiu" to Grandpa Xia - two pheasants that she had "hunted" herself in the mountains.
Grandpa Xia's literacy class has been going on for some time, and Xia Daohua has never missed a single one.
Although Old Master 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 knew how to read was just a pretense. In fact, the characters of Da Chu were no different from ancient traditional Chinese characters. Although Xia Daohua was not proficient in writing, she had no pressure in recognizing them.
She was more focused on the small business of the money-making team.
After considering it for a few days, Xia Daohua decided to let Xiao Xiancai out.
But it is not convenient for her to go there by herself.
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