"No way!" Liang Shengdi snatched the bamboo shoot back. "You're lying to me, an old woman, about not understanding the market? It's already selling for 15 cents on the market, and you're going to cut my price by two cents? I might as well sell it slowly."
Shi Weijie was also anxious. There were actually not many people selling bamboo shoots in this season. Although he had just followed Liang Shengdi here, he also took a quick look at the boats on both sides. There were quite a lot of bamboo weavings, but no bamboo shoots.
"If you buy them all at once, you'll definitely have to give them a discount. How can it still be 15 cents? My dad came to buy them yesterday, and the price was only 13.5 cents per pound!"
"You little Sith! You just framed me! You were trying to cheat me out of that five cents!"
Liang Shengdi felt that she had found a big loophole and started cursing happily, which made Shi Weijie choke.
It’s his fault that he is too young and doesn’t have as many tricks as the elderly.
"Then, 13.5 cents! I just wanted to leave some room for negotiation, didn't I?"
Liang Shengdi rolled her eyes and said, "One cent and fourty-five cents!" Then she also wanted some room for bargaining.
"Oh, Grandma, can you make it cheaper? You have so many bamboo shoots, at least 50 or 60 kilograms! How can you only give me 5 cents off? It's already past 4 o'clock, and it won't be dark soon. You definitely can't sell them all. Sell them all to me so I can go home and eat earlier!"
Shi Weijie regretted his youthful and talkative behavior, and wanted to play the sympathy card.
But Liang Shengdi was unmoved. Half a cent might seem like a small amount, but when added to fifty or sixty kilograms, it would still add up to several cents, enough for her to have at least two pieces of osmanthus cake!
Shi Weijie still felt that the price of 1.45 cents was not enough. His father said that the maximum price was 1.4 cents, but Liang Shengdi was stubborn and refused to lower the price.
The two of them argued for a long time. Old Lady Liang's small eyes turned around and looked at the things on her boat. She pointed with her finger.
"Do you want fish?"
Shi Weijie understood immediately, but his restaurant had someone deliver fish to his door, so it would be redundant to buy it back. He stood on tiptoe and stretched his neck to look inside again, pointing to the basket next to the bamboo shoots and asked,
"What's in there?"
Liang Shengdi quickly tilted the cup to show him what was inside. "Oyster mushrooms, want some? 60 cents a pound!"
Shi Weijie took a look and thought this one was worth buying. "Make it cheaper. I'll take this basket of mushrooms with me too."
"Tsk! It's already very cheap. You restaurant owners must know how much mushroom prices have risen in the past two years. The supply and marketing cooperative is already selling oyster mushrooms for 70 cents a pound! I'm not trying to make any money from you!"
Liang Shengdi curled her lips. "We also send our mushrooms to restaurants. My wife picked this basket first because she said the umbrellas might open tomorrow, so she asked me to pick them and sell them. If you don't want them, I can just take them back and ask her to send them to the restaurant!"
"Okay, okay, then 60 cents per pound will be enough!" Shi Weijie spoke quickly. He bargained out of habit. Besides, mushrooms are light. Even if it's 70 cents per pound, this basket probably won't be as expensive as the total price of that pile of bamboo shoots.
"Oyster mushrooms are 60 cents a pound, and bamboo shoots are 14 cents a pound. I want both, okay?"
Liang Shengdi then nodded in agreement, "Wait, I'll weigh it for you."
Shi Weijie also took out a basket from his boat, weighed his basket first, and then transferred the mushrooms in Liang Shengdi's basket to his own basket and weighed it again.
Finally, it was the bamboo shoots. The beam scale was only so big, so many bamboo shoots had to be weighed in batches. Liang Shengdi was illiterate and could only count her money by counting on her fingers. Shi Weijie had to add up the weight himself.
"Calculate carefully and don't frame me again! I worked so hard to dig these bamboo shoots. They didn't just fall from the sky!"
"Oh! Grandma, who do you think I am!" Shi Weijie shouted speechlessly. Not only was he unable to bargain with others, but he was also wrongly accused of being petty. He was really more wronged than Dou E!
The mushrooms weighed only 9.4 jin, and the bamboo shoots weighed 62.8 jin, for a total of 14.44 yuan. Liang Shengdi generously waived the 4 cents.
"Just give me fourteen dollars and forty cents!"
Shi Weijie: ...Even if you ask me to give you four cents, I can’t.
After paying the money and moving all the things onto his boat, he asked,
"Grandma, are you still digging behind these bamboo shoots?"
"Dig it, do you still want it?"
Shi Weijie nodded. "Yes, when will you come next time?"
Liang Shengdi herself doesn’t know either. It might be tomorrow, or next month. After all, the autumn harvest is only a few days away.
"Where is your restaurant? How about I deliver it to you when the time comes?"
What a great feeling! Shi Weijie immediately gave an address, took out a small notebook and pen from his pocket, wrote a bunch of words quickly, and then tore it off and handed it to Liang Shengdi.
"This is the place. There's a river right outside the back door of our restaurant. Just row your boat across!"
Liang Shengdi took the paper, folded it twice and put it in her pocket. Since she couldn't read anyway, she would let Guoqing take a look at it later.
"Okay, I'll go directly there next time."
After getting the confirmation, Shi Weijie rowed away and continued to go to Heji to see if there were other shops selling bamboo shoots.
Liang Shengdi had a good start and sold out half of her goods, leaving only fish.
She washed her hands with river water, rubbed them on her clothes, happily opened the oil-paper package she had just bought, and took out a piece of sesame cake.
Mmm~ This smells really good~
"Hey! Madam Liang! You're out selling fish again! What fish do you have today?"
A woman's voice came from the shore. She was carrying a basket and looking down at Liang Shengdi's boat from a high place.
"This basin of crucian carp, this basin of grass carp, and these two baskets contain crabs and eels." Liang Shengdi chewed and pointed at the river fish in the middle warehouse. "What would you like? I'll get you a big one!"
The woman was also a regular customer. She didn't ask any questions, nor was she polite to Liang Shengdi. She just pointed and said, "How many eels are there in your basket? I only brought one basket."
"It's okay! I have a basket I'll lend you first. Just give it back to me next time you see it."
Liang Shengdi stuffed the last bite of sesame cake into her mouth, then dusted off her clothes and hands, bent down and took out a small bamboo basket from the depths of the awning. It was not the first time she had lent someone a basket. Some people remembered to return it, while others ran away. She didn't care.
Such a small basket, and the weaving is so crude, it wouldn't be worth much if sold.
For Liang Shengdi, weaving some baskets is nothing. She even weaves a few and puts them on the boat when she has free time, so that people who come to buy seafood can borrow the hairtail fish to take home. In this era when plastic bags are more expensive than baskets, she has gained a lot of business because of this.
"How many eels do you want?"
The woman made a two-sign gesture and said, "Give me two, pick the thicker one."
"Of course! The ones I caught weren't the thin ones!" Liang Shengdi responded and opened the eel basket. She poured out two eels at an angle and quickly caught them in the small bamboo basket.
The small basket was not heavy, so I just hung it on the beam scale and weighed it.
"One dollar and five cents a pound, a total of three pounds and two ounces."
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