As she sold more and more dolls, Lin Yue's confidence grew, and she also became more determined to make a fortune by "picking up scraps" in ancient times. Combined with the medical knowledge she had learned in the 21st century, she was sure that she could make this business bigger and stronger.
When the sun climbed over the branches of the locust tree at the corner of the street, there were still three rag dolls left in front of Lin Yue.
These small objects were pieced together with scraps of cloth she had picked up, and their arms and legs were made of straw - but before filling them, she soaked the straw in a medicinal soup made from chinaberry bark for a long time. After drying, the straw not only had a faint bitter fragrance, but also could repel termites.
The paint on her baby face was not ordinary pomegranate juice, but natural pigment mixed with honeysuckle dew. She could feel a subtle coolness when she touched it with her fingertips - it was the dried flower branches she picked up at the alley next to the bun shop when she went to buy buns just now. She added a little alum when boiling the water, which not only fixed the color but also prevented children from contact dermatitis.
"Sister, sister, you can laugh!" A five or six-year-old girl with cute pigtails was tiptoeing to pull at the edge of a basket. The red string on her pigtails rubbed against her blue skirt. Oh, it was the daughter of Aunt Wang, the tofu seller across the street.
Lin Yue took the opportunity to lift up the hem of her skirt to show Aunt Wang the inside: "Aunt, look at the stitching here. It's the 'avoiding evil pattern' from Qianjin Fang. Each thread is soaked in mugwort water to keep mosquitoes away. Buy one for the little girl. She looks so happy with it."
Aunt Wang pinched the doll's straw arms doubtfully, and suddenly smelled a faint medicinal fragrance: "Young lady, this doll... looks like a moving sachet." Lin Yue smiled and handed over the ceramic bowl with copper coins (she happened to bring a bowl with her, so she used it to hold the copper coins she received, which also made it possible to put it to good use): "To be honest, the straw inside is mixed with dried perilla and patchouli, and I just soaked it in mugwort water for a long time, so it has a slight medicinal fragrance." This was true. When she was sewing the doll, she had deliberately hidden a medicine bag the size of a fingernail in the straw core - it was packed with picked up tea seed shells and dried chili powder, to prevent the child from being bitten by fleas while playing.
Finally, as the sun set, all the dolls she had made were sold. Lin Yue counted the twenty-one copper coins in the bowl, her fingertips still stained with blood from the needle pricks she had used...
The old man selling sugar paintings next door saw her tying money bags with discarded bowstrings, and suddenly laughed and said, "Young lady, with your craft, you should set up a stall in Pingkangfang..." Before he finished speaking, the little beggar A Mao at the end of the alley suddenly ran over, holding a rag doll in his arms and rubbing against her.
"Look, sister!" Amao lifted the doll's blue shirt, revealing the snow-white lining underneath—a piece Lin Yue had cut from medicine wrapping paper she'd found at the apothecary store, with traces of unwashed angelica still lingering on the corners. "Holding me to sleep at noon has helped my scabies feel less itchy!" The scabs on the child's neck had indeed faded considerably, and Lin Yue then remembered that when she was stuffing the doll, she had mixed a small amount of dried Stemona root powder into the straw—the very same anti-lice and anti-parasitic herb she'd learned about in her previous life. Unexpectedly, it also had a beneficial effect on scabies.
While squatting in the shade of a locust tree, eating steamed buns, she suddenly caught sight of scraps of fabric stained on the hem of her skirt. Before sewing these scraps, she had rinsed them in water boiled with purslane—a ubiquitous wild vegetable whose whole-herb decoction inhibits a wide range of bacteria, making it particularly suitable for fabrics that children would come into contact with. Recalling Aunt Wang's subconscious wiping of her hands after touching a doll, Lin Yue suddenly realized that in this era without the concept of disinfection, if her "rag business" was to expand, the medical student's core skills would be the true moat.
(End of Chapter 2)
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