After a day of harvesting, several patches of the once golden rice paddies were bare. As Zhou Chenyu walked along the road, he saw two strong young men carrying a huge square wooden plank into the field.
Then one person was responsible for placing the cut rice ears at the edge of the square groove, while another person grabbed the rice ears and tossed and patted them in, and two children wandered around the field to see if any rice ears had been missed.
After turning another corner, they arrived at the entrance of Zhoujia Village, where they saw a group of people gathered there to buy ducklings. They were pushing and shoving each other, afraid that if they were a step too slow, someone else would buy them all.
The chicks I bought last time are already laying eggs, and there's still a lot of empty space at home, so why not buy a few more ducks? It's the end of June now, so raising them for six months until the end of the year will be just right for them to eat.
Zhou Chenyu wanted to go and take a look, and saw two elderly people pushing and shoving each other, just like the group of people squeezing onto the bus to buy groceries during the morning rush hour. They were all the same, getting on the bus like worms and getting off like dragons.
"Ouch, ouch, be careful, old lady, don't fall at your age."
Zhou Chenyu helped the old woman who was about to fall. The old woman thanked him, but then, unwilling to give up, rushed over to pull his hair. She was afraid of hurting herself, and even more afraid that the old woman would bump into something, so she decided to let it go.
"Mother, we're back!" Baoyu pushed open the courtyard gate, and a flock of about seven or eight ducklings were lying in the shade of the yard. Baoyu couldn't wait to share his joy and searched the house for them. "Huh, the door is open, but where are they?"
"Coming, coming, I'm here." Li Xiuju heard Baoyu's voice and came back carrying a basket of green beans she had just picked from the garden. "These are the ducklings I just bought, two coins each, a bargain! How's your sweet soup selling?"
Zhou Chenyu and Baoyu exchanged a glance. Baoyu pulled out a bag full of copper coins and said with pride and a little smugness, "Mother, we've sold out of taro ball dessert. It cost over a hundred copper coins. Business is booming. Many people want to eat more after they've had some."
"Really?" Li Xiuju put down her vegetable basket, opened the pot lid, and looked inside. "Great, it's all sold out. Are you hungry? I'll cook you some vegetables."
Zhou Chenyu had been walking all day and her feet were blistered. She sat down lazily and said, "Okay, I still want to eat the pickled radish from yesterday. It's so appetizing."
"Okay, Mom will cook another big plate."
Li Xiuju quickly went into the kitchen to get busy, and in no time she had made a plate of spicy stir-fried pickled radish and a radish omelet.
The pickled radish tastes just like yesterday, slightly sour and fragrant with a crunchy texture. It's sour, spicy, and refreshing, and you can eat one crunchy bite after another. Before you know it, you've eaten half a plate.
The preserved radish omelet uses dried radish that was recently sun-dried. It is diced, stir-fried in oil until it is 80% cooked, and then fresh egg liquid is poured in and fried into a pancake shape.
When dried radish is mixed with fried eggs, it doesn't taste as pure and fragrant as fried eggs with chives. Instead, it has a slightly sweet and cloying flavor from the dried radish. Even though no meat is added, it's more satisfying than eating meat.
Li Xiuju had already eaten. While Zhou Chenyu and Baoyu were eating at the table, she sat aside picking green beans. Watching the two children eat so heartily, she felt sorry for them: "They must be starving after eating lunch so late."
Baoyu, being careless, blurted out the truth, "Business is so good, we don't have time to eat. By the time we finish eating, all the customers have left."
Li Xiuju paused, and Zhou Chenyu put a big bite of fried egg into his mouth. "When no one came at first, we all drank several bowls of taro ball sweet soup. We were full, so we didn't go into the city to buy food."
"How many people can sugar water fill up? You're kidding me."
Li Xiuju glared at Zhou Chenyu, who stuck out his tongue.
Li Xiuju washed the green beans and let them dry. She took out salt and a jar for pickling the green beans, sprinkled a handful of salt on the green beans, and after making sure the green beans were evenly coated with salt, she stuffed them all into the jar and sealed it with water.
She said, "I still have some flour left over from making the mugwort cakes last time. I'll make some scallion pancakes for you to take with you tomorrow morning. You can eat some to tide you over if you get hungry. Making money is important, but having enough to eat is even more important."
"good."
The best time to sell sweet soup is during the hot summer months, so Zhou Chenyu and Baoyu dare not stop. After dinner, they go to bed early and get up at around 4 a.m. to prepare a new batch of sweet soup to sell.
Li Xiuju was the first to get up; while it was still pitch black outside the courtyard, the kitchen was already lit up with firelight.
Zhou Chenyu washed her face in the dim light. The dazzling night reflected in the basin. She looked up and the vast sky was right in front of her. "One, two, three, four, five... twenty-five... there are so many stars."
Zhou Chenyu counted for a while, but it would take forever to count all the stars in the sky. She smiled, covered her face with a damp cloth, and sat quietly for a while.
I used to sleep until 8 a.m. before going to work. Even after sleeping for eight hours, I was still incredibly sleepy. The thought of facing office politics and backstabbing made going to work feel like going to a funeral.
Now, even though she gets up at 4 a.m., the thought that once she sells two pots of sweet soup, she can arrange her time freely—no backstabbing colleagues, no insane KPI assessments, no endless pressure from her boss, no countless daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reports…
You reap what you sow.
She thought about it carefully and felt as if she had inexhaustible energy.
Just do it!
Yesterday's mung bean and taro ball sweet soup sold very well, so Zhou Chenyu tried making a pot of red bean sweet soup as well.
Red beans and mung beans are cheap; you can buy a pound for just two coins. A pound of beans boiled into a sweet soup with six or seven taro balls can sell forty or fifty bowls. After deducting costs, they can earn more than a hundred coins a day.
If business stays this good every day this summer, I estimate I can save up one or two taels of silver over two months.
In business, one must avoid being short-sighted. Zhou Chenyu didn't want to just make money and lose her reputation, so she made the sugar syrup thicker.
After having breakfast with Baoyu, she took the scallion pancakes that Li Xiuju had specially made, loaded a cart with her belongings, and set off in the dark.
They left home earlier than yesterday. The two of them walked along the deserted country road, where dogs barked in the deep alleys, and the sounds of children crying and couples talking came from the houses.
Zhou Chenyu lit a bamboo torch to illuminate the road ahead. "Baoyu, can you watch the stall by yourself this morning? I have to go to the yamen."
Baoyu yawned and looked over groggily, "Sister, what are you going to the yamen for?"
Zhou Chenyu touched the pastries in the basket; they were red bean pastries she had made with the leftover red beans and flour. A smile appeared on her lips, "I'm going to bring some good food to your squad leader, Yang."
Baoyu's eyes widened immediately. "Oh, it's that plate of red bean pastries that you wouldn't let me touch."
He grumbled, "I can manage the stall all by myself, but I don't even get to eat. No way, I'm not doing this!"
"You heartless bastard!" Zhou Chenyu patted another box in annoyance. "Here, open it and see for yourself."
Baoyu opened the wooden box with some skepticism. Inside were six red bean pastries. He immediately went from angry to happy, saying, "That's more like it."
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