The Wen family now lives on East Street in Yuanbao Town. They were initially sent to Raozhou City by Vice Captain Chen and his soldiers. They learned that to settle down in Raozhou City, each person needed 100 taels of silver. The Wen family had about 30 people from old to young, and Old Man Wen had many descendants, so they could afford more than 3,000 taels of silver. However, a house with five courtyards in Raozhou City was not cheap. If one wanted to live in a better location, a house with five courtyards would cost at least 2,000 taels of silver.
Although the Wen family was not confiscated at first, they still took a lot of money secretly to make arrangements.
Before he was exiled, the officials swarmed like locusts and robbed him of most of his property.
In fact, before the concubine entered the palace, the Duke of Anping was only the Earl of Anping and had no family property. Later, the concubine entered the palace, and slowly became a concubine, and then the empress. During this period, he was also respected and accumulated a lot of family property. However, the new emperor and Concubine Fu would not really let him take all of this family property away, so those guards took away almost all of his family property at the instruction of their superiors. Master Wen did not dare to say anything. By the time they were exiled, all the family property of the Wen family was only ten thousand taels of silver.
He spent several hundred taels on travel expenses and the ten thousand taels of silver notes. When he arrived in Raozhou City, he learned that the settlement fee and the money for buying a house were not cheap, so he was reluctant to settle in the city.
Master Wen knew that living off one's savings would lead to nothing. His family had no shop or business, no income at all, and no one in the family knew how to do business. The servants in his house and the shop owners in the capital could not go with him. All of them were sold or dismissed. If he really had to stay in Raozhou City, the few thousand taels he had left would not be enough, so he chose Yuanbao Town.
I was also thinking of taking it slow. It only costs ten taels per person to register in Yuanbao Town, and the five-story house next to the government office is half the price of that in Raozhou City. So in the end I chose to register in Yuanbao Town, which is the closest to Raozhou City. After registering, I bought a house, and then bought some land and shops to see what kind of business I could do.
If I make a lot of money, I can move my business to Raozhou City in the future.
Even though merchants were the lowest class among the four classes of scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans, Mr. Wen had no intention of giving up business.
He knew in his heart that without money, even a scholar would have to go hungry. It would be better to earn more money so that at least he would have enough food and drink and a group of servants.
As for studying and taking the imperial examinations, the Wen family and the lineage of Prince Shu have not been allowed to take the imperial examinations for three generations, so it is unlikely that they will be able to study.
Even Old Master Wen wanted to let his granddaughter Wen Pingling enter the palace to be the new emperor's concubine. He had the confidence in this. Among Old Master Wen's unmarried granddaughters, Wen Pingling, the eldest daughter of the main wife, was the most beautiful. However, the border town was thousands of miles away from the capital, so how to send the granddaughter to the capital was still a problem, and everything had to be done slowly.
When Wen Pingling went out today, she was followed by another illegitimate daughter of the eldest wife, Wen Pingling's illegitimate sister, Wen Pingxiang. Naturally, she was not as well dressed as Wen Pingling.
Xu Qinyu remembered that the other two boys seemed to be Aunt Bai's two grandsons.
Aunt Bai was another concubine of Old Master Wen. She gave birth to a daughter and a son. The daughter had naturally married long ago, and the son was Old Master Wen's third son, also a bastard, and had already married and had children.
Aunt Bai was a girl from a good family. She was favored by Old Lady Wen at the beginning. As Bai's parents had passed away due to illness, her brother and sister-in-law arranged for her to be given to Old Lady Wen as a concubine.
Aunt Bai was born beautiful, and Old Lady Wen was afraid that Aunt Bai would be favored alone, so she gave the maid around her to Old Lady Wen as a concubine, who was Wen's biological mother, Aunt Gui.
There was nothing wrong between the two concubines, and they had been getting along well all these years. Because of this, Old Lady Wen looked down on Concubine Gui. She felt that since Concubine Gui was a concubine she promoted, she should join her in suppressing Concubine Bai. It was not until Wen entered the palace and became a concubine that Old Lady Wen dared not to be disrespectful to Concubine Gui and treated her with respect.
It was precisely because of the respect shown over the years that when the Wen family got into trouble and was exiled, the Wen family was also implicated and exiled. Old Lady Wen hated Concubine Gui and bullied her even more cruelly.
Xu Qinyu was not very sure whether the girl and two boys following behind were the concubine of the first wife and the two from the third wife.
Because of the Wen family, there are so many descendants. When she thought of the descendants of the Wen family, her head started buzzing, because there are so many people.
I heard that the old lady has two legitimate sons and one illegitimate son, which is easy to distinguish.
However, these two legitimate sons married wives and concubines and had children and grandchildren.
Only the third illegitimate son born to Aunt Bai only married a wife and was unwilling to take a concubine. Because he married a wife late, he also had two sons and a daughter, all of whom were not yet of marriageable age.
It seemed that they were these two young men, the two sons of the third wife and the grandsons of Aunt Bai.
Because of the dispute over sheltering from the rain on the big rock when they were on the way to exile, Wen Pingling wanted to bring people over to fight with her. These two teenagers were not there. They stood at a distance and looked at Wen Pingling as if she was a fool. So Xu Qinyu had some impression of them.
Because there were too many members of the Wen family, Xu Qinyu only knew them from her original body's memories. She couldn't tell them apart, and the one who impressed her the most was Wen Pingling, because Wen Pingling was always causing trouble during his exile and was particularly annoying.
Xu Qinyu didn't understand what she was thinking. Her family was in trouble, but why did she still like to stir up trouble? She must be mentally ill.
Jianwen Ling came over on her own, and although she said hello, her tone sounded a little complacent.
Xu Qinyu didn't give her any face at all, and sneered, "A good dog doesn't stand in the way."
When Pei Jianing saw Wen Lingling coming over, her face turned unhappy. She hated Wen Lingling and didn't want to deal with her. But when she heard what her fourth sister-in-law said, she couldn't help but burst out laughing.
As expected, it was the fourth sister-in-law who went up and slapped him in the face.
Wen Lingling glared at Pei Jianing. She heard two more chuckles from behind her. Turning back, she saw that it was the two half-brothers from the third room.
Wen Ling was so angry that he shouted, "Wen Shuncheng, Wen Shungong, are you two crazy? Didn't you see that this guy was bullying me? Why are you laughing? And she said that a good dog doesn't stand in the way. You followed me here, and in her eyes you are also dogs. Why are you laughing? Are you pigs?"
"It was actually quite funny." The two brothers grumbled.
They didn't know what the eldest wife thought when she heard that Lingling was wearing such a seductive and glamorous makeup to go out for a walk. They didn't want to go out at all. The old lady asked them to follow her. She said, "Our Lingling is beautiful. People in such a small place don't have much knowledge. I'm afraid they have bad intentions to bully Lingling. You should follow her and guard Lingling. If Lingling gets hurt, I will only ask you."
So what if there is a dog? In the Wen family, their third branch is just like a dog.
The two brothers' eyes darkened, but they restrained their smiles.
After Wen Ling finished venting his anger at his two half-brothers, he turned back and sneered at Xu Qinyu, "I just wanted to say hello to you out of kindness. I thought that after all, we have all ended up here, and our two families are such close relatives, so we should naturally work together. There were indeed some misunderstandings on the way to exile before. At that time, everyone was in a bad mood and it was inevitable that there were some arguments. But now we are all in Yuanbao Town, so we should support each other. Fourth sister-in-law, aren't you going too far by saying this? You should apologize to me, and I will forgive you."
Xu Qinyu felt that even if she wanted to establish friendship between the two families, she had ulterior motives and some selfish agenda.
So he would not pay any attention to her. "Whether you are kind or have ulterior motives, I can see clearly. You are just a weasel paying New Year's greetings to a chicken, with ulterior motives."
What she said was to insult Wen Ling and call him a weasel.
After all, Wen Ling was the daughter of a noble family. This was not the way she would quarrel with people in the capital. It was like a dagger hidden in a cotton wool. How could she just come up and call someone a weasel? She didn't know how to quarrel like that. She didn't know how to retort for a moment. She was so angry that her face turned pale and her hands were shaking a little.
She screamed, "Xu Qinyu!" She even stopped calling her Fourth Sister-in-law.
Xu Qinyu glanced at her and sighed, "Don't scream so loudly, I can hear you. I'll leave first."
She really didn't want to talk to Wen Lingling.
Seeing that she was not going to listen, Wen Lingling turned around and left, becoming even angrier.
Now she only had a half-sister who was always uncomfortable and two half-brothers who didn't get along with her on weekdays. She wanted them to beat up Xu Qinyu, but she felt that the three of them wouldn't help her. In fact, she didn't plan to beat anyone up herself. She was wearing a rabbit fur cape and bright makeup, and she wouldn't tear someone's hair in the street. It was too embarrassing. She was better at commanding others to help her.
Besides, she couldn't really fight with Xu Qinyu.
She was indeed out for a stroll today, and running into her aunt's family was purely accidental.
But she did have some thoughts on her mind, her own little thoughts.
She knew the current situation of the Wen family, and she also knew that her grandfather chose Yuanbao Town instead of Raozhou City to settle down because he probably didn't have much money, so he chose Yuanbao Town. At first, she was not very willing to live in the town and wanted to live in the city, but later she figured it out and decided that it would be better to stay in the town as long as she found a job that could make money.
But it has been almost three months since we came to the town, and our family is living off their savings and has no income at all.
My grandfather bought two shops on East Street. Naturally, they were empty shops. They didn’t know what to do for a living, so the two shops had to remain empty for now. The daily expenses for a family of more than 30 people were huge. Not only my grandparents were worried, but she was also worried that they would have no money to spend and would have a hard life in the future.
In order to save money, no one in the family buys slaves.
All the housework in the house is done by people from the third room, even Aunt Gui and Aunt Bai need to work.
And there was her aunt. Her aunt was washing clothes at her house. She also knew that her aunt came home to wash clothes because she wanted to be with Aunt Gui to take care of her. In fact, she didn't care much whether her aunt was working at home or not. Maybe her grandmother felt that she had suffered a lot when her aunt was the queen, so now letting her aunt stay at home to wash clothes could also help her vent her anger.
When she went out and saw Xu Qinyu this time, she thought of what she had heard the two brothers Wen Shuncheng and Wen Shungong secretly say two days ago.
The two brothers hid at the back door and said that there was delicious fish and meat for sale on South Street, and it seemed that it was run by Aunt Wen's daughter-in-law.
The two brothers, one is thirteen and the other is only eleven, still half-grown children. They muttered to themselves, recalling that they had lived in the Wen family since they were young. Although they were always scolded by the old lady when they were in the capital, they had no worries about food and drink. Now they are worried about food and drink. The first and second wives can still eat well, but they, the third wife, only eat bean porridge and cooked vegetables because their grandfather told the old lady to be frugal.
Knowing that Fourth Sister-in-law could earn money by cooking, she couldn't help but sound envious, and said that she also wanted to go out and find a job to support her family.
So Wen Lingling knew that Xu Qinyu probably set up a small stall to cook food, but she didn't know exactly what she sold.
She remembered that the food Xu Qinyu cooked for the officers and soldiers on the way to exile smelled indeed fresh and fragrant, and an idea came to her mind.
She stopped Xu Qinyu just to make peace with her and try the food she cooked. If it was as delicious as she told the two brothers, she wanted to open a restaurant with them. She would let her mother provide the money and Xu Qinyu provide the cooking skills. She also thought that this would be a bargain for Xu Qinyu. After the restaurant was opened, she would let her be the chef and give her twenty taels of silver a month.
She had no idea that Xu Qinyu could easily earn twenty or thirty taels of silver a month from the food she made. And she did it all by herself. If she really opened a restaurant or a wine shop, she wondered how much she could earn.
Who knew that Xu Qinyu ignored her completely and even called her a weasel!
After scolding, he ran away!
When he saw Xu Qinyu, he turned around and left without even looking back.
Wen Lingling was angry and annoyed, and immediately turned around and instructed his two half brothers, "Wen Shuncheng, Wen Shungong, you guys stop her for me!"
The two rolled their eyes and ignored her.
Then Wen Ling was so angry that she started crying, and tears fell down her cheeks. She was mainly angry at Xu Qinyu, and when she saw that her half-brother didn't help her, she became even angrier and couldn't hold back.
Seeing her crying, Wen Shuncheng and Wen Shungong ran away, planning to sneak back home after dark. Otherwise, if they came back during the day, Wen Lingling and Old Lady Wen would complain and they would be punished to kneel for half a day. It would be better to come back secretly at night and run away secretly during the day and stay away from home for several days to see how the old lady would punish them.
The concubine of the eldest wife, Wen Xiang, who was left behind, said weakly, "Sister, please stop crying."
Wen Ling cried so much that her makeup was a little smudged. Seeing people pointing and talking around her, she stomped her feet in anger, covered her face, turned around and ran home.
Smelling the fragrance of the apple, he sighed and slowly followed.
Xu Qinyu didn't feel bad when she met Wen Lingling, she didn't take the Wen family to heart.
She just didn't expect that Old Master Wen would let the whole family settle down in the town. She thought they would stay in Raozhou City. She had thought that if the Wen family stayed in Raozhou City, then her mother-in-law's biological mother, Aunt Gui, would also have to stay in Raozhou City. It would be extremely difficult for her mother-in-law to see her, not to mention that the Wen family would not treat Aunt Gui well. Now that she knew that the Wen family was all in Yuanbao Town, she had some other ideas.
Aunt Gui is my mother-in-law's biological mother. The blood relationship is thicker than water and cannot be severed. My mother-in-law must be thinking about her every day.
But this is different from modern times. If you don’t want to live together, or have no feelings for each other, or if you are being bullied by domestic violence, you can file for divorce.
It is difficult to divorce here. Even if Aunt Gui is a co-wife, it is just a nice title. After all, she is still a concubine. It is extremely difficult for a concubine to divorce or go to the government to sever ties with her, unless Old Lady Wen is willing to write a letter to let her go.
On the way back, Xu Qinyu couldn't help thinking about this.
Wen has been absent-minded ever since he met Wen Lingling, and he was distracted on the way back.
When she got home, Xu Qinyu put aside the scraps of clothes, fabrics and furs and prepared to fry melon seeds and peanuts.
She has no idea about Aunt Gui's affairs now, and she is not sure whether Aunt Gui is willing to leave. After all, the thoughts of many women in ancient times are completely different from those of modern women, and it is also due to the general environment. You can't blame people like Aunt Gui, just like Mrs. Luo's daughter-in-law, Lin.
Xu Qinyu planned to fry the melon seeds and peanuts first.
She fried the spiced melon seeds in an iron pan with salt and a little bit of spices. The seeds tasted salty and delicious.
While she was frying melon seeds, she asked her family to peel the peanuts they had bought.
She bought dried peanuts in the shell. These peanuts in the shell cost eight cents per pound. There are also special peanuts for sale, which are more expensive. It is better to buy the peanuts in the shell and peel them yourself.
She plans to make the peanuts into five-spice peanuts, which are more delicious.
The ordinary fried melon seeds and peanuts here are not added with salt or spices, there is no taste at all, and they taste very original.
But the spiced ones are definitely tastier.
It is more troublesome to make spiced peanuts.
Soak the peeled peanuts for 15 minutes to soften the surface.
Then it was time to cook. She did not waste the spices from roasting the melon seeds and used them to cook the spiced peanuts.
Cook the peanuts with spices until they are 70% cooked, drain and fry the five-spice peanuts that are now 70% cooked. When the heat is almost right, pour in the salt used to fry the melon seeds. Use the salt to thoroughly fry out the moisture in the peanuts, making them dry, crispy and fragrant.
The fried five-spice peanuts were scooped out with a colander. She fried a lot in one pot, so there was not much salt left. She was reluctant to throw away the remaining salt, so she filtered and dried it and used it for her family's cooking.
The fried pork belly peanuts taste fragrant and crispy, suitable as a snack or a side dish for drinking.
After giving each of the two children one peanut, Xu Qinyu gave them many instructions, "Feng Ge'er and Yan Jie'er, be careful when eating peanuts. Eat slowly and chew them for a while longer. Will they taste better?"
My two children are three or four years old now, so they can eat some granular foods, but we still have to be careful.
The two children nodded and asked Xu Qinyu for a few more.
Xu Qinyu brought it to Wen, the fourth brother, and Ning Jie'er, and they all tasted it and said it was delicious.
She fried a lot this time. If she preserved it well, it would be enough to eat for a few days. She could also send some to Xia's sister-in-law and Xu Kongmu's family.
In fact, if these five-spice melon seeds and five-spice peanuts are sold on East Street and West Street, and they are sold at a higher price, they might make a lot of money during the New Year holidays. Xu Qinyu was very tempted.
But I heard my fourth brother suddenly say, "Yu Niang, you should have a good rest these few days, your body won't be able to take it."
Xu Qinyu glanced at her fourth brother, who seemed to see what she wanted to do. But he was right. She was indeed afraid that her body would not be able to bear it. The body was the capital of the revolution! Only with a good body could she think about other things. Since she was exiled here, she had been working non-stop and had hardly had a good rest. She also wanted to take advantage of the New Year to have a good rest for a few days.
Forget it, don’t think too much about it, just have a good rest for these ten days.
You can make money at any time, and there is no end to making money!
Oh, if only she could find a few talented apprentices, she could now teach her apprentices how to fry peanuts and sell them for money.
None of the Pei family members were good at cooking. Sometimes, when she was too busy, Wen and Pei Weixuan also took over the cooking.
She clearly taught me how to cook with her hands, and I just had to watch the heat, the ingredients, and the seasonings, but the food didn't taste that good.
Roasting peanuts is a technical job. If you really fry them, you might be afraid that the peanuts won’t taste good and won’t sell well, which would be a waste.
She also knew a way to fry salted dried Yinhua peanuts. It required fresh peanuts that had just been pulled out of the ground, washed, boiled with the shells, and then dried in the sun. This could be done in August or September, which was also the peanut harvest season. The salted dried peanuts could be preserved longer, so there was no rush.
At noon, Xu Qinyu made some stewed rice.
In the afternoon, I was busy making egg cakes, mung bean cakes and jujube rice cakes.
To make date paste rice cake, you need to steam the red dates first. There is no food processor here, so it is impossible to puree the date flesh with the skin removed after only the core is removed. The date skin will affect the taste, so the task of peeling the dates and making date paste was given to the Pei family.
When kneading the glutinous rice flour and white flour, she also added some brown sugar to make it taste better.
After the dough has been proofed, knead it and roll it flat. Spread a layer of jujube paste on it, roll it up, cut it into pieces and steam it in a pot. The house is filled with sweet aroma. The steamed jujube paste rice cake tastes sweet and sticky.
Pei Weixuan ate several pieces. It seemed that his fourth brother actually liked sweets more.
But the jujube rice cake just out of the pot was really delicious, sweet and sticky, and Xu Qinyu also ate several pieces.
When Zhuzi came to serve Shao Ge'er dinner in the evening, Xu Qinyu packed two bags of spiced peanuts and some jujube rice cakes for Zhuzi, asking him to take them back for Sister-in-law Xia to taste.
After dinner, there is nothing to do. Tomorrow I will make some fried radish balls, fried fish, fried lean meat balls, and lotus root dumplings for the New Year, and then there will be nothing to do.
Xu Qinyu naturally didn't have to do the cleaning; that was done by her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and step-husband.
After dinner, everyone stayed in the kitchen, waiting for the water to be boiled for washing and chatting.
Wen suddenly said, "Yu Niang, Xuan Ge'er, Ning Jie'er, I have something to tell you."
Xu Qinyu said, "Mom, just tell me what you want to say."
Wen clenched his palms and mustered up the courage to speak out.
"In fact, these days, I have been smelling the laundry."
She knew that her family didn't want her to have anything to do with the Wen family, but Aunt Gui was her biological mother, the one who gave birth to her and raised her. She couldn't just ignore her closest relative, whose blood was thicker than water.
At first she went to East Street and West Street to look for a job.
Only people who live there are willing to hire someone to do the laundry.
She saw a notice outside a house with five entrances recruiting pulp and washing workers, so she knocked on the door. Unexpectedly, the person who opened the door was the elderly Concubine Gui.
She then learned that the Wen family had also come to Yuanbao Town and had asked Aunt Gui to live in the side room of the house as a gatekeeper.
She was so angry that she wanted to stay in the Wen family to see if she could find a way to make Aunt Gui break up with her father.
How could Aunt Gui really want to stay in the Wen family? Even though she was a maid of Old Lady Wen and was promoted to an concubine, she never thought of being the old lady's concubine. Later, when her daughter entered the palace, she also got a contract to sell her body and was no longer the old lady's slave. After that, she was exiled and continued to be tortured when she came to Yuanbao Town. She didn't want to stay in the Wen family even more.
But Old Lady Wen kept her just to torture her and was not willing to let her go at all.
She knew that her hope of leaving the Wen family was slim, and she didn't want her daughter to stay in the Wen family and be bullied by Old Lady Wen, so she asked Wen to leave and not stay in the Wen family to wash clothes.
How could the Wen family really not care?
Seeing that Yu Niang was busy, and unable to think of any other way to take Gui Yi Niang away, Wen Shi spent more than two months washing clothes at the Wen family's place, accompanying Gui Yi Niang every day.
Xu Qinyu really didn't know that her mother-in-law went to Wen's house to wash clothes.
Because before today she had no idea that the Wen family was also in Yuanbao Town.
But given my mother-in-law's personality, she probably told them only because she had no other choice.
Xu Qinyu didn't think it was a big deal. She just wanted to find a way to get Aunt Gui out of the Wen family.
But how can we get Old Lady Wen to release the person?
In fact, it was still Mrs. Wen who was unwilling to let him go.
Mrs. Wen sighed and said, "Aunt Gui is not actually a born daughter of Old Lady Wen. She was abducted and sold to a pawnbroker. Later, she was chosen by Old Lady Wen's family and bought to be a maid for her. Old Lady Wen is not an easy person to get along with. Even when she was a concubine, she had a bad temper and often beat and scolded the servants." So Aunt Gui suffered from a young age.
Aunt Gui was only four or five years old when she was abducted. How could she remember many things? She had been to so many places that she couldn't even remember where her hometown was. She only remembered that she was abducted, and everything else was vague.
Xu Qinyu couldn't help but sigh when she heard this. There were more beggars in ancient times than in modern times.
But no matter what era it is, human traffickers deserve to die!
Xu Qinyu was trying hard to think of a solution. As she was thinking, she heard Ruan Jie'er, who was sitting on the stove watching the little white snake, suddenly cough.
Xu Qinyu suddenly had an idea and looked at Pei Weixuan with an immature idea.