Chapter 42 Entering the tailor's workshop, I discovered I could also make money...
In Chen Jiuchuan's mind, Lin Xiushui was short of money, very short of money, especially money.
The two used to work together to make money. There were many fields in Shanglintang, and many frogs and sparrows. People in the inner city of Lin'an loved to eat these two things, so many people caught them.
Usually, Lin Xiushui would pull the net bag while Chen Jiuchuan went down to the field to catch frogs, or Lin Xiushui would hold the bag opening while Chen Jiuchuan would catch sparrows. There were various jobs in spring, summer, autumn and winter. The money earned was split 50/50 between the two, and occasionally Sang Ying would be added to make it a three-way split.
However, things are not going well right now. Lin Xiushui has taken up tailoring work in a clothing shop in town, while Chen Jiuchuan has started working in shipping. They are acquainted with people in the mulberry and silkworm trades, and their paths have diverged.
But he really knows how to take on jobs.
Whether transporting mulberry leaves, mulberry seedlings, or silkworm eggs, one thing is indispensable: burlap sacks.
Lin Xiushui boarded his boat, and after exchanging a few words of catching up, Chen Jiuchuan remarked that her face had become rounder, so Lin Xiushui didn't want to talk to him.
Seeing the neatly stacked burlap sacks, she blurted out, "Chen Jiuchuan, you've switched to the burlap sack business again?"
“No way,” Chen Jiuchuan’s cousin Zhang Shu popped his head out from the pile of sacks. “We picked these up for you, so you could take them to mend them.”
I didn't sleep well all night trying to get this tattered sack sorted out. It was exhausting to tidy up everything from a bunch of junk to such neatness.
Zhang Shu rambled on: "Especially me, I was thinking about how much money is needed for food and drink in town. It's not easy for you, A Qiao, to earn money. What if there's no business? I was so worried that I couldn't eat. When I heard that I could earn three or four coins for mending a burlap sack, I didn't even sleep and quickly grabbed this job for you."
Chen Jiuchuan said, "You stole it? You went to sleep in the river before you were even fully awake."
He found the work, he carried the sacks, but he was the one who truly didn't sleep.
Lin Xiushui said, "I'm so touched by your thoughtfulness, but I can't believe a single word you said, Zhang Shu."
"Hey, you two," Zhang Shu said angrily. Sure enough, the two of them only knew how to team up to annoy him. They were like this before, and they are like this now. What sins had he committed?
Lin Xiushui didn't hear anything else; her eyes were only on the piles of burlap sacks. She circled around them, reached out and touched them, and finally blurted out, "Do you sell burlap sacks?"
Whether or not to repair them is another matter, but she found that these burlap sacks were really good. Although they were made of coarse cloth, they were well woven. If you could buy burlap sacks, it would definitely be cheaper than buying cloth, and they would be even better for making gloves.
Zhang Shu exclaimed, his face full of confusion, "Ah Qiao, this is for you to replenish, replenish, replenish."
“My ears are fine, I don’t need any treatment for now,” Lin Xiushui replied.
Chen Jiuchuan said, "Let me pack up and switch to selling burlap sacks."
"Really? I don't believe it. If you're going to sell, I'll only do business with you," Lin Xiushui said with a smile, but she took over the job.
Chen Jiuchuan was puzzled as to what was so good about burlap sacks. Why spend money to buy burlap sacks?
“Then why are you still taking on mending sacks for others? I’m telling you, brother,” Zhang Shu said with disdain, “don’t you have anything more respectable about you?”
"Decent," Chen Jiuchuan glanced at himself. He had no dignity; he didn't even care about saving face.
This was the first time Chen Jiuchuan had ever taken on a mending business. He didn't care about being respectable; all he wanted was to make a lot of money. He even went through several detours to get the goods.
After arriving in town, he found Lin Xiushui's thoughts increasingly unfathomable, as if they were a tangled mess in his mind.
Lin Xiushui knew him all too well; otherwise, why would she go to such lengths to get him some sack business for her?
She invited the two of them to her house for dinner. Chen Jiuchuan could go alone, but he was reluctant to bring Zhang Shu along. He said, "He eats too much. Cooking for him would be a waste of food."
Zhang Shu spat, "This guy has the nerve to talk? Who can actually eat this?"
Actually, tomorrow is Qingming Festival. In previous years, Chen Jiuchuan's mother would invite Lin Xiushui to dinner, and when Wang Yuelan returned, everyone would buy paper horses and use wheat cakes and thick glutinous rice to sweep the graves.
Suddenly the waterway was closed for major water conservancy repairs, and the road to Shanglintang would take an extra half day to a whole night. He couldn't go back for Qingming Festival this year, so Chen Jiuchuan rushed over and took on some more work for Lin Xiushui so that she could have less to worry about while she was busy.
Before he knew it, it was Qingming morning. He had spent the whole day in town. Early in the morning, he asked Lin Xiushui to take Xiaohe with him to "touch the green," which means to touch snails. There is a custom in the town of eating snails during Qingming Festival.
Xiaohe was very happy, as she loved playing in the water. Lin Xiushui, on the other hand, felt that Chen Jiuchuan had nothing to do, so she didn't really want to touch him and squatted at the riverbank.
Chen Jiuchuan handed her a handful of broken willow branches, "Then you can weave a hat."
Lin Xiushui looked at him, somewhat puzzled. Chen Jiuchuan said, "In Mingzhou, there's a custom during Qingming Festival: wearing a willow hat is a way of remembering the deceased. You can't take this hat off."
Thinking of one's parents is the same as missing one's family.
Every year around this time, Lin Xiushui is not very happy, but she doesn't say it. However, she misses her mother very much.
She slowly wove willow branches for herself, weaving in her longing. As she wove, she looked at the green willow branches and the babbling river. When she put the hat on her head, she only thought about making sure it didn't fall off, and didn't think about anything else.
Moreover, she was sleepy early in the morning, and Chen Jiuchuan kept bothering her. She was only thinking about whether he was sick. He asked her to pick out screws and make green rice dumplings, which she didn't know how to do.
The difficult Qingming Festival was over, and Lin Xiushui was no longer so sad. Chen Jiuchuan left the town overnight, and before leaving, he even gave her a bunch of sacks.
Lin Xiushui said, "I just said it casually. If I really want to buy it, I will."
"Anyway, I have no shame. I stole it from someone else, so you can just take it and use it."
After he finished speaking, someone banged a clapper to urge him on. Chen Jiuchuan waved his hand and strode away; he had to go check on the grain.
Looking at the tall young man's back, Wang Yuelan said, "Why don't you just acknowledge him as your cousin? After all, your Aunt Zhang treats you like a goddaughter."
Lin Xiushui looked puzzled and exclaimed, "Ah!" Even though Chen Jiuchuan was a year older than her, she really didn't want to call him "brother." Zhang Musheng even called her "sister," and she wouldn't agree to that.
"You really want to go for it? I was just teasing you," Wang Yuelan laughed and patted her head. "I told you to stop thinking about it. Once someone's gone, they're gone."
After Qingming Festival, Lin Xiushui stopped thinking about it. When she returned from her break, Madam Gu told her that she planned to send her to the tailor's workshop, which was a workshop where all the tailors worked.
Madam Gu had been watching her sew for half a month and knew her sewing skills. In the end, she decided to let her join the Gu family tailor shop. She said, "The tailor shop is different from the ready-made clothing shop. Here, there are only a few laymen, but when you go there, there will be tailors, some of whom are old tailors with twenty or thirty years of experience."
In other words, Lin Xiushui's tailoring skills were indeed quite good in a small place like a clothing shop, but among dozens of tailors' workshops, her skills were not particularly outstanding, and in such a place, skill was the deciding factor.
Madam Gu thought Lin Xiushui was capable, and Granny Bu had praised Lin Xiushui to her many times. She said while fiddling with the abacus, "In the past, I was half ironing cloth and half tailor. Now I'll let you go there to be a tailor, but you can only work as an assistant first. I can pay you two strings of cash a month. If you do well later, I can pay you two strings and five cents as a junior tailor."
"That's how it is in our line of work. The better you do, the higher your wages. Those who just sew clothes inside get low wages, but those who can train apprentices to be needleworkers for wealthy families get various bonuses in addition to their wages."
“There are forty or fifty tailors inside. For the next two days, you will follow Granny Bu to sort through the fabrics and get to know her.”
Lin Xiushui was somewhat surprised; why had she left the clothing shop so quickly?
“You’re not leaving. You still have to come back. You’ll still be in charge of ironing the new cloth. Just go to the tailor’s shop first and come back every three days.”
Lin Xiushui had been at the tailor shop for almost two months and was really reluctant to leave. Xiao Chun'e was also reluctant to part with her, but she said to Lin Xiushui, "The tailor shop is more suitable for you. Don't be afraid. My mother works as a cook at the tailor shop and her cooking is delicious. The food there is very good. I'll ask my mother to give you a couple more pieces of meat, no, I'll give you a full serving!"
Lin Xiushui was amused by her. She bid a reluctant farewell to Xiao Chun'e and Da Chunling. That day, with her bag on her back and her heart pounding, she followed Gu Niangzi to the Gu family's tailor shop.
She couldn't help feeling a little nervous but also excited. She would finally be able to meet many tailors. Before, in the clothing shop, she was the only tailor. Her skills were passable for an amateur, but once she entered the tailor's workshop, she really didn't know how good her skills were.
She used to think that Madam Gu only managed the clothing shop, and although there were many tailors, it should only be a sewing workshop, so it shouldn't be very big. But to her surprise, the Gu family's tailor shop was quite large, as big as the front and back yards of three clothing shops combined.
The Gu family tailors not only supplied clothes to Gu Niangzi's clothing shop, but also Gu Erniang's clothing shop, Gu family raw clothing shop, Gu family raw silk shop, and so on.
So, in the front room alone, there were about a dozen tailors, surrounding half the room's worth of cloth, spreading it out on the table to inspect the cloth. Some people were taking notes with paper and pen, and each tailor could immediately tell what kind of cloth it was after touching it.
A tailor marked it and said, "Changzhou white ramie cloth, fine cloth, for making undergarments. They're short ten bolts of cloth there."
“The fabric is good,” another seamstress added. “It’s fine for making a pleated skirt.”
Another woman was hitting the cloth with a ruler, her face full of anger. "You got the wrong cloth. You're going to get a good beating. The hemp from Runzhou is top-quality cloth. The cloth from Huzhou is divided into three grades. What are you standing there for? Move it back now. If the people inside recognize it, you'll get another scolding."
Lin Xiushui tugged at her bag, walked through a group of tailors and cloth, and went to the cloth lady. She and the cloth lady were old acquaintances. When she was learning about cloth in the cloth shop, it was the cloth lady who took her there.
She was only allowed to identify three types of cloth: linen, silk, and satin. She was asked to look at them over and over again, and even Lin Xiushui herself could hardly recall them. She spent fifteen days looking at the same batch of linen, picking out the mistakes one by one. It was tedious and boring. Every time she came out of the cloth shop, she would sit by the bridge for a while, her head feeling throbbing from looking at them.
She once said that the first skill a tailor should have was ironing fabric, and the second was examining the fabric to determine its quality, the sizing, the presence of errors or loose threads, and the dyeing process…
The old woman told her, "When you get here, you still have to identify the fabric first. There are dozens of tailors in the inner room, each with their own work to do. They can't look at the fabrics one by one, so we need to look at them first."
This is related to Lin Xiushui's ironing and mending skills, which she is capable of doing.
There were always twelve cloth-watching women in this room, and each of them had two apprentices to help out. None of them took Lin Xiushui seriously. However, one of the women pulled the cloth-watching woman aside and said, "Is this little girl any good at judging people? She looks very inexperienced. You should keep a close eye on her."
They were actually relieved. Fortunately, Madam Gu didn't assign anyone to them; she clearly didn't want to involve anyone with poor judgment.
Grandma Bu only said, "She is small, but her eyesight is excellent."
"Then let her identify this piece of cloth," the cloth-watching woman in the corner beckoned, "Isn't that Ah Qiao? Come and take a look."
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked over. Lin Xiushui looked at the old woman first. She was working under the old woman's hand. After the old woman nodded, she took a small step over without rushing.
The woman asked her, "What kind of cloth? What grade is it? Is it good?"
Thanks to Lin Xiushui's sewing and ironing skills, identifying fabric wasn't too difficult for her. She reached out, touched it, and felt it, confirming that it was kudzu cloth.
Looking closer at the pattern, the pattern is very orderly, the fabric edges are neat, there are no loose threads, and the sizing is very even, without being top-heavy.
She replied in front of everyone, "It is a piece of linen cloth. It must have been of excellent quality in the past, capable of being made into first-class cloth. Moreover, this piece of cloth was sized very well. It did not come from Lin'an Prefecture and was not heavily sized, but it was only in the past."
Some people asked curiously, "What does that mean?"
“Because this cloth used to be a first-class cloth, but it must have been stored for quite a long time, and the fabric has turned black,” she sniffed, “and has a sulfur smell. It must have been fumigated in a drying rack to turn white. This kind of cloth can no longer be called first-class cloth; it can only be considered third-class.”
The room fell silent. One of the women turned to the corner and asked, "Is that really how it is?"
The cloth-picking lady gave Lin Xiushui a high opinion of her and nodded, "Indeed, this batch of kudzu cloth has been sitting in the collapsed house for too long, and the color inside has turned black. It was just steamed the day before yesterday and brought back, and the smoke has turned it white. It's a good seedling."
"Not bad, he has a good eye for things at such a young age, and he's a good candidate to be a tailor."
Lin Xiushui, a promising talent, was remembered by everyone in the house in less than half an hour and was given a job. She made a good living here by relying on her own skills.
Moreover, lunchtime was much better than at the clothing shop, with a meat dish and a vegetable dish. But here, no one joked with Lin Xiushui, no one went behind the kitchen to openly borrow the stove from the cook to cook, and no one specially gave her a piece of food to secretly borrow the stove to stew water and bake flatbread.
She was eating meat, but she couldn't swallow anymore. She really missed Xiao Chun'e and Da Chunling.
Aside from meals, the tailoring workshop was quite interesting. The ladies would discuss the quality of fabrics. For example, if they couldn't tell whether a piece of fabric was good or bad, they would turn it over and over and have people look at it, each with their own opinion.
Moreover, when they debated about cloth, they didn't just talk the talk; when they got excited, they would grab a cloth ruler and pound it with a loud bang, their faces full of defiance. They would roll up their sleeves, stand on a stool, and have their apprentices stand behind them to cheer them on, determined to win the debate.
Once the cloth has been examined and its quality determined, the person who had been distorted will become friendly and approachable again, and everyone will be happy.
Lin Xiushui would shudder at first, seeing the fabric-viewing commotion turn into a fight—it was the first time she'd ever seen it. But after three or four fights that afternoon, she gradually got used to it, telling herself that this was the rule for viewing fabric, and that she was just practicing her voice.
After a day's work, wandering around with Granny Bu, sitting in a dark corner, Lin Xiushui found joy in the hardship. After finishing her day's work, all she could think about was cloth, cloth, cloth.
Xiao Chun'e came to find her, asking with a concerned look, "Ah Qiao, how is the tailor shop?"
"Cloth," Lin Xiushui realized what she had said and rested her head on Xiao Chun'e's head, "Good, cloth is very good."
All she wants right now is to be a piece of cloth, to tell everyone that she is good, a good piece of cloth.
Xiao Chun'e sighed, "I can't eat without you here."
"Yes, without you, I have no one to joke with while I eat," Lin Xiushui said bitterly.
Xiao Chun'e comforted her again, "Let's go in together, let my mother recognize our faces, and she'll give you a few more pieces of meat."
Lin Xiushui felt bad and quickly stopped her, not wanting to make her mother feel awkward. She pulled her away and started talking to Xiao Chun'e about the charcoal business, saying, "I have a good idea."
"What?"
Lin Xiushui's brilliant idea was to use burlap sacks to make clothes, specifically smocks for children. She found that burlap sacks were really good—cheap and useful—and the smocks she made would keep the children clean, and she could also earn money.
The smocks she made were very simple in design, requiring only a front piece, a back piece, and sleeve patterns. She could sew five or six a day for the thirty-odd children in the charcoal shop.
Why not make masks that are more suitable for the charcoal industry? We have sold them before, but we couldn't find good materials. Anyway, they are all stuffy and uncomfortable. They said that these things are not as comfortable as face shields.
The smock was comfortable to wear; it wasn't stuffy or constricting. And even if the smock got dirty after you put it on and then put on gloves, the clothes underneath would still be clean.
A burlap sack costs only twenty or thirty coins. If you piece it together, you can buy a smock for sixty-five coins. But buying a whole bolt of burlap will cost you a lot of money. These days, there are plenty of people who can't afford cloth and wear paper clothes and use paper blankets.
In particular, when Lin Xiushui was mending clothes at the mulberry tree, several people wearing paper clothes asked her to mend them. The paper clothes were made of paper made of mulberry bark and were not sewn together but glued on. She sewed them together with thread.
There was also a trade that specialized in making paper clothes, and even government offices or the imperial court provided paper clothes to the poor.
With the weather getting warmer, wearing paper clothes is actually quite cool, according to the person who came to have their paper clothes mended.
Lin Xiushui then realized that making clothes from burlap sacks was really economical; who said that burlap sacks couldn't be used to make good clothes?
She collected a lot of grain sacks and made not only blouses, but also aprons and trousers to sell. She sewed some fabric patches and pieced together fabric scraps in contrasting colors. There were quite a few buyers, because there were not many people with money or wealthy households in Sangshukou.
The mending business isn't limited to Sangshukou; even in tailor shops full of tailors, there are always jobs and money to be made.
Because some jobs, without dedicated sewing women, are low-paying, demanding, and the supervisors are particularly picky, they become unmanaged and no one wants to take them on. There's so much work that it's impossible to finish, and they also have to mend tattered things.
No one mended the broken curtains. Everyone would come and go, complaining, but they were left hanging there. If anyone tried to fix them, they would have to fix them too, and there would be no end to the work. No one cared if the table curtains were torn. They would just put a piece of cloth on top to cover them up. It wasn't like the cloth was torn; as long as it looked presentable, that was fine.
Since Lin Xiushui arrived, the curtains have been mended, and the tablecloths have been patched so neatly that the holes are no longer visible. She had just done it casually, but she didn't expect that Granny Bu would tell Madam Gu that she would talk to the workshop manager and ask her to pay.
She discovered that doing mending work in a tailor's shop was much more profitable than doing it in Sangqiaodu.
She has automatically found a way to earn extra money each month, which is fast, allows her to become familiar with people, and most importantly, makes a lot of money.
In just a few days, many of the seamstresses have become inseparable from her, and they are all saying, "If you leave, who will mend these things?"
Who understands the pain some of them endure every day after work, going home to mend tattered clothes? But ever since Lin Xiushui came, pain? Discomfort? What are those? She's tidied everything up and mended it all.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
