Chapter 47 Looking for Ah Qiao, what about Lin Xiushui...?
In the latter half of April, secondhand clothing shops sell summer clothes, mixed with many spring clothes that are only good among the bad ones.
At the Sanghe Bridge, as you sail to the bridge, the first thing you see is a row of people selling secondhand clothes. Most of them spread out mats on the ground, pile up a bunch of old clothes, and shout out their wares. They say the clothes are cheap, but the quality is poor, and you don't know where they get them from.
On the left and right sides were secondhand clothing shops. What was most attractive was not the signboard, but a small stall by the entrance where two people would unpack bundles of clothes they had bought from pawnshops or other places, shake out the various clothes, and sing in unison.
Liu Ya Sao's secondhand clothing shop didn't employ anyone to hawk its wares. Unlike other secondhand clothing shops that had a blackout door and were dark inside where you had to feel the clothes to judge their quality, her shop had its door wide open, with all kinds of clothes hanging inside, catering to men, women, young and old alike. Business was decent, even though the shop was relatively small.
"Have you eaten? If not, come over here for a bite. It's been a while since you've been here," said Aunt Liu, who was taking down a door panel. She was delighted to see Lin Xiushui coming over. Putting everything else aside, she really enjoyed doing business with Lin Xiushui.
Liu Ya Sao piled the door panels aside, glanced at Lin Xiushui's hand, and said, "You didn't bring that half-human wooden thing? What, you don't want it anymore? You're going to burn it as firewood? Give it to me if you don't want it!"
Lin Xiushui tilted her head to look at her, shook her head, stepped into the door and said, "I never said I didn't want it. It's at home. It's too heavy to carry around. When did I stop wanting it? There's no such time."
Su Qiaoniang doesn't specialize in making dolls. She's currently busy, having taken on a job making string dolls for others to earn a living. She needs to train her apprentices for a month or two, and she doesn't want to bother them all the time.
She took out a measuring tape, pulled out both ends and stretched them, "I brought this with me today."
Nowadays, most women's clothes consist of a few items: an outer jacket or vest, an inner tube top or blouse, and preferably a skirt or trousers. Generally, women have similar body shapes, so if the measurements are accurate, the sizes can be easily altered.
Moreover, some women come to her not to have their clothes altered, nor to choose patterns, but simply to buy a well-fitting and inexpensive garment. Their biggest requirement is that it not be torn and that they can wear it.
If Lin Xiushui were to make one for each person, it would take her quite a few days to make one set, which wouldn't be cost-effective. Moreover, she would charge three or four hundred coins for each one, not counting the price of the fabric. It would be much more cost-effective to buy old clothes and alter them.
"You've made money? You've become rich?" Aunt Liu was a little surprised to see Lin Xiushui picking out good materials. In the past, when she came, she would pick out whatever was cheap.
Just kidding, Lin Xiushui certainly didn't become rich, but she did make a lot of money.
She's currently selling gloves and various other items, as well as mending supplies and collar trimmers. She can currently spare three to five strings of cash to buy secondhand clothes, speaking with great confidence, saying, "Let me take a look first; if it's too expensive, I won't take it."
"I'm also someone who likes to save money."
Liu Ya Sao leaned against her clothes and laughed, "I thought you had made a lot of money, and I was just about to ask you for some tips."
"Where would I get the means to earn a living with my own two hands?" Lin Xiushui said, pulling off a light brown and white floral jacket. She took it off to examine it closely, measured it with a cloth ruler, and found that the size was just right. She then touched and examined it inch by inch and noticed that there were two holes in the back, which she could mend.
Liu Ya Sao had just bought a package and glanced at it. In their clothing shop, people could choose whatever they wanted, good or bad. She gave Lin Xiushui a discount of 700 coins. Even if the clothes had holes, she could sell them to others for 1.2 coins. Such good material.
Lin Xiushui picked up another light purple dress and asked, "What about this one?"
"This material is so-so, but it comes from Pingjiang Prefecture. The pattern is nice, and you can see that a lot of fabric was used. Nine hundred coins is the minimum."
Lin Xiushui didn't say whether she wanted it or not, and her hand touched the light stone green upper garment next to her. Liu Ya Sao immediately said, "This is linen cloth from Lin'an Prefecture. Even though there are some loose threads on the side, it will still cost 1.5 or 1.6 strings of cash. I'll give you 1 string. Sister, you're also from the tailoring business. You know whether my price is fair or not."
Lin Xiushui certainly knew that the quality of a garment depended on its fabric, material, texture, workmanship, pattern, whether it had a lining, size, collar and cuffs, and whether it was damaged. These were all important factors in judging a garment.
The fabric she asked about wasn't particularly high quality, but it was clear that it would fit her figure well and could be easily altered.
She had no complaints about the price, and she complained that it was too expensive; the price of the clothes was more ferocious than a tiger.
These days, if an ordinary person wants to buy a set of clothes, they have to spend one or two months' wages to afford a set of plain clothes.
She looked into the corner, where a large pile of plain-colored clothes stood, most of them with holes and made of mediocre material.
But it's cheap! Whether it's a jacket, a blouse, or a skirt, it's all 200 coins, a clearance sale of 200 coins each.
With three strings of cash hanging in her palm, Liu Ya Sao stood blankly by the door, her hand dangling back and forth, watching Lin Xiushui's back as she carried the large bundle.
All I want to say is, sis, at least bring something expensive with you!
It's true that when it comes to clothes, you should buy good ones rather than bad ones. You can wear a bad one for one season, but a good one can last for several years.
Do the people who cross the Kesang Bridge have a lot of money?
No, otherwise Lin Xiushui's mending business would be so successful, and she could sell so many cheap burlap sacks and scraps of cloth. Most people are very frugal.
Lin Xiushui first spent several dozen coins to send the dress to a laundry shop for starching. After receiving it, she ironed it, then removed the collar and replaced it with a collar and collar made by her using various fabric scraps. She tied a knot on the skirt, and if it didn't fit well, she made some minor alterations. For just over three hundred coins, she could buy a dress that was both stylish and well-fitting.
These clothes are selling extremely well; those who want to buy or alter them have to enter a lottery. This was Lin Xiushui's idea, otherwise it wouldn't be appropriate to distribute them to anyone else.
The women were very receptive to it. After all, making a wish before the Bodhisattva and Buddha required burning incense, candles, and money, and it took a long time for the wish to come true. Now, with cheap clothes right in front of them, they didn't need to do anything; it was just a matter of drawing a fortune stick. They were truly grateful.
So early in the morning, all the people at the stalls in Sangshukou watched this group of women "put on a show".
Some women held a jar of lottery tickets, shaking it up and down, nodding their heads, saying, "May the Bodhisattva bless me, may the Bodhisattva bless me, I, Xie Sanhua, have drawn a blue one today, oh, how annoying."
The blue ones were unlucky, the red ones were lucky. Out of ten lots, two were blue and eight were red.
"Step aside, let me try. I'm not bad at anything else, but I have amazing luck. Last time I was washing clothes in the river, I found a coin," another woman snatched the divination stick and boasted to herself, throwing out a blue one in front of everyone.
The others burst into laughter. She angrily adjusted her hair bun and stomped her foot, exclaiming, "Is there any justice in the world? Even divination has to be based on reason!"
At this moment, the group had no time to dwell on their disappointment at not being able to buy cheap clothes; their only concern was their own bad luck, which turned into admiration for the good luck of others.
Lin Xiushui originally came up with this idea because she was worried that everyone would be upset if they couldn't buy clothes, but it didn't work at all. In the end, she was the only one who got hurt, which is simply outrageous.
Everyone had come to regard her divination stick container as a way to test one's luck. When the bamboo craftsman, Grandpa Zhou, was going to select bamboo materials, he would first come to borrow a container. After muttering some incantations, he would throw the divination stick into the container. If he threw a blue one, he would turn around and sit down with a thud, pick up the sewing basket that someone had brought him, and say while mending, "Today is not a good day for doing things. I'd better mend something."
The women living in the alley were the same. Several of them would rush over early in the morning, not to mend or alter their clothes, but toss the divination sticks. They would be happy when they drew a red one, and one of them would slap her thigh and say, "I'm lucky today, I'm sure I can buy the cheapest rice."
Some of the women pulled out red envelopes, shuddered, and looked on in disbelief. "My God, I visited that stingy relative today, who even rinses the latrine bucket four times before watering things. How could I possibly receive even the slightest bit of a return gift from them? It's unbelievable!"
When she returned, she did receive a return gift: a bucket of chewed bones, which she was told to take back and feed to the dog. It was infuriating.
Lin Xiushui went from feeling helpless to watching the show with amusement. Anyway, there was always something exciting to see in Sangshukou. It was either the fat son who poked a hole in his father's family heirloom painting, crying and being chased and beaten, running around these stalls while pulling up his pants, until finally the couple who repaired the paintings and calligraphy fixed them, and only then could he put his pants back on.
Or someone might be carrying a pair of chicken coops from the other side of the river, having just bought an old hen, a rooster, and chicks from the chicken and duck market, when they get to the side, the bottom of the coop falls down, and the chickens fly out in a panic.
It was utter chaos. Hu San Niangzi was pulling at her cloth and shouting, "Hey, my cloth! Hey, the chicken flew onto my cloth!" The bamboo craftsman, Grandpa Zhou, was in a panic and yanked the chicken coop off. The woman was still shouting, "Where's the chicken coop? Oh dear, how did my chicken fly onto the umbrella?"
Lin Xiushui's large blue cloth umbrella, a perfectly good umbrella, was first marked with two chicken footprints. She swallowed the egg in her mouth, "Hmm, eating too many eggs, what a mess."
Sun Da, who had come to bring her money and mend things, saw the scene of everyone catching chickens and said, "It's like chicken feathers stir-fried with chives, what a mess!"
Seeing many people glaring at him, he chuckled and said, "I'm just talking nonsense, like tailoring clothes without scissors."
Lin Xiushui silently brushed the chicken feathers off the table, pretending that no chickens had been there. Seeing that Sun Da had brought a woman, and a child beside her, she asked curiously, "Are you going to get some nourishment?"
Sun shook his head. "No, she altered the clothes."
Then he turned to the woman and said, "This is Lin Xiao Tailor. If you need any changes, just tell her. It's cheap and won't cost you any extra money."
"What clothes do you want to alter?" Lin Xiushui asked gently.
The woman looked to be about thirty years old and seemed quite awkward. Seeing her like this made everyone even more uncomfortable, and they were so anxious that they couldn't speak. The little girl, as usual, chimed in, "My mother wants to alter a jacket so that it looks nicer." Others comforted her, saying, "Then you've come to the right person, not the wrong place. Don't rush, don't rush, talk slowly."
The woman became even more flustered, unsure of where to put her hands, and could only manage a dry laugh, nodding repeatedly to everyone. The little girl, on the other hand, said generously, "My mother said thank you."
Sun Da said he met her on the road. He saw that she was anxious and flustered because she couldn't agree on a price with someone, so he brought her to Lin Xiushui.
He took another forty or fifty pairs of gloves and went around selling them by boat. After explaining what he needed to do, he hurriedly left.
After Lin Xiushui packed up her stall, she took the woman and child to her house and learned that the woman had a stutter and her speech was not very clear.
The little girl was thin and sallow, but spoke very clearly. She told Lin Xiushui, "I will call my mother my mother, and my name is Li Sanya."
Li Sanya raised her head and said proudly, "My mother wants to alter her clothes. She used to be a servant in someone else's house, but now she says she can go to the procuratorial office and wants to alter some decent clothes to wear."
Her mother was both anxious and angry. She tugged at Li Sanya's clothes, asking why she would tell everyone everything.
But Li Sanya disagreed. Although Cangtou Sao was a cleaner and janitor in a wealthy household, it was precisely because of this that she was able to continue doing cleaning and wiping work at the sanitation bureau.
Lin Xiushui understood, but didn't say anything. She reached out and took the bundle, unfolded it, and looked at it. It was a gray-white jacket, but the cuffs were orange-red.
Making it look presentable is quite difficult and tricky.
She bent down slightly and said to Li Sanya, "Come pick it up in a couple of days at the edge of the rooster's hour. You've altered quite a few clothes, so it will cost sixty coins. Give me thirty coins first, that's the going rate. If you don't like it after the alterations, we can give you a refund."
Li Sanya's mother nodded hurriedly, took out a cloth bag from the bundle, opened it layer by layer, and told Li Sanya to count the money.
Li Sanya first calculated that it was cheaper than other families' prices before counting out thirty coins for Lin Xiushui, thanking her properly, and then leading her mother away.
Lin Xiushui was not entirely satisfied with this jacket after making several alterations, so she took it to the tailor's workshop the next day. Now that she wasn't the only tailor, she had many ideas and methods.
When they arrived at the tailor shop, before they even started working, a group of female tailors gathered around to look. They first looked at the blue-gray jacket, which looked like an old cloth cover that had been washed too many times and turned white. Wearing it would have looked worse than wearing a burlap sack.
The old tailor wiped his needle on his head, glanced at it, and said, "First, take off this collar. Blue-gray with orange-red on top looks like an old hen wearing a rooster's comb; it doesn't look right."
“The collar should also be blue, and the sleeves and collar should be widened. Ah Qiao, your drawn thread embroidery is not suitable, it’s too delicate. This is more suitable,” Madam Du said, touching it. “Don’t blame me for praising my own wares, but this is more suitable for my embroidery style. I have a bunch of dark landscape collars at home, I’ll bring them to you tomorrow to match.”
"What kind of relationship do we have? Why are you asking me for money? When my Xiaoduo had her birthday last time, you even gave her a cloth rabbit, which she loved. Do you expect me to give you money back?"
The young seamstress, Xiao Huan, leaned in and said, "Let's not argue about money. Talking about money will only hurt our feelings. Instead, let's talk about whether Lin Aqiao will take on apprentices and teach us new embroidery patterns. That would be more suitable for our needlework relationship."
"What needles and thread?" Li Jin, who was assisting Lin Xiushui, said. Lin Xiushui only heard the last few words, "I have a lot of needles and thread. Give them all to A Qiao." Lin Xiushui glanced at her, and Li Jin made two "ah" sounds and nodded, which meant that she should go and get the needles and thread.
That's not what I meant.
"What does that mean?" Li Jin asked her immediately.
Lin Xiushui said seriously, "Go and pull out the yarn."
"Hey, you won't tell me," Li Jin turned his head to carry out the order, still muttering, "What do you mean? What do you mean?"
The others burst into laughter upon hearing this. One of the women wiped away her tears of laughter and said to Lin Xiushui, "I'll go and call the seamstress next door to come and give us some ideas."
“We said it’s pointless to change the color. If we want it to look good, we should just cover it up completely. But Ah Qiao sincerely asked,” a woman with a high bun put her hand on Lin Xiushui’s shoulder and pointed at the back of her jacket with scissors, “to add a narrow strip.”
He then outlined the two sides of the side seam of the jacket, saying, "If you cut it open, you'll definitely need to make a slit. Sew a wide green border along the edge, and at the cuff seam, it's best to sew two narrow borders as well."
Another seamstress pinned the needle and thread to the apron, looked around with her hands behind her back, and said, "For light colors, it's actually best to add dye. Can't we seamstresses be less rigid?"
She said with a grin, "When Manager Yao hears this later, she'll say, 'Oh dear, we need to learn from other people's strengths. Why can they come up with novel patterns in their tailoring, while you can't? Is it because your brains are like printing plates, all cut from the same mold?'"
"You're going to pay? For a fee of only sixty coins, who would take on the dyeing job? Humph."
"Look, you don't believe me when I say you're inflexible? My family owns a dye shop. What's wrong with you looking for me? I don't want your money!"
Before Lin Xiushui could speak, her wife, who had just been sarcastic, laughed and said, "Great, that's exactly what I was waiting for."
Why are you all laughing? Have I been set up?
Everyone else laughed, but Li Jin said, "A trap? What trap?"
One tailor said, "It's like a crooked pot and a crooked stove, one set after another, Li Jin, Li Jin."
Lin Xiushui laughed so hard she rubbed her stomach. When she was with them, she couldn't get a word in edgewise. There was no need to say thank you, because they would say that. Instead of saying anything insincere, she should give them two neckerchiefs as a gift.
As for what color to dye it, Lin Xiushui had actually asked, and Li Sanya said that her mother liked blue. This blue-gray color had been washed many times, and the soft blue had faded.
Lin Xiushui dyed it back, and if she wasn't satisfied, she returned it. Following the instructions of other tailors, she removed the collar band and replaced it with a new light stone green wide-brimmed collar band, with side slits on both sides, a thinner collar band in the middle, and a wider seam at the back.
The jacket, completed under the joint guidance of the two tailors, was delivered to Li Sanya and her mother.
"They changed the jacket?" Li Sanya's eyes widened.
Her mother hurriedly waved her hand, struggling to utter a single sentence, "Money, there isn't enough money."
"What's not enough?" Lin Xiushui handed her the clothes. "It's enough. I'm very cheap. The dyeing is free, and the fabric scraps I sewed are only thirty coins each. I'm still making a profit."
"Moreover, if I ever need the help of the Bureau of Arrangements, I'd like to rely on you."
Li Sanya looked up at her, but they were too short to lean on each other.
Even if you manage to get into the bureau, you'll be doing the hardest and most tiring work. You just want to dress a little more presentably for the first few days.
"Then eat more and grow taller," Lin Xiushui took a cloth tiger out of the cabinet and stuffed it into Li Sanya's hand, "Who knows, you might grow up to be as strong as a tiger."
"Really?"
"certainly."
Lin Xiushui said, "You just have to rely on yourself."
She watched the mother and daughter walk out of the courtyard, out of the long, winding alley, and into the open space outside.
Seeing them always reminded her of Sang Ying, and she wondered where she was going and whether she could successfully leave Shanglintang and come to a place more suitable for her from the fields. Sang Ying wanted to grow up in Sangqing Town.
She thought to herself, "Everyone has their own life."
Of course, rather than waiting for Sang Ying, the first people she saw were the people from the Tentation Office.
When she returned from Qinghewu, a crowd of people had gathered under the mulberry tree, three or four layers deep, and there was a lot of noise.
Lin Xiushui also squeezed in to take a look, thinking that something interesting had happened again. She pushed her head in but couldn't see anything, so she nudged the person next to her and asked in a low voice, "What happened?"
"What is it? The people from the Accounting Office are here, looking for A-Qiao."
Lin Xiushui was standing on tiptoe to look when she heard this. She nodded repeatedly and agreed without thinking, "So you're looking for A-Qiao."
Hmm? Something seems off.
Looking for Ah Qiao has nothing to do with Lin Xiushui.
Author's Note: I'm late with the update, please give me a red envelope! [Please!]
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