Chapter 60 Making Clothes for Yourself
What's so good about being literate? Does it make the road easier to walk on?
Lin Xiushui asked Sang Ying, and Sang Ying replied, "Of course, I can read and find my way around."
“Come, come, let me tell you, you don’t know what it’s like to be a clerk until you do it,” Sang Ying said, patting his back. “The most abundant thing in Sangqing Town isn’t mulberry trees, it’s roads.”
The town has nine wards and thirty-six lanes, with waterways crisscrossing the area. It's not surprising that there are many boats and it's crowded. You can manage by rocking the boats left and right, but when it comes to transporting rice, that's a big problem once it reaches the shore.
Despite repeated demolitions by the street management department, the encroachment on the street remains quite serious. Shops have set up stalls that occupy most of the street, and various floating stalls have been set up on the opposite side of the river. The main road, which was originally wide enough for more than a dozen people to walk side by side, can now only accommodate five or six people at most.
The crowded streets were filled with all sorts of haphazardly hung signs, colorful pavilions and gates, and various plaques, creating a bustling and chaotic scene. For Sang Ying, delivering rice and grain to each shop according to the written instructions on such streets was simply maddening.
“When I agreed to be a broker, I was only thinking about the monthly salary and that I was capable,” Sang Ying recalled her experiences during that period. She could only say, “No wonder they need someone who can read, no wonder no one wants this kind of job.”
She explained many times how to first take the slip of paper, then row the rice shop's boat before finishing work, inquire about the location, and once ashore, look up at each of the dozens of shops on the street to identify the shop where you need to pick up rice.
This place is relatively easy to find. There are quite a few people who need to pay for rice at the rice shop. After all, as long as people have mouths, they need to eat. So the rice shop is busy collecting rice and has few people. Half of the town's rice needs to be delivered. When someone comes and says they want to deliver rice, they have to deliver it immediately.
Sang Ying was the one who was bossed around the most. She was young and literate, so she was easy to bully. She was paired with two women, and the three of them would be made to deliver any last-minute orders.
Delivering rice to shops is fine, but the worst place is the fish market or meat market in the north of the city. These places are big, dirty, and chaotic, and the stalls are not fixed, so delivering rice is very troublesome. You need to know the way, ask for directions, and be able to read.
Everyone wanted to see when Sang Ying would give up, but she gritted her teeth and persevered, thinking that she could make a living by farming in the fields, whether it was raining or sunny. How could it be more difficult than it was now?
That was truly something. Carrying rice made your shoulders ache, walking made your toes bleed, and your legs trembled. This job, which paid eight coins a string plus two bushels of grain at the end of the month, truly made people endure the most bitter hardships before becoming a rice carrier.
With her sun-tanned face, she said, "The road is certainly easier to walk than before. I don't have any grand ambitions, I just want to earn a living on my own."
"You have to learn to read. I sent a message to my mother, and she said I've made something of myself."
These three simple words, if Sang Ying were in Shanglintang, she could wait thirty years, until she became a bride and then a mother-in-law, and she still wouldn't get to hear these three words.
Getting out of this situation is no easy feat, and she won't easily give up and go back.
Lin Xiushui knew all too well how difficult things were for her. She would never say she needed to rest just because she was tired. How could she rest? At most, she could only rest for three days a month.
So she really spent a lot of money, and luckily she had made some money at the moment, so she bought Sang Ying a map of all the scattered streets and all the big and small streets in the town.
It was fortunate that Lin Xiushui had rented houses before and knew that the people most familiar with every street and alley were the real estate agents. They were responsible for a certain area, and each of them had a very detailed map.
Others wouldn't sell to her, thinking she was trying to steal their business. In the end, she went with her household registration certificate because real estate agents had to register with the government, and she didn't have a special certificate.
“Go ahead and learn,” Lin Xiushui said, sweating as she handed her a thick stack of scriptures. “We not only need to learn to read, but also to recognize the roads.”
Sang Ying was practically in tears. In the sweltering summer heat, she couldn't even shed a tear, and she was so anxious that she had to exaggerate and tell her, "My heart is like the blazing sun, suddenly hit by a thunderstorm, babbling and sobbing."
With so many local records, and even the divisions made according to the streets and alleys, Sang Ying wouldn't have to work too hard for at least a while.
Lin Xiushui wiped her face, then covered it with a wet wipe, and muttered, "You understand too well."
Just like in the old days, when she traveled a long way to a family's house to have her clothes altered, Sang Ying would inquire beforehand and go with her.
After taking so many detours, it's good to be able to relax a bit now.
It was so hot that Lin Xiushui was exhausted from rowing the boat, even more so than from drawing a piece of yarn. She made a firm decision: starting tomorrow, she would pay to ride on someone else's boat.
Otherwise, she wouldn't want to go to work at all.
If you ask her how much money she earned, aside from the fifteen taels she had saved before and the three strings she saved later, the rest she earned and spent, and then earned again. Who could understand?
It's much better than Guanghui, the street detective who doesn't earn money but still writes every day.
“Money is something you either have or you don’t,” Guanghui said. “But I have six cats.”
Lin Xiushui was puzzled; what did this have to do with cats?
“It’s okay, I just wanted to say something,” Guanghui said, adding that she missed the cats, even though she sniffed them all in the morning before leaving.
He sat under the covered walkway, a good distance from Lin Xiushui, and handed her his copy of today's newspaper.
Only Lin Xiushui and the old fortune teller know how to read this thing; others have to listen to it, but she can read it.
To be honest, Guanghui failed the imperial examinations, wanted to become a Taoist priest but couldn't break his bond with cats, and couldn't earn a penny. He could live off his family's wealth every day, but this tabloid article was indeed interesting.
Fortunately, Guanghui didn't know he had so many prefixes, otherwise she would have insisted on adding that he raised six cats.
He could also accept bribes, write about other people's affairs in tabloids, and get a steamed bun or some vegetables from his own family. He could even bring his own cat to show him. He would break down each and every one of these incidents. Didn't he value personal relationships? The cat was valuable too.
Anyway, Lin Xiushui glanced at it and knew that Chen Guihua must have slipped her money, no, she must have slipped her soap.
I like to give people soapberries, which are the most common and not very valuable items in perfume shops.
Because among a pile of messy mending items in the tabloid, there was a small newspaper that read, "The first shop at Sangshukou, Chen Guihua washes babies cheaply. No baby who has been washed there has ever complained. No matter how dark or dirty the baby goes in, they all come out completely naked."
The following omits hundreds of words of praise, from the techniques to the soap beans, even the daily act of boiling water could be described in dozens of words.
She looked at Guanghui and asked, "Could you please stop wasting water?"
“She gave me way too much,” Guanghui shrugged, unable to refuse. “She said the soapberries weren’t for me, they were for my cat.”
"You have to return it to me after you're done writing it; someone wants to put it on the wall."
Lin Xiushui admired no one in Sangshukou except Chen Guihua. Despite her loud voice and constant bickering with Chai Niangzi about how bad the firewood was, she was actually quite shrewd despite her rough exterior.
The tabloid that Guanghui wrote was not intended to spread information widely.
Chen Guihua reached out and took the tabloid. She couldn't understand it, which was fine. She held it carefully in both hands. "Of course, tabloids are something you read once and then forget. They should be posted on the wall so that nobody can understand them and everyone who passes by will find them strange."
"When something is strange, I want to know. If I want to know, I'll find out what I, Chen Guihua, am doing, and it's all good stuff."
Guanghui humbly asked, "What constitutes a good deed? Without charging money?"
Chen Guihua had her own explanation: "Let me ask you, isn't it good to combine 'woman' and 'son'? I wash both the baby girl and the baby boy, don't you think that's a good thing?"
Lin Xiushui fell silent upon hearing this, unable to refute it, utterly unable to refute it.
“Guanghui, let me give you some more soapberry. Can you draw a picture of a bathhouse based on your cat drawing? No other shop or store on the street can draw as well as you,” Chen Guihua said, rubbing her hands together. “Draw it bigger, otherwise people won’t understand it.”
Guanghui happily agreed.
Only Lin Xiushui pursed her lips and walked with Chen Guihua for a while, past the mulberry trees, before asking, "Where did you run into trouble?"
Chen Guihua was looking down at the tabloid when she heard this, and she was a little stunned. Then she smiled and said, "No, I just want to earn more money, to earn more."
Actually, it's true that perfume shops are busiest in the summer, since people want to wash themselves after sweating, but that's not the case at all. In winter, boiling water at home is a hassle, and people really don't want to boil it, so perfume shops do a lot of business.
In the summer, they would simply fill a basin with cold water, wipe themselves down on the spot, or wash in the river at night, never spending a penny more than necessary.
Seeing that there were fewer people, the perfume shop immediately arranged two shifts, one for the morning shift and one for the evening shift, with the monthly wage halved. Chen Guihua didn't make a fuss; she simply chose the morning shift.
When she returned at noon, she thought about taking on washing jobs herself. She would not only wash bodies, but also wash children's hair and clothes. This would make up for the shortfall, but in reality, she was losing a lot of money, earning seven or eight hundred coins less.
She had no one to help her; her mother-in-law had passed away long ago, and her husband was practically dead when he went out, only sending two strings of cash with him. Her family was reliable, but she couldn't very well ask her mother for money.
Lin Xiushui guessed and could roughly figure it out, but she didn't expose it. Instead, she said, "This way of writing won't work."
"How do you know if something is clean? What exactly constitutes a good wash?"
"You need to come up with something that others don't have, like soap balls for washing children's bodies, hibiscus leaves for washing their hair, and you can also collect mugwort. In the hot summer with lots of mosquitoes, you can take a mugwort bath," Lin Xiushui continued when she arrived at Chen Guihua's house. "You can separate hair washing from body washing. You can take on hair washing jobs for older people with long hair that's hard to manage. I think you're good at hairstyling, so learn more. After washing hair, you can say you can braid hair buns. Couldn't you make some money that way?"
Chen Guihua was stunned; how could she not have thought of that?
“Sister Xiu, why are you so kind, telling me everything?” Chen Guihua moved her stool, scraping the wooden floor with a few swishing sounds. “I can’t share any of the money I make with you.”
She closed her eyes again and compromised with herself, "A little bit, a little bit will do."
“Who said I was going to split the money? We can make money together in the future,” Lin Xiushui suddenly said.
"Auntie, go learn a skill first. Don't be afraid to spend money. Save a penny or two, and you can eat and drink it. The food has to be outstanding so that your brand can become famous."
Chen Guihua humbly asked for advice, "Then what should I do?"
"Practice your hair-washing skills first."
"ah?"
Lin Xiushui was very serious. She felt that washing a child's body might not earn as much as washing their hair. After all, children run into the water at night, and a quick rinse is all it takes to get them clean.
Her hair wasn't just a matter of washing it; it was long and difficult to manage. It would get tangled as soon as she took it out of the bun. She had to wash her hair every two days, which was like being tortured, as she had to bend over with her neck hunched over. She couldn't help but scream.
Asking her aunt for help is even worse; she screams like a pig being slaughtered.
She wants to outsource her hair.
Otherwise, of the three thousand strands of hair, she might only have worries left, with no hair left, because they had all fallen out.
The hair washing business was outsourced to Chen Guihua, and she was very dedicated to making money from it.
She bought hibiscus leaves specifically for washing hair, cleaned up the small wooden couch in her home, and polished it until it shone. When someone lay down on it, she would first comb their hair with a wooden comb, then pour water over it and slowly wash it.
Throughout the entire process, he only asked if the water was too hot or too cold, without saying a single unnecessary word. His technique was skillful, neither too light nor too heavy.
Lin Xiushui finally understood why Xiaohe always said she felt comfortable after taking a bath – because it was truly relaxing.
It's like being extremely thirsty on a hot day and then drinking a sip of ice-cold water.
Seeing that her eyes were closed, Chen Guihua thought she hadn't washed her properly and quickly asked, "What's wrong? Is my technique bad?"
“It works well,” Lin Xiushui said, “but there’s one thing that’s not quite right.”
"Which point?"
Lin Xiushui said, "It's not good for my money."
She was joking, but she felt so comfortable after the bath that she suddenly had a breakthrough. In the summer, if the sewing business wasn't doing well, she could do other businesses to make a living.
With her hair still damp, she said she wanted to do business with Chen Guihua.
Chen Guihua was terrified. "Did I wash someone stupid?"
Of course not. Lin Xiushui was just thinking that after the weather got hot, oilcloth gloves were no longer easy to sell. She used to earn more than three strings of cash a month just by selling gloves, after deducting the cost of hiring several women to sew and cut the cloth.
The price is 800 coins now. It's best to buy them first from the people who used to work at the laundry shop, and use them in the fall and winter. After all, nobody likes to wear gloves in the hot weather.
She had already accepted that money comes and goes, and if one product doesn't sell, she can sell another. But recently, after going back and forth, she still couldn't figure out what was simple, had enough fabric to supply, and was also easy to sell.
Actually, it's not very common. The more delicate the item, the more troublesome it is to make. And while she can guarantee that she can do it well herself, she can't expect others to do it well either.
Now that she's washed it, she's figured it out. She can make a gauze bag to put on a ball of soap to make lather. She can also use this small gauze bag to pour in mugwort and soak it in water. Not only can she pour in mugwort, but she can also pour in dried rose petals from perfume shops, bath beans, etc. It's suitable for washing her face and body.
Even if these don't sell, she can switch to selling tea and spices.
Most importantly, she has access to a much wider variety of yarn than small brokers on the market.
Since the drawnwork embroidery was moved out of the neckline, one of her daily routines has been to select various types of gauze, such as plain gauze, clear gauze, three-patterned gauze, chestnut gauze, and velvety gauze. She has drawn many types of gauze and can tell whether there are any loose threads or not just by touching them.
Although the gauze bag is small and has only a drawstring at the opening with no fancy design, it still needs to be carefully selected, and the premise is that it does not leak any threads.
For ordinary families, even a single bolt of plain silk gauze without any patterns would be quite expensive. Lin Xiushui would never have considered it before, preferring to use thicker materials such as hemp or silk instead.
Things are different now. The sewing workshop earns money from the accounting department. After making curtains and draperies, they make a considerable income. Several sewing women can earn double the money. The tailor shop frequently interacts with the accounting department, and they also earn money from other young ladies doing drawn thread embroidery. They have also gained a reputation, but the drawn thread is too slow and the patterns are becoming more and more complicated.
She receives an extra allowance mid-month: a bucket of ice, two baskets of fresh fruit from various places, including a honeydew melon and about ten crabapples, a basket of loquats with seeds (the seedless ones are called loquats with seeds), and the most fashionable bayberries.
She exchanged the two bolts of summer cloth for plain gauze. Madam Gu told her to choose for herself, so she chose two bolts of cheap and well-starched plain gauze, as well as the threads pulled off from the drawnwork embroidery, all of which were hers.
The gauze bag had to be sewn with yarn. This plain gauze was quite thick and had large holes. She grabbed a handful of bath beans, put them inside, tightened the bag opening, and squeezed it back and forth in the water. Soon, bubbles appeared.
When the tailor shop gets any less-than-ideal yarn next time, she'll buy it and make bath balls.
She felt very clever, while Chen Guihua thought, "That's great! Pour in the mugwort, and that handful of mugwort can be used many times!"
Lin Xiushui silently took back what she was about to say. When it came to being stingy, Chen Guihua was truly true to her nature.
When it comes to making money, she is diligent and meticulous. Chen Guihua herself says that money is like her own mother.
She first sold a gauze bag to the perfume shop. Without saying anything, she put a soap ball on it and vigorously washed out a lot of white bubbles, filling a large basin. The shopkeeper saw it and immediately said he wanted to buy it.
The more bubbles, the better the perfumes are made with high-quality ingredients, though the main reason is to save money.
A gauze bag costs nine coins, two cost seventeen coins, and three cost twenty-five coins. Buying three bags is equivalent to making a profit of two coins.
That's definitely a great deal, but it's only for the first three customers. After that, you get one free bag with every ten you buy.
The perfume shop alone needs three hundred gauze bags, some for soap beans, some for bath powder, some for facial cleansing powder, some for finely ground peas, some for flower petals of various colors, and so on.
Chen Guihua received a deposit of one guan and six guan because Lin Xiushui said she trusted her and would pay after the sale.
Chen Guihua, clutching the money, had been in a daze the whole way. She wanted to pinch herself, but her hand froze in mid-air, unable to bring herself to do it. In the end, she patted her face.
She takes one coin from each transaction and can make three hundred coins in return.
"Am I crazy?" she said as she handed the money to Lin Xiushui.
Lin Xiushui glanced at her; her hair had come undone and was hanging limply on her forehead. She was overjoyed and honestly said, "It looks like it."
“My goodness, I can earn so much more money,” Chen Guihua said, plopping down on a stool. She held her heart, which was about to leap out of her chest, and said, word by word, “I’ll buy a nice bathtub, I’ll buy soap balls, I’ll practice my hair-washing skills, and I’ll go and learn hair-making techniques from others.”
She was dazed, as if she had suddenly realized something and let go of all her energy. Suddenly, this thought popped into her head: she no longer expected anything from her son, nor from any school land, nor from her husband who rarely came home. She thought about them making money, about them becoming successful, about her being able to live a good life with their help, but those were things that seemed so far away.
She will never get what she hopes for.
Lin Xiushui pushed the counted money over and said, "We can go now."
"You can start learning right now."
Chen Guihua touched her disheveled temples and murmured, "Go and learn by yourself."
She walked away dejectedly, then suddenly ran back, grabbed the money, and ran out again, saying, "Yes, I'll go by myself, Sister Xiu. I'll bring you a pig next time."
Wang Yuelan was carrying a soup bottle back when she ran out like the wind. She muttered something to herself, knowing that the two of them had recently switched their business from gloves to gauze bags. After they came back inside and put away their umbrellas, she couldn't help but ask curiously, "These gauze bags are more profitable than your gloves, sachets, and silk dolls?"
“Yes, don’t underestimate this little thing. It’s small and doesn’t have any fancy features. It’s quick to make,” Lin Xiushui said. “Even though you might not earn much from each small task, you can add it all up and earn three to five strings of cash a month, or even more.”
She estimated that no one would compete for this business. At the very least, a bolt of yarn cost two strings of cash, and if a bolt could be cut into about two hundred pieces, each piece would cost at least ten coins. If she wanted to use better quality yarn, she would be losing money.
Lin Xiushui was able to buy yarn at a low price, below market value, thanks to drawn thread work. Drawn thread work brings joy. Today, I'll say something against my conscience.
She wanted to make a lot of money, lots and lots of money, and ideally, open a shop.
I've already inquired with Zhang Yalang, and he said that renting a good location on the street would cost five to ten guan a month, while buying it would cost seventy to over one hundred guan, depending on the size.
She only had twenty strings of cash left and didn't plan to rent a shop immediately. Being a tailor was not as easy as mending. She could just set up a stall, sit down, and let people bring their things over, mending or repairing what needed mending.
If it were like her current situation, taking on odd jobs to make clothes, she could do it all in a room. But people always want more people to know about them, and tailors want more people to see the clothes they make.
Before renting a shop, she had to learn a skill and have at least ten bolts of cloth. No tailor shop would be without that much cloth. Most importantly, she had to have money!
She doodled on the paper, trying to master the skill; she would keep learning it.
Ten bolts of cloth would cost at least twenty or thirty strings of cash, but she crossed that out. Now she had three bolts of cloth, and things were much better that way. What was wrong with three bolts of cloth? She had even found herself a dye shop with a stable supply of cloth, the kind that could produce unique pieces through tie-dyeing. Thinking about it this way, she felt much more hopeful.
They could even count the pieces of cloth they had in their hands. One bolt was not too little, two or three bolts were good, and they were quite satisfied. Time to go to sleep.
The next day, Chen Guihua went to learn how to comb hair and called a carpenter to tidy up her house. For several days in a row, Wang Yuelan felt a little uncomfortable.
Her frustration stemmed from the fact that "Chen Guihua made such a big fuss, making it seem like I was falling behind others by not learning anything from her."
Wang Yuelan would absolutely not allow Chen Guihua to appear before her one day dressed in fine silk and satin, with a jade crown and a high bun, and say that she had become rich.
She still didn't make any progress and continued working as a silk reeler in the silk trade. In the future, she would only make her fortune thanks to her niece.
This was worse than a nightmare, where someone stole all her possessions and left her with only a single penny.
She was anxiously searching for something, but calmly said, "Would Sizhen accept someone my age?"
“I’ll definitely accept it,” Lin Xiushui agreed quickly. “We’ll go and learn it, and I’ll pay your tuition, Aunt.”
"Why did you ask me to say it? It's like I'm your daughter."
Lin Xiushui didn't care. She had told her aunt before that she should learn to read more characters, but Wang Yuelan didn't want to learn at all.
That's it, this damn competitive mentality.
This gave Wang Yuelan a surge of confidence. She was determined that one day she would be able to understand the words on the house tax and household registration documents.
Then he knows a few more characters than Chen Guihua, but he doesn't compare himself to Xiaohe.
But when she got to the entrance of the private school, she started to back down. Of course, Lin Xiushui had told Sizhen in advance and insisted on pulling her inside.
Even though Wang Yuelan couldn't learn it, she gritted her teeth and tried to learn it anyway.
After she learned it once, she never mentioned Xiaohe again; this thing was really difficult.
Lin Xiushui shared the same sentiment.
On her way to meet an old tailor, a tailor with exceptional skills, who was said to be able to tell what kind of clothes would suit a person just by looking at the fabric and measuring, without even needing to take their measurements.
It was recommended by the old tailor who worked in the tailoring industry.
The first thing people said to her was, "Make yourself some clothes first."
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