Chapter 64 (This appears to be a fragment of a sentence or paragraph and doesn't translate directly. It likely refers to a website or online platform.)
Besides mulberry trees, the main products of Sangqing Town can be summarized in four words: silk and cotton fabrics.
With more mulberry trees and silkworms, there is more silk, but also more waste cocoons. The inferior cocoon silk is used to make silk floss, which is then woven into silk fabric. Since many families raise silkworms, they need to ask the government for advances on silkworm raising funds, also known as "buying silk and repaying the money by weaving silk." As a result, there is also a lot of silk fabric.
Brocade was extremely rare. In the past, when it was in Tokyo, it was called Shu brocade. After the capital was moved to Lin'an, the weavers and jacquard looms of the Chengdu Transport Office were moved to Suzhou, now Pingjiang Prefecture, where a special Song brocade weaving bureau was established.
While Song brocade flourished throughout Pingjiang Prefecture, it was only just beginning to take root in Sangqing Town. Compared to the two warp and weft threads used in silk weaving, brocade requires two warp threads and three weft threads. The two warp threads are the face warp and the base warp, while the three weft threads are special colored weft threads, hence the name "double brocade".
Lin Xiushui was well aware of how difficult this was. Most of the fabrics brought into the tailor shop were silk and satin, with very little brocade. They were expensive, and secondly, they were very complicated to weave. A large wooden loom was used for weaving, with one person upstairs making the pattern and the other downstairs weaving the cloth by hand. At most, they could produce one foot of cloth a day.
Craftsmen who can weave silk and satin are plentiful, not to mention Lin'an City, but even in Sangqing Town, there are many. However, there are probably not many brocade weavers outside of Pingjiang Prefecture.
To weave brocade, one not only needs to put in hard work, but also endure hardship. If Wang Yuelan wanted to join the newly established brocade workshop, she had to put aside her current work—the relatively easier silk reeling and cotton weaving for a month—and leave behind her two strings of cash to learn for a month and see if she had the talent.
“Aunt, you might as well give it a try,” Lin Xiushui said, sitting in the house. She knew this path was tiring and arduous, and even if she went to weave brocade, it was hard to say whether she could learn it well.
This is vastly different from the difficulty of learning characters. If learning to recognize characters can be achieved with hard work, then weaving brocade is something that requires a lot of effort but may not be possible to master.
Lin Xiushui got up, took a few steps to Wang Yuelan's side, and, understanding her aunt's concerns, said, "As for Xiaohe, since Sizhen is free, we can add some tuition fees so she can go to the private school in the morning and I can pick her up in the evening."
Xiaohe has been attending school for over a month and is no longer averse to the private school. She says she could spend all day there. As for Xiaoye the cat, if she has three meals a day and is fed, she can lie in the house all day.
As for the two strings of cash he lost, Lin Xiushui said, "As long as I can learn it, I can earn it back many times over in the future."
“Aunt, I’m taller than you now, and I can still support this family.”
Wang Yuelan looked up, then propped herself up on the table. Four or five months had passed, and Lin Xiushui was now taller than her. She was no longer the child she had been when she came from Shanglintang and had to be led to find Master Xing, a child she had always worried about.
Taller, capable, earns more than her, and considerate in every way, Wang Yuelan was able to make this decision because she knew she had someone she could rely on.
“Okay,” Wang Yuelan said softly, “I’ll take charge of the household for you.”
She gave up what others considered an easy job and turned to an extremely arduous and difficult profession, one in which she had to spend more than half a month learning to recognize a loom and thread the warp and weft.
It was very difficult. Wang Yuelan learned nothing on her first day. She couldn't even recognize all the looms. Even just standing there, her clothes were soaked through.
Did she only get home at dusk, and when she stood in front of the door, trying to step over the threshold, she couldn't even move her legs. She leaned against the wall to rest for a while, with only one thought in her mind: This is so difficult!
What is she after?
Wang Yuelan couldn't quite explain it, but perhaps she didn't want to live a mediocre life.
Anyway, I'm putting in a lot of effort to learn. If I don't understand it in one day, I'll try in two days; if I don't understand it in two days, I'll try in ten days; if I don't understand it in ten days, I'll try in twenty days. It's too early to give up now.
Wang Yuelan learned to weave brocade, swallowing all the hardships and exhaustion. With Lin Xiushui taking care of the family, she could devote herself wholeheartedly to learning.
When Lin Xiushui brought Xiaohe back, Xiaohe, who had been to school all day, shook her head and said, "I understand, this is called 'If you don't study, you won't amount to anything.'"
“That makes sense,” Lin Xiushui took the book bag from her, said goodbye to Sizhen, and then turned around and said, “But there is a saying: ‘Jade that is not carved cannot become a vessel, and a person who does not learn cannot know righteousness.’”
Xiaohe was unwilling to give up and stopped nodding. She raised her head and said, "That means if you don't learn when you're young, what will you do when you're old? My mother is still young."
Two or three people who hurried past her stopped, glanced at Xiaohe, smiled knowingly, and left, leaving Lin Xiushui standing there laughing heartily.
Xiaohe didn't understand what she was laughing at, but she grinned too. Even after Lin Xiushui stopped laughing, she kept laughing all the way home. When asked why, she said she wanted to be happy for a while longer.
Lin Xiushui also bought Xiaohe a small bamboo flute and let her go play by herself. She couldn't stand such an unpleasant tune. When she got home, Zhou Niangzi came over carrying a gauze bag full of two large sacks.
Now, Zhou Niangzi works with Lin Xiushui, having quit her job of sweeping street garbage and focusing on sewing. She can earn more than two strings of cash a month, which gives her enough money to leave her young child with her mother-in-law. She no longer has to travel around or worry about where her next meal will come from.
"Ah Qiao, I've counted them. There are a total of 335, and none of them are damaged," Zhou Niangzi wiped the sweat from her face. She had counted them very carefully.
Lin Xiushui stepped out from the threshold, grabbed a handful and examined them. There were no flaws. She thought the price of the gauze bags would drop quickly, but unexpectedly she stumbled upon another trend and was able to make a fortune.
That involved catching spiders, putting them in gauze bags, and selling them for the Qixi Festival (Double Seventh Festival). Before Qixi, spiders would proliferate in the town. Young women would buy them and put them in boxes, checking before Qixi to see if the spider silk had formed a round web. If it was a round web, it meant they had good fortune.
In the past, spiders were sold in boxes or cloth bags, which was really a waste of time. Now that they saw gauze bags, everyone started to use their brains. They would catch spiders and put them in gauze bags, and the rounder the spiders, the better they sold.
When Song San Niang brought it to her, Lin Xiushui was almost scared to death. She was just joking that her drawnwork was spider embroidery, she didn't really want to raise spiders.
Fortunately, Song San Niang specially picked out a good spider for her, saying that it would definitely bring good luck, but Lin Xiushui kept her eyes tightly closed and quickly refused, thinking to herself, "Damn it, who came up with this idea?"
Good practices are ignored, while the strangest and most unusual ones become popular. In any case, the method of raising spiders in gauze bags and selling them spread throughout Sangqing Town, and Lin Xiushui became somewhat numb to it.
If you can't beat them, join them.
In the tailor's workshop, Madam Gu was surprised to hear her method and looked at her with surprise, asking, "What do you usually eat? I'll feed my daughter the same way you do."
“Eat porridge and rice, and raise spiders,” Lin Xiushui replied.
Madam Gu said, "I really want you to raise it."
She immediately changed her tune: "That was what A-Qiao said just now, not what Lin Xiushui said right now."
Madam Gu chuckled and glanced at her paper pattern again. It had more than a dozen patterns resembling spider webs, all round. They weren't particularly exquisite, but the idea was good.
Lin Xiushui said, "This method of raising spiders, judging by whether the web is perfectly round or not, is not a good method at all."
"So what if a woman isn't skillful with her hands? She can still do some jobs even if she's not skillful. But if you really want to be good at this, you might as well create a skillful one."
Drawn thread embroidery can create patterns resembling spider webs, and these patterns last longer than spider webs. Instead of praying to heaven or asking spiders for help, it's better to create many of these patterns yourself.
Lin Xiushui designated this as a long-term project for drawnwork embroidery, calling it "Deqiaowang" (meaning "skillful net").
“Then you go do it,” Madam Gu agreed with her idea. Who hasn’t been saddened by a torn spider web on the Qixi Festival when they were young?
It's clear that a spider's web-building depends on many factors, yet strangely, the woman lacks the skill to do so.
Lin Xiushui didn't leave after she finished speaking. She sat down again and said, "Wife, I need another person."
“Okay,” Madam Gu interrupted, “Xiao Chun’e, right? When she starts work tomorrow, let her go to your place to help out. She can come back when it gets cooler.”
Lin Xiushui hummed in agreement and praised, "My wife, you are truly a brilliant strategist."
"I didn't calculate it at all."
Lin Xiushui added, "There's one more thing. Can we add a monthly allowance for our drawn thread embroidery? Everyone's hands are shaking from morning till night. We can make anything, from fish, shrimp, and crab sauce to dried fish and preserved meats."
Madam Gu treated her very well, with a monthly allowance of five strings of cash and six coins, three bolts of cloth, three days off a month, a monthly allowance at the end of the month, and holiday and year-end gifts.
That was just for her, but Lin Xiushui still wanted to fight for her subordinates. Before that, she negotiated the apprentices' monthly wages from 1.2 guan to 1.6 guan, and even got them two days off a month without rest, morning snacks, afternoon soup, a separate place to rest, and at least 30 wen for any irregular work hours.
Gu Niangzi watched her quietly several times, and finally, thinking about the money she could earn from drawn thread embroidery, which was over a hundred strings of cash, she said it was acceptable.
When the topic of monthly allowances came up again, Madam Gu thought about the money she earned and conceded, saying, "Okay, I'll give you three strings of cash every month to use for purchasing."
"Stop, turn around, and go."
Lin Xiushui had nothing else to say, so she immediately turned around and left to tell everyone the good news.
And once Xiao Chun'e's face has healed tomorrow, she can come to the sewing shop to work and help pull up the cloth, until summer is over.
Xiao Chun'e stood at the mending station, looking bewildered. "Am I supposed to start working here now?"
"You don't need to test me or anything?"
Lin Xiushui said, "Then I'll test you. What's my name?"
"..."
Xiao Chun'e thought for a moment and said, "I don't know."
"Congratulations, you got it right," Lin Xiushui patted her shoulder, "Come and work here."
"Huh? Huh?"
Lin Xiushui pulled her in, her face serious. "I'm not joking with you, it's really busy here."
The sewing and mending department recently took on a job from the event planning company to make table curtains for a wedding banquet. They need to make sixty table curtains. The sewing and mending is possible, but they need manpower to pull and cut the fabric.
In the summer, this work was much easier than burning charcoal, and Xiao Chun'e still earned money by working and received subsidies. Even if Lin Xiushui was talked about behind her back, she didn't care.
Xiao Chun'e stopped talking about those things. She just rolled up her sleeves and said, "Where's the cloth? Where is it? I'll definitely work hard. I, Xiao Chun'e, am not a vegetarian; I'm a meat-eater."
"We're having meat for lunch, so you can have mine too."
Xiao Chun'e started working on the sewing and mending, while leaving some space for the drawn thread embroidery to work on the ingenious net pattern given to her by Lin Xiushui. She had to finish the item before Qixi Festival.
While others are catching spiders, they're making clever webs; how can this not be considered preparation for Qixi Festival?
After finishing up here, a trend of wearing indigo-dyed skirts has recently emerged in the tailor shop. Madam Gu said that all the clouds in the sky have fallen onto their skirts, and the wind blows them all blue.
It was a blue, eerie wind.
Lin Xiushui brought them this batch of blue cloth, which was dyed in a similar way, but the shades of blue varied, including cyan, cloud blue, and lake blue. Each of the ladies made skirts and styled them differently.
“This one doesn’t have many pleats. Look at the pale yellow bodice and yellow sash I’ve paired with it,” a woman called out to Lin Xiushui. She had also sewed a white gauze over her blue cloth skirt, combining the two colors together. The yellow sash was on the right, along with the pale yellow bodice and peach-pink short jacket.
Lin Xiushui was taken aback by the combination, and she simply nodded and said, "It looks good."
Another woman walked over. She was wearing a white gauze straight-sleeved shirt, a light purple vest, a light blue skirt, and a soft white gauze apron.
Lin Xiushui was dazzled by the sights. When one came, she said, "Beautiful." When another came, she replied, "Really beautiful." And when yet another came, she said, "So beautiful, so very beautiful."
It seems like I'm at a loss for words, yet I'm not.
Lin Xiushui concluded by saying, "Follow the same set."
Among the many blue dresses she wore, she made a top to match. First, it had to fit well, and second, it had to be timeless and something she could wear for the past two or three years.
After hearing this, the tailor said, "Why don't you say that these clothes could have been worn twenty or thirty years ago?"
“I’d like to, but that would definitely be outdated,” Lin Xiushui said.
The tailor was barely satisfied with what she was wearing. It was a green, mid-length jacket with an interesting collar band that was shaped like a yellowish-green tangerine. It wasn't embroidered on, but rather cut out of cloth and embroidered on, making it playful and lively.
The light purple strapless top features a green dragonfly embroidered in gauze. The gauze was first layered and then sewn on, with traces of yellow-green embroidery thread on the wings. It is delicate and exquisite, and it complements the skirt quite well.
Jin the tailor was barely satisfied. She said earnestly, "In clothing, the garment comes before the crown. As tailors, we must first think about what we ourselves wear. If we are careless and shoddy even for ourselves, how will others perceive us?"
"Secondly, it's about pleasing others. You have to make others feel that you are dressed neatly, well, and attractively. That's what a tailor is all about."
Lin Xiushui wanted to become a tailor like the latter.
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