Chapter 7 Making Money, Making Money
Of all the colored fabrics, red is the most irritating to the eyes.
Lin Xiushui ironed very slowly, and after ironing for a while she had to put down the iron and stare at the wild grass in the corner of the yard, otherwise the red spots in her eyes would be too bright.
She ironed white cloth quickly, never sitting down. But when she ironed red cloth, she would sit down to catch her breath halfway through, her mind filled with thoughts of running away.
Finally, he could only say in a cowardly tone, "I really wish no one in this world would get married."
"Why don't we dye this red color green? That would look much better."
Xiao Chun'e, holding the fire tongs and fiddling with the stove, couldn't help but sigh, "That's right, that Madam Song even complained that the ironing cloth was made of charcoal instead of coal, and kept nagging to change it. It's really annoying."
Charcoal is made from wood, while coal is made from coal. In Lin'an, it is also called coal bricks, which are made by piling coal powder into coal bricks. They need to be heated for a longer time to burn, but they are very expensive.
Coal was very popular in Tokyo in the past, with about twenty government-run coal mines along the Bian River alone, and every household burned coal. But in Lin'an, charcoal was burned more often.
So much so that even Song Niangzi, a native of Bianjing, was still not used to it, and kept talking about the charcoal shops of the old days.
She was the overseer on the groom's side, her mouth never stopped, her thin lips like scissors opening and closing.
She came three times that day, much to the annoyance of Lin Xiushui and Xiao Chun'e. After work, Xiao Chun'e cursed a few times, then turned around and chuckled, "Ah Qiao, why don't you come shopping with me? A new colorful shed has been built on the west side of the bridge market recently, with lots of good stuff, including flower garlands and hairpins from Lin'an, which are very fashionable items."
Lin Xiushui rubbed her dry, stinging eyes, blinked a few times, and then said, "Take another look. Do I look like I have that kind of money?"
On a windy day, she wore a thin green jacket, her hair was neatly combed into a bun, and she didn't even have a flower wreath. She covered her head and face with a cloth, looking like a masked swordsman from a storybook.
People say she goes out to rob and plunder at night, and no one recognizes her.
She was destitute and had no money to spare. Besides, once she bought this kind of thing, she would buy it again.
This game, also known as "Guanpu," is a form of gambling for amusement, purely based on luck. You can bet on anything, including trendy fruits, clothes, headdresses, flowers, birds, and animals. The most common method is to spin a wheel or toss six coins to try your luck. If you win, you laugh; if you lose, you cry and make a scene.
Since Lin'an Prefecture did not prohibit buying and selling, the town of Sangqing was filled with buying and selling stalls all year round, just like the mulberry leaves on a mulberry tree.
Xiao Chun'e is quite obsessed with gambling. She has to gamble a couple of times on her way home from work. She gambles on everything, not only flowers and fresh fruit, but also soy sauce and vinegar. She often loses and gets scolded. She will only stop after she has lost all her monthly wages.
Lin Xiushui couldn't afford to gamble with Guanpu. With her bad luck, she would be doing a disservice to her 57 coins if she didn't lose everything.
However, after leaving the needle shop, her savings plummeted to twenty-seven coins, which was truly pitiful.
A needle costs thirty coins. Lin Xiushui was afraid it would fall off if she pinned it to her clothes, or run away if she put it in her purse. She wished she could hold it in her hands.
Especially when she passed by the bakery, with bakeries baking in the oven outside and the shopkeeper wrapping them in oiled paper, he wouldn't forget to call out, "Meat pies, sugar pies, three coins each..."
Thirty coins could buy ten meat pies, but the worst part was that she only had one needle.
She took the needle back to Sangqiao Ferry. As soon as she stepped off the bridge, Chen Guihua was still wearing that light green and white collared jacket. Ever since she sewed it for her, she could see that jacket every morning when she went out.
She didn't understand Chen Guihua's thoughts at all. She had spent five coins to mend it, so of course she had to wear it every day until she got her money back.
"Sister Lin," Chen Guihua waved to her from afar as soon as she saw her, switching from her left hand to her right, and then hurriedly ran a few steps to greet her, a stiff smile on her face.
Lin Xiushui felt a chill down her spine; she knew that talking to her was bound to be bad news.
She wanted to decline, but seeing Chen Guihua's red eyes and anxious expression, she changed her words to, "What's wrong?"
After all, Wang Yuelan and Chen Guihua had many verbal disputes, mostly over trivial matters, and had not reached the point of completely cutting off contact with each other.
She took over some of Chen Guihua's work, which her aunt was more than happy about.
"You," Chen Guihua hesitated, her mouth opening and closing but ultimately she didn't say anything, "No, nothing."
Lin Xiushui found it baffling. "If you're asking me to mend your clothes, take out the clothes first and let me see if they can be mended."
Upon hearing this, Chen Guihua seemed to regain her composure. Without saying a word, she rushed into the house and then rushed back out, her words coming out as quickly as if she were returning a borrowed item.
"Look, can you patch this hole? You need to patch it so that it's undetectable."
"If you can make up the difference, one hundred coins," Chen Guihua said, watching her expression, then hurriedly raised the price, "Three hundred coins, three hundred and fifty, four hundred, five hundred coins, take a look."
Lin Xiushui picked up the clothes; it was a thick, peach-colored jacket. She searched for the hole and found a scorched hole, about two fingers wide, on the back of the garment.
The beauty of this garment lies in the silk fabric it's made of, which allows for more intricate weaving and mending. If it were made of satin or pure silk, it would require extremely fine needles, like wool needles, to mend it.
She probed her finger into the hole; there was a layer of silk floss inside, which had also been scorched by the fire, but the noodles hadn't been burned.
Chen Guihua was so anxious that her hair bun came undone, and she was completely at a loss. She worked in a perfume shop, a job that was not exactly respectable. She did manicures, shaves, back rubs, and baths for people. In the mornings, she would also boil water, do laundry, and mop the floor, earning sixty coins a day.
She hadn't slept well today, and the perfume shop was busy, so she was asked to do twenty extra baths. While drying clothes for someone, she became confused and the clothes touched the stove, causing the charcoal fire to burn a hole in them.
The woman told her that she either had to pay three strings of cash or return the item exactly as it was, or she would take her to the authorities.
The perfume shop owner pleaded with her, asking her to wait a day and try to find a solution.
Chen Guihua's entire fortune was still pledged in the pawnshop; where would she get three strings of cash to pay it back?
I asked the women who mended clothes all the way, and they all said they could mend, but it was very conspicuous. The embroiderer said she would embroider some flowers on it, while the tailor wanted the original fabric. He would take the whole piece of back fabric off, turn the silk floss inside out, and then cut it back to the original shape and put it back together.
But this fabric comes from Suzhou; Sangqing Town doesn't have this peach-pink color.
Since there was no solution that Chen Guihua wanted, she had no choice but to give up and pin her hopes on Lin Xiushui.
"Don't panic, it's a minor issue," Lin Xiushui said gently. "Just remove the original thread and sew it back on."
She wasn't greedy and demanded five hundred coins at once. Instead, she said honestly, "This will take half an hour to mend, so give me thirty coins."
Chen Guihua had been holding her breath, but upon hearing this, her hands started trembling and her voice quivered as she pressed her for confirmation.
Lin Xiushui didn't boast. She went inside and brought out a table and chairs, along with an embroidery hoop and scissors, and found the best-lit spot outside.
Mending is a very demanding job, especially fine mending, which requires completely restoring the fabric texture. This requires a steady hand and a precise eye.
She removed the fabric from the back of the jacket, took the original thread from the edges of the seam, tore off the burnt silk floss inside, and turned it inside out again.
Then, she put an embroidery hoop on the cloth, wrapped the edges of the hole with cloth, and once the cloth was taut, she picked up scissors and cut off the charred cloth loops.
Fortunately, she changed the needle; this one had a finer tip and was fine for mending. She threaded the needle, first inserting it horizontally about a finger's width from the hole, then the needle began to move up and down the thread smoothly, the needle moving up and down in the tiny hole.
The horizontal red line covered the hole in a fine, dense pattern. Then the line turned vertical, like weaving cloth, with the needle moving within the thread. In the blink of an eye, the once bright and shiny hole was completely invisible.
Lin Xiushui cut off the loose threads, sewed the fabric back together, carefully felt the garment again, and then handed it to Chen Guihua, saying, "Take a look."
Chen Guihua was so engrossed in looking at it that she was startled when she heard these words. She picked it up and examined it from all angles, holding it up to the light and even trying to lick it with her saliva, but she couldn't see any trace of the hole.
Overjoyed, she slapped her thigh and jumped up and down laughing, exclaiming, "Amazing! Absolutely amazing!"
After saying that, he grabbed his clothes and ran towards the bridge.
"Hey," Lin Xiushui called out as she got up, but then she only saw a corner of her clothes. She muttered, "What's the rush? Just give me the money first."
Anyway, you can run away from the monk, but you can't run away from the temple.
“Ah Qiao,”
Lin Xiushui suddenly heard someone calling her. She looked around blankly and shouted, "Where?"
"Come down at the dock and help me move the fabric."
Wang Yuelan's voice came through, sometimes loud and sometimes soft.
Lin Xiushui then ran down the stone steps and stepped onto the boat. Seeing Wang Yuelan bending down to pull up a roll of oilcloth, she quickly lent a hand.
“This is all because I asked you to cut oilcloth gloves,” Wang Yuelan said, rubbing her lower back and pointing to the oilcloth. “Two pairs of oilcloth gloves per person, enough for twenty people, and the remaining cloth will be used to offset the labor costs.”
“It’s quite large,” Lin Xiushui said, pulling open the oilcloth and roughly estimating the size. “There should be some fabric left over.”
Wang Yuelan got off the boat first and then said, "What do you think they were thinking? They were afraid you would steal fabric from the measuring tape and not sew it properly, so they put a piece of cloth in my mouth first."
"I measured it inch by inch with a tape measure. You can only cut it into a small garment and add some other odds and ends. It's not much at all. You're losing out big time. Humph, I should have known better than to take this job."
So that's how it is. No wonder Wang Yuelan had a stern face, drooping eyebrows, and didn't seem happy at all.
But Lin Xiushui laughed and said, "What's the big deal? It's work anyway. If we keep it compact, we can even make a larger oilcloth."
Wang Yuelan became increasingly angry. If it weren't for her friendship with the people from Ran Si, which prevented her from making a scene, she would have definitely thrown the cloth at them.
But despite her anger, she never vented it on Lin Xiushui.
"There are fresh crucian carp for sale at the fish market. I remember you used to love eating this fish, so I also bought some tofu to stew for you."
She snorted again, "Just eat and go to sleep. Postpone this work and do it later."
Lin Xiushui was used to Wang Yuelan's temperament and went along with her, saying, "It's my fault. If I had known it would cost money, I could have bought a piece of cloth for eighty coins and worn it around my waist."
Wang Yuelan glanced at her sideways, "You're trying to shut me down with your words."
“Aunt, why are you so upset? You’ve already gotten a good deal,” Lin Xiushui said with a smile, taking Wang Yuelan’s hand. “I even made thirty coins from Aunt Guihua today.”
"Have you received the money?"
Lin Xiushui's smile froze; she had forgotten about that.
Wang Yuelan put her hands on her hips and pretended to be looking for someone to ask for money, but no one was there.
While the fish soup was simmering, Xiaohe's voice rang out from outside the door: "Aunt Guihua!"
“Little He, let’s play with the jujube millstone,” Chen Guihua said in a high-pitched voice.
"What's gotten into her? Is she possessed by something?" Wang Yuelan felt a chill run down her spine. Before, when Chen Guihua argued with her, her voice could be heard throughout the entire river bend.
Chen Guihua still didn't give Wang Yuelan a friendly look, but as soon as she saw Lin Xiushui, she smiled and ran over with a piece of pork in her hand, saying, "Sister Xiu, here are some double bones from the butcher shop, and some pickled pig's head meat for you to eat."
She took out another copper coin wrapped in cloth, saying, "Count them, it's thirty coins."
Wang Yuelan turned to Lin Xiushui and asked, "Did you save her life?"
“You’re talking nonsense,” Chen Guihua spat. “My life is worth a lot of money; you should at least give me a pig.”
A note from the author:
Have a great holiday everyone! [kissing emojis]
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