Chapter 8 Making Money Requires Boldness
Wang Yuelan often said, "If you don't take advantage of Chen Guihua, you're just wasting your time."
After all, Chen Guihua was notorious for being stingy in Sangqiao Ferry. Not only were her clothes covered in holes, but you could always hear her arguing on the other side of the river early in the morning because she would always put up a bamboo pole on the other side to dry her clothes.
Last year, a tattered piece of clothing fell into the river. She couldn't swim, but she jumped in to retrieve it and almost drowned. Luckily, there were many boats passing by.
The feud between Wang Yuelan and her stemmed from Wang Yuelan's desire to take advantage of others. Originally, all the thresholds and eaves of the houses in a row were at the same height, but Chen Guihua insisted on adding another door in front of the door, covering it with an eave, and making it a "horizontal door".
Being suppressed for no reason, Wang Yuelan could not bear it. The two had been at odds because Xiaohe and Dabing had fought, and this incident was the last time they had a complete falling out.
That's why Wang Yuelan couldn't understand why someone who was so careful with every penny was now spending so lavishly. Fresh bones with skin and meat cost 35 coins per pound at the butcher shop, and pig's head meat cost 38 coins per pound.
They gave them two pounds of bones, one pound of pig's head meat, and thirty coins.
Wang Yuelan sniffed the meat again and again, wondering, "Could it be poisoned, or is it from a dead pig?"
“Aunt,” Lin Xiushui said with a smile as she saw that she was about to go find a needle to test for poison, “There won’t be any poison. She explained to me that the dress she asked me to mend belonged to someone else and she was supposed to pay me a lot of money in return.”
"Oh dear, that's a huge loss!"
If it were Wang Yuelan herself, she would definitely have given her a good beating.
Xiaohe stared at the meat, pouting, "I want to eat meat." "You have to thank your older sister for that," Wang Yuelan said, cutting a pig's ear. "If it weren't for her skill, you wouldn't be able to eat this pig's ear."
Xiaohe stood on a small stool, focused only on the meat, nodding haphazardly, "I'll remember, or I'll kowtow to my elder sister."
Wang Yuelan slapped her, "Stop talking nonsense."
But seeing how hungry she looked, he cut off a piece of pork ear meat, gave it to Xiaohe, and said to her, "Tell your sister to come and eat quickly."
Lin Xiushui was pounding clothes in the yard. These coarse linen clothes were very stiff. They were very prickly to wear without being pounded with a mallet. They would soften after being pounded for a long time.
She wanted to disassemble the garment and use it as a lining for an oilcloth, since both ramie and fine white cloth cost one or two strings of cash per bolt.
There has been so much rain this year that she wants to buy tung oil and paint the walls and pillars of the old house several times to prevent the rain from causing rot inside.
She was mainly afraid it would break and get smashed.
"Sister," Xiaohe called out happily as she chewed on the soft cartilage of a pig's ear, her mouth glistening with oil, "Come and eat!"
Lin Xiushui looked down on her and took a handkerchief to wipe her face. "Dirty cat." She went into the house and picked up the chair that had tripped over. The house was so cramped that all you could hear all day long was things clattering and crashing to the floor.
Wang Yuelan shaved off the meatiest part of the pig's head and piled it in a bowl for Lin Xiushui to eat, while she ate the scraps herself.
He then discussed with Lin Xiushui: "I was thinking of sending some of this meat to Granny Zhang next door. Her son works in the timber industry and is a very skilled carpenter."
“You still need a cutting ruler and thread board, and he is also good at making needle clips. His mother and wife are in the double-thread sewing industry, making needles for shoes.”
"You deliver it, so we can make connections and exchange favors."
Lin Xiushui had just arrived and had only met her neighbors twice. The family was busy making a living and would leave home before dawn. Usually, Lin Xiushui would finish washing up and prepare to lie down to sleep at night when she would hear footsteps and voices coming from next door.
She knew her aunt meant well, and immediately said, "Aunt, I'll take it over later. Let's stew these two bones first, because Xiaohe's calves cramped up at night."
“I’ll take her to the dye shop tomorrow. There’s a children’s pharmacy called Jin’s on that street. Let’s go take a look,” Wang Yuelan said, shaking the salt jar. She also found a small jar, poured water in it, and washed it clean.
He handed the earthenware pot to Lin Xiushui, saying, "You have a stove there, so you can fill it with meat soup and heat it up tomorrow."
Lin Xiushui took it. Actually, the food at the clothing shop at noon was very bad. After all, the managers didn't eat there. So, besides steamed buns, there were only flatbreads. The steamed buns were alright, but the flatbreads were made of pure flour without any filling. They were dry, hard, and choking.
Eating it always made her feel like she didn't want to live anymore. To make perfectly good food taste so awful is truly a sin.
They wouldn't even give her water. The cooks said that boiling soup would waste too much firewood, so they told her to drink raw water. As a result, she had to fill her own water container every day and secretly boil it on the stove with Xiao Chun'e.
Xiao Chun'e would also bring sugar. The two of them would soak the cakes in hot water until they turned into foam, then sprinkle some sugar on them and scoop them out with spoons to eat. If they didn't eat them quickly, they would solidify into a whole block and become even harder to swallow.
Lin Xiushui never said that. Every time Wang Yuelan asked her, she would say that she was eating well, but Wang Yuelan never believed her. If she were really eating well, she would have taken the food home long ago.
The meat soup needs to simmer for a while, so we ate the fish soup first. The crucian carp were very small and thin at this time, with not much meat and quite a few bones, but the fish soup was very delicious, the tofu was smooth, and we also ate rice. It was rare for Lin Xiushui to stay in her chair after eating her fill.
She went to cut oilcloth first, and when it got dark, Wang Yuelan led her to the Zhang family next door. The whole family had just finished work and squeezed into the courtyard, using the daylight and a sesame oil lamp to eat. The seven or eight of them gathered around a small square table.
Grandma Zhang invited everyone she met to eat, but she was still suspicious that Wang Yuelan wasn't the type to come over at mealtimes.
"I'm bringing you a dish, some braised pig's head meat, bought by my daughter A-Qiao," Wang Yuelan said, standing at the door, tugging at Lin Xiushui and handing the plate over.
Grandma Zhang initially declined, saying, "I can't accept this."
"Don't be embarrassed, we're all neighbors," Wang Yuelan said, placing the plate directly on the table without mentioning anything else, only asking everyone to get to know the people.
This means we've already crossed paths, so it'll be easier to help each other out in the future.
The next day, Granny Zhang returned the gift with several packets of candy, carefully examined Lin Xiushui, and asked Wang Yuelan, "Did something happen to you yesterday?"
“It’s nothing serious, I just wanted to ask if Carpenter Zhang has any free time,” Wang Yuelan said, bringing a chair for Granny Zhang to sit on.
Grandma Zhang said bluntly, "Stop beating around the bush, just tell me what you need."
“Grandma, I want to ask Carpenter Zhang to make a cutting ruler, a few thread boards, a needle clip, and I also want to order a wide wooden board,” Lin Xiushui continued, “preferably two feet wide and three feet long.”
She really had nowhere to cut cloth right now. The table was too small, and it wasn't cost-effective to make a wide table. She didn't have that much money. All she needed was a wide wooden board with two long benches underneath.
Since he was a neighbor and had eaten his bread, Zhang the carpenter took the job. He was busy with silkworm rearing and needed to make silkworm frames and cocoon frames.
Before he makes something, he asks clearly, "Should this cutting ruler be the length of a provincial ruler, or should it be the standard length for ordinary people? What about the molding board? What kind of wood should it be made of? Mixed wood and bamboo are the cheapest; they can make one for three coins."
Lin Xiushui pondered that the measuring tape should be half a finger shorter than the standard measuring tape, so it should be based on the standard measuring tape.
The thread board is used for winding thread. The thread wound by the thread board is easier to use than that wound by a wooden stick. It should be made of bamboo or wood. The needle clip is used for pulling out needles. Some fabrics are hard and difficult to pull out.
That was settled. Zhang the carpenter said he would give it to her in two days. He would choose cheap and good materials for the wide planks for her and charged her fifty coins.
Wang Yuelan wanted to help her out, but Lin Xiushui quickly shook her head, saying, "Now that we have wide planks, we can take on more jobs, and we'll save up eventually."
She earns a few coins by setting up a stall in the morning, and then goes to iron cloth to earn a monthly wage. She also wants to buy some small scraps of cloth, because if she only relies on sewing, the money she earns is not enough to buy tools.
Lin Xiushui carried a small earthenware jar tied with a hemp rope, thinking about how to earn more money as she walked. She only had seven coins left, and with this in mind, she walked all the way to the clothing shop.
Xiao Chun'e was already emptying the charcoal ash in the yard. Lin Xiushui went in a few steps, put the jar on the table, and said with a smile, "Xiao Chun'e, we can have meat soup with flatbread today."
"Hey, meat soup!" Xiao Chun'e exclaimed. She stopped working and ran over. "I brought something with me today too. Look, it's the honey cake I bought yesterday. It didn't cost me any money!"
"There's also a rice cake ball. We secretly baked it and ate it. Now we can have a good lunch."
Xiao Chun'e chattered excitedly, showing off the things she had brought, still basking in the joy of having won the betting game yesterday.
Even though that morning, when Madam Song came over and said some random things, neither of them got angry. At noon, they went to collect the cakes, secretly used the stove to heat up the meat soup, and then cut the rice cakes in half, baking them until the outside was crispy and the inside was sticky and soft.
They ate pancakes, roasted rice cakes, and drank a sip of meat soup. There were a few big bones in the soup, and Wang Yuelan picked out plenty of meat from the bones. The two of them ate until their mouths were greasy.
In the afternoon, they shared some honey cakes, and Lin Xiushui no longer found ironing the red cloth difficult.
Lin Xiushui finished work very early today, but she couldn't finish ironing this batch of red cloth. Her eyes hurt a little, and everything looked reddish. When Madam Gu saw that her eyes were red, she told her to go home early.
She rarely finishes work this early and walks on the street; the wind is also very gentle and soft, like light silk.
The streets of Sangqing Town were always noisy and bustling. Donkeys carried sacks of grain to rice shops, and small brokers hawked their wares at the street corners, selling "kite medicine thread," "belt boxes," and "books for sale." Under the bridge and on the boats, they shouted "firewood for sale" and "cow dung ash."
She was an old woman, covering her legs with a large piece of cloth patched in blue, white and brown, which held her scissors and balls of thread. There was a pile of scraps of cloth on the small table. Occasionally, she would rummage through them with her rough, cracked hands, then bend down and carefully sew.
Lin Xiushui walked over slowly. She wasn't trying to steal business. She knew the mending rates here very well. It only cost one or two coins to mend a garment, and even for more difficult repairs, it was no more than seven or eight coins.
The money earned from mending clothes in a day is barely enough to make ends meet.
She just wanted to see how others repaired their products, what they repaired, how they did business, and how they talked to customers.
After watching for a while, seeing the old woman take on the task of mending the cuju (ancient Chinese football), I couldn't help but ask in surprise, "You can mend this too?"
“Why can’t it be mended?” The old woman looked at her and, seeing that she was a young girl, assumed she was just curious. So she kindly told her, “Anything that a needle can sew through can be mended. Look at this football, it’s made of pig’s bladder, so it’s light and thin. How can it not be mended?”
“I can mend not only clothes, but also mats, silk umbrellas, lanterns, and fishing nets. Everyone calls me the Mending Granny.”
Lin Xiushui originally thought that sewing could only be done by making patterns on the fabric. She changed her methods and practiced patching and embroidery, but there were never many people who came to her for mending, after all, no one's clothes were worn out every day.
After meeting Granny Baibu, she realized that she had narrowed her path and should have put up a signboard with a louder tone, saying that she could fix anything.
She's still too honest.
A note from the author:
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