The housewarming party was a lively and joyful affair.
Everyone ate to their heart's content, and Fan Jin went out to see the guests off.
Afterwards, Shuiqing closed the gate and led the children to wash the dishes and clean the yard.
The land they built on was enormous, the houses were spacious, and the yards were also extremely spacious, with no one blocking the sunlight.
When the thatched hut was built, the spring was left open so that the new house could be built next to it for easy access to water.
Nowadays, new houses are no longer built next to the spring; instead, the spring is simply enclosed in the courtyard.
Water is too important, especially for their large family; they simply don't feel comfortable leaving it outside in the yard.
Washing, cooking, laundry, brewing... all require water. Wastewater and dirty water can be poured directly into the open ditch and discharged outside, making it extremely convenient.
After the group finished packing, Shui Qing followed Yan Qiu and the others to check on the fermentation process of the rice wine.
The kitchen was built on the east side. Originally, there were two rooms: one for cooking and one for eating.
Later, when they wanted to brew wine, they simply added four rooms to the original two rooms. Fortunately, the land was big enough, so it was easy to add them together.
One side still served as the kitchen and dining room, while the other side had a stove with three holes in a row for steaming rice. Another room contained a large water vat for brewing wine.
To facilitate fermentation in winter, the brewing room adopted the style of the northern kang (heated brick bed), where rice is steamed and fire is lit, and the smoke circulates through the flue, gradually warming up the room.
The temperature is easy to control, and there's no need to wrap yourself in a quilt anymore.
After all, we produce about 200 jin of liquor a day now, and it's too much trouble to store enough for three to five days using cotton quilts.
"Mother, sales haven't increased for several days, and they might even decrease," Fan He reported, looking up.
"These past few days, Brother Ling and I have been to many places, but we haven't been able to reach an agreement with any of them. Brother Ling went to inquire and found out that other wine shops are cheaper than us!"
Shui Qing calmly asked, "How much cheaper?"
Business people always consider the issue of lowering prices to sell.
After all, she's not the only brewer in the market. It's common business practice for other companies to start a price war and make it impossible for them to sell their products.
Fan He originally thought this was a huge deal, and he couldn't eat or sleep well for several days. Now that they had moved to a new house, he thought his mother would finally feel more at ease, so he dared to tell her.
I was afraid that she would suffer from poor eating and sleeping habits like I did, having to take care of three meals a day and manage a lot of people and things, which would exhaust her health.
Surprisingly, my mother wasn't worried at all; she treated it as casually as asking about the weather.
Influenced by his mother's calm demeanor, Fan He gradually calmed down and replied, "It's eight coins cheaper per pound, and the restaurant can get an additional two coins cheaper per pound if they buy in bulk."
After hearing this, Yan Qiu and the others silently calculated in their minds that one jin of rice could produce at most two jin of rice wine, with a net profit of about thirty wen. However, other shops had directly reduced the price by ten wen per jin, so two jin would be twenty wen!
"Mother, other stores have lowered their prices too much!" Xinghui took a deep breath and said worriedly.
"Should we lower our prices too?" Fan Jiang's understanding was simple: if others could lower their prices, they should too! Let's see who can outlast whom.
Upon hearing the price reduction, Shui Qing immediately understood that they were trying to bankrupt their business by lowering prices.
A pound of rice used to yield thirty coins for wine, but now it only yields ten coins – the price has plummeted!
You should know that most of those families hire people to do the work. The laborers in the city are not cheap. The cost of a worker can be several tens of coins a day. Some families also have to rent storefronts, which is an even bigger expense. Their costs are much higher than their own.
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