Chapter 21 Opening Soon: Her little shop is finally going to open.
Outside, the rain was pouring down. Yao Ruyi quickly ushered Zhou Jumu and his wife, who were soaked even with umbrellas, into the porch. She handed them hot towels to wipe their faces and served them piping hot ginger tea.
Grandpa Yao sat in the wooden wheelchair next to her, also holding a cup of hot tea, quietly gazing at the silvery rain curtain, while listening to Yao Ruyi and Zhou Jumu and his wife check the accounts.
Lotus Fragrance still had water dripping from her hair, but she simply wiped it off casually and sat down to do the accounting. She had brought a large abacus with her back, placed it on the table, and used both hands to calculate and report the accounts, doing so very efficiently. Zhou Jumu put away the ruler, but his eyes were always fixed on his focused and serious wife, his eyes sparkling with admiration for her.
“The young lady said she wanted something affordable, so we’ll use pine and cedar wood.” He Xiang wiped the water droplets from her forehead. “We’ll repair the walls and windows for you, and we’ll only charge you a small fee for your hard work. You can give us 300 coins. We’ll deliver the two sets of small tables and stools you wanted, free of charge! All in all, the shelves, cabinets, and window frames will cost 980 coins; the shelves will cost 575 coins; and the drawers, nails, tung oil, raw lacquer, and other miscellaneous items will cost 545 coins. As for the wages, if you’re not in a rush, my husband and I will do it ourselves without hiring anyone else. You can just pay us 1,600 coins for three days’ work, which is 4 strings of cash in total. I’m not bragging, but you won’t find another place in the entire city of Bianliang that offers this price.”
Zhou Jumu also turned his eyes. He was clumsy with words and could only act like a straight man, saying things like, "My wife is right," "That's true," and "That's right." Then he looked at Yao Ruyi expectantly.
Four strings of cash. Yao Ruyi pondered.
She had previously inquired about timber prices with Madam Cheng and Aunt Yu, and the price offered by Zhou Jumu and his wife was indeed reasonable. Glancing up at the couple's drenched appearance, she didn't haggle any further, only instructing the workers to do a good job, and gritted her teeth and agreed.
Regardless, getting the shop up and running first is the most important thing.
Yao Ruyi paid a deposit of two strings of cash and signed a contract with Zhou Jumu and his wife, agreeing to start construction seven days later. The two of them then braved the rain and drove their mule cart back home.
After seeing the people off, Yao Ruyi turned back and saw Grandpa Yao sipping his tea from time to time, then staring blankly at the rain. She felt quite guilty. After deducting her daily expenses and the money for buying eggs, she only had a little over eight hundred coins left. She had just used Grandpa Yao's savings to pay the deposit.
Yao Ruyi walked over hesitantly, squatted down in front of Grandpa Yao, and confessed with shame: "Grandpa, I'm sorry, I haven't earned enough money these past few days, so I can only borrow your money for now. I'll make up for it when I earn more money in a few days."
The rain poured down, the raindrops pounding densely on the bluestone pavement, the wind filled with the pungent smell of grass on a rainy day. Yao Qizhao slowly turned his head, his expression somewhat dazed, but after hearing her words, he suddenly raised his withered hand and gently patted her shoulder: "It's alright, just do as you please. You can take whatever money I have, don't worry about it. These past few days... I've seen it all. You're so young, yet you have to support the household and take care of this useless old man... You've suffered so much, it's I who have wronged you."
Yao Ruyi was stunned and looked up.
Grandpa Yao was looking down at her, and at that moment, Yao Ruyi even felt that he was lucid. But soon, he gradually became dazed again and murmured, "I'm hungry."
"Time to cook."
Yao Ruyi smiled, patted her knees, and stood up: "I'll do it."
Just as she was about to step over the threshold of the kitchen, she seemed to sense something and turned her head to look. Grandpa Yao was sitting in his wooden wheelchair, watching her back quietly and for a long time, along with the heavy rain behind him. When he saw her turn around, he did not look away. His eyes were filled with nostalgia, helplessness and memories of the past, as if he was trying his best to hold on to the increasingly blurred memories in his mind through her figure.
Yao Ruyi suppressed the bitterness in her heart and turned to go into the kitchen.
Just now, Grandpa Yao told her, "It's Grandpa's fault for letting you down," and she thought of her maternal grandmother again. She remembered that her maternal grandmother always told her, "It's Grandma's fault for letting you down, for not being able to cure you."
Those who love you are always like this; even if they give you everything they have, they still feel deeply indebted to you.
Days flow by like water.
Yao Ruyi continued to set up her stall every morning to save money, and took Grandpa Yao to eat chicken wings and get physical therapy every day. She also spent several days thoroughly cleaning out the two storage rooms. As the weather got colder, she and her neighbors bought two thousand catties of coal ash and stocked up on coal briquettes for winter with Aunt Yu and the others.
Almost every household in the alley knows how to make coal briquettes.
Although the book is set in a fictional world, the underlying historical context is still the prosperous and powerful early Northern Song Dynasty, when the coal mining industry was thriving. There was a dedicated coal market in Bianjing (Kaifeng), with dozens of coal shops of all sizes supplying coal.
The coal briquettes were made with a large amount of sand and soil, and their price could even be lower than that of charcoal. However, at this time, coal briquettes and coal ash could not be bought individually; they were sold in quantities of hundreds or thousands, or even thousands of kilograms, and were not sold retail. A few days ago, it was Aunt Yu who suggested that the families of Ruyi, Cheng Niangzi, Yinzhu, Lin Sicao, and You Saozi "group buy" coal ash together. Yao Ruyi received 350 kilograms of coal ash, which piled up and made half the yard black.
Afterwards, Aunt Yu went to great lengths, finding some acquaintances to get several hundred kilograms of mud from the river dredgers for free—Bianjing was a city formed by the Yellow River's floods and sediment, and the yellow mud and sand in the river were perfect for making coal briquettes, so there was no need to buy them from elsewhere.
The Yellow River carried silt and sand, and the watermen had to dredge the city's waterways every day, otherwise, delaying the grain transport by the canals would be a capital offense. These watermen had to haul cartloads of river mud to the outskirts of the city every day to pile it up. Aunt Yu didn't spend a penny and hauled dozens of cartloads, which were then divided among the six families. Soon, coal and mud filled the entire yard, and before they dried, they smelled terrible.
At this time, making coal briquettes was similar to that in later generations. The ratio of coal ash to mud was seven parts to three. If you weren't worried about it crumbling into dust after burning, you could even use a six-to-four ratio to save money. Add some lime and rice husks, mix well, then slowly add water and knead it repeatedly with your feet or hands, like kneading dough, and finally shape it into a briquette.
Stirring coal sludge was also very interesting, like kneading dough. When she was little, she would follow her grandmother and go into the coal sludge, taking off her shoes and getting herself covered in black soot. Her grandmother would bathe her at night, pressing her into a big red plastic bucket and scrubbing her for an hour while cursing.
The aunties and sisters-in-law in the alley were making solid coal. Yao Ruyi had calculated that making one hundred solid coal briquettes would require one hundred and twelve catties of coal slag and forty-eight catties of soil. If they were to make modern honeycomb briquettes, eighty-four catties would be enough to make one hundred briquettes, and only twenty-six catties of soil would be needed. Calculated this way, each coal briquette would only cost 3.8 wen.
She kneaded the honeycomb briquettes according to her memory, then poked twelve ventilation holes in them with a wooden stick. She then neatly arranged them in the yard and let them air dry in a well-ventilated place for three days. During this time, they could not be exposed to rain or direct sunlight, as this would cause them to crack.
It's done.
These past few days, after selling her tea eggs and soup noodles, Yao Ruyi has been busy making coal briquettes at home, kneading about a dozen or twenty each day. Eventually, even Grandpa Yao, who was watching her, learned how to do it and started helping her mix the coal slurry and knead the briquettes, albeit with trembling eyes. Although he didn't understand why she was poking holes in them, he squinted his old eyes and helped her.
It was much faster for the two of them to do it.
Although Grandpa Yao's hands still tremble, his legs are much more stable after exercising and undergoing physical therapy. He just can't walk very fast, but Yao Ruyi is also encouraging him to move around more, which can be considered a form of rehabilitation exercise.
Of the 350 jin of coal ash, she and Grandpa Yao only made about a hundred, with the majority still piled up in the woodshed. The earliest ones had dried completely in the shade; she would touch them whenever she had free time, and once they were dry, she would use a shovel to carry them into the woodshed. Now, there were seventy or eighty neatly stacked, shiny black coal lumps in the shed, and another twenty or thirty or so in the yard waiting to be dried. These were enough for a while, and she would make more each day from then on.
Aunt Yu saw her huffing and puffing to poke holes in the coal briquettes every day and teased her, "You little rascal, you're so stingy. You'll know how bad it is when you wake up freezing in the middle of the night."
Yao Ruyi couldn't explain the principle of the ventilation holes in the honeycomb briquettes, but she stubbornly argued several times that this way the briquettes could burn longer and brighter. The other sisters-in-law and aunts didn't believe that such poorly made briquettes could have such benefits.
She had no choice but to give up.
A few days later, the oven was delivered, and Zhou Jumu and his wife also brought timber in a mule cart. Amid the curiosity and anticipation of their neighbors, the Yao family began construction, knocking on walls and making windows.
As the winter solstice approaches, the last batch of grain transport ships before the canal freezes are heading towards Bianjing (Kaifeng) with full sails and oars. In the cold of late winter, a thin mist still floats on the river. At the bow of the ship, a tall man leans against the mottled railing, silently gazing at the water. His old clothes are filled with the river wind, which stretches his figure into an even thinner and more gaunt shape.
At this moment, in the alley of the Imperial College, Yao Ruyi also got up to wash up, yawning. She was so cold from the overnight chill that she rubbed her hands and stamped her feet. She pulled her jacket tighter around her and looked up.
The sky was covered with dark clouds; it had been overcast for several days, so heavy it looked like it was about to fall, indicating that heavy snow was imminent.
She quickly changed into a thick coat, hurriedly took a carriage to place an order outside the Zhuque Gate, and soon spent all the money she had worked hard to earn for more than half a month.
But on her way home, even with the cold wind blowing in her face, she was so excited that she skipped around and her face turned rosy.
Her little shop is finally going to open.
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