Chapter 75: The Lost Family is Worth a Fortune
It was just the Frost Descent, but it wasn't cold enough to require cotton-padded jackets. Sang Luo took measurements for the two little siblings and made them clothes. Chen An already had a pair of trousers, so he only needed to make the top, but Chen Ning was going to make a full set.
It took them two days to make a set of clothes. On September 12, the brother and sister put on their new clothes. The material was much thicker than the summer clothes that had been washed for several years and were already worn out. The most important thing was that they didn't have to expose a large part of their ankles.
If you ignore the pair of cloth shoes with patches on the toes, they look really smart.
Of course, no one noticed that the brother and sister were wearing patched cloth shoes. Even though they were patched, they were still good shoes. There were many children in the village who wore patched cloth shoes with exposed toes, and many of them went barefoot.
Not to mention the children, people like Sang Luo and Qin Fangniang who walked twenty miles of mountain roads every day had shoes that were actually full of patches, but everyone used the same color material to sew them on, so they were not noticeable unless you looked closely.
With the new clothes, even Chen An, who always wanted to act mature, couldn't help but think a little, and took advantage of the fact that his sister-in-law was at home and the brother and sister didn't have to leave anyone at home to look after the house, and took Chen Ning around the village three times.
I haven't worn new clothes for many years. Now I put them on and let everyone see them.
He also let everyone know how much their sister-in-law loves him and Aning.
No one else knew about this little secret, but when the brother and sister went out, the children in the village were really envious. The weather had just turned cold, and Shen An and Shen Ning put on new clothes.
If you say that Shen An and Shen Ning were the most pitiful kids in the village before, now they are the most envied kids by all the children in the village.
Shen An and Shen Ning had enough of the tour and returned satisfied.
Sang Luo found it funny and said to the two of them, "You shouldn't feel cold if you dress like this recently. If it gets colder, wear your old clothes inside and put on a new layer of clothes outside. Wear two layers and you'll be warm."
Shen Ning: "If you put old clothes on the outside, new clothes won't get damaged easily."
Anyway, everyone has seen the new clothes today. Don’t think she didn’t see it. Third Aunt also saw it and stared at them for a long time.
Shen Ning felt relieved!
"You really cherish her." Sang Luo smiled: "It's up to you guys, do whatever you like."
In between picking sour dates and digging konjac every day, Sang Luo started to make autumn clothes for herself. In the afternoon, when Sang Luo came back from the mountains, Old Man Chen and Chen Youtian came with a wooden bucket borrowed from Zhou Cunzheng's house.
"We will help you measure out the grain for the autumn tax now. It's best to pay it tomorrow to avoid queuing on the 15th. It would be troublesome if something happens to delay it. We have been queuing up to buy grain recently and found that there are families in the county who don't have much grain in stock. Because several grain stores have limited purchases, they are so panicked that several families have to queue up to buy grain. Even so, we may have to wait until the last two days to get enough."
Therefore, there were huge crowds of people outside the government offices of fourteen or fifteen counties.
Sang Luo hurriedly invited the two men into the yard, put the backpack in the kitchen, and asked the two men to help move the grain out of the main house.
Four stones and four dou. It took quite some time to unpack the bag, put it into the measuring device, and then repack it into the bag.
Finally, Old Man Chen asked Sang Luo to prepare another bag and put two dou of grain in it: "Take this with you as a backup. You can prepare some money to bribe the clerks who collect the grain, so that you don't need to use this backup grain."
Otherwise, if you ask them to kick the wooden bucket a few times, or shake it a few times, then they will have no choice but to swallow their anger.
Sang Luo nodded in agreement, and prepared to bring a dozen cents with her for handling the matter, which was enough to buy nearly two liters of rice. But she had to spend the money, so whether it was two liters or two dou, it didn't matter.
After the grain was weighed, Sang Luo went to the Lu family and told them that she wanted to borrow their cart to deliver the grain to the county the next morning.
Sang Luo's home is on the mountain, and the cart cannot be pulled up. Lu Dalang said that he would pull the cart to the foot of the mountain early tomorrow morning and wait, and then everyone would go up to help Sang Luo carry the food down.
The next day, before dawn, Qin Fangniang and her friends came to get the tofu. Lu Dalang, Shi Erlang, and Chen Youtian, who were also going to the county, came over to help move the grain.
An oil lamp was specially lit in the main room, and Shen An and Shen Ning looked at the pile of grain bags that their family had accumulated over the past few days, and nearly half of them were gone in a flash.
The two little guys were so distressed that they cried.
The villagers were still asleep when two carts quietly left the village.
Zhou Cunzheng and his son saw the cart of grain pulled by Lu Dalang. They were stunned for a moment and then realized that it was Sang Luo going to pay the rent and taxes.
He didn't ask Sang Luo how she had enough food, he just asked, "Have you brought your household registration?"
Sang Luo nodded: "I've brought it."
Zhou Cunzheng didn't say anything else and followed him to the county.
When the group arrived, the city gate had not yet opened, but there was already a line outside the gate. Every once in a while, there would be a person holding a torch. Looking in the light of the torch, there were more than a dozen people like Sang Luo pulling grain carts.
These people all have one thing in common: they are poor, extremely poor!
It is just the autumn harvest, and among those who farm normally in the countryside, there are actually very few who cannot pay the autumn tax at this point. These people are probably already extremely poor, or they don't have any land of their own and are farming on rented land. If the land is not good enough, they will indeed have difficulty paying the tax.
There are relatively few cases like this in Shili Village. The poorest family, Zhou Laizi's, also paid their taxes a few days ago. Their difficulty is that after paying the taxes, the grain they have left won't last until next autumn.
Sang Luo only glanced a few times and didn't look again. Everyone has their own sufferings and difficulties. No one knows what the other has encountered. If she had not traveled through time, her original body would have died, and Chen An and Shen Ning would not know what their situation would be now.
In this world, it is not easy to manage yourself.
As the sky gradually brightened, more and more people came. Some of them were here to deliver grain, while others were here to set up stalls. Most of them were holding a grain bag in their hands, and they were coming into the city to buy grain.
Sang Luo discovered that compared to the previous times she came to the county, there were slightly more people going to the city to buy food.
I think this tension and some rumors about disasters in various states have also spread to various villages. Those families with better conditions have begun to make preparations in advance.
Today's city gate seemed to open a little later than usual. As soon as the city gate opened, the whole team became agitated. Sang Luo and her group arrived relatively early and were the first group to enter the city. Because Lu Dalang had to queue up to buy food, Sang Luo did not bother her and pulled the cart away by herself.
It was Feng Liuniang and Gan who helped push the cart, preparing to take Sang Luo to the county government office where grain was to be paid.
To get to the county government office, they had to pass by the grain shop. They hurried over and found that there was already a long queue outside the shop. Judging from their clothes and the time when the city gate had just been opened, they were all residents of the county.
Sang Luo's heart skipped a beat at that moment. Could Chen Youtian and his group still buy food today?
She didn't care and pulled the grain cart to the county government office. When she got there, she didn't need to ask where the county government's granary was, because there was already a long queue in the alley outside a separate courtyard not far to the east of the government office. The residents of the county had stockpiled enough food and had been paying rent and taxes in the past few days.
Sang Luo pulled the cart in the queue, leaving Feng Liuniang and Gan to do their own things while they waited for the clerks from the government office who were collecting grain to go to work.
Yes, among the clerks in the yamen, except for the guards at the city gates, no one would arrive at the yamen so early. The common people would only come early to grab a spot in the queue. Since they were the first in line, they had to wait.
When the sky brightened, after waiting for another two or three quarters of an hour, there was finally movement at the gate of the courtyard east of the yamen.
The team suddenly became agitated.
She didn't know what the clerk inside was saying. Sang Luo stood on tiptoe to look at the head of the line and saw the two men at the front of the line starting to move the grain bags from the cart into the yard. They silently counted how many carts would pass before it was their turn.
In front of them was a woman with a young man in his twenties. The woman asked the young man in a low voice, "Have you prepared the money for the fight?"
The young man touched his narrow sleeves and nodded.
The woman breathed a sigh of relief.
The process of harvesting grain was not fast, as the grain had to be unpacked and weighed bag by bag. Sang Luo waited for nearly half an hour before it was her turn. The grain bags had to be moved in. Only then did Sang Luo realize that it was quite difficult for her to carry the grain bags alone.
And it's not just one bag, it's a whole truck.
The clerks in the courtyard were already urging her to come. Sang Luo looked at the car parked behind her, and saw two burly men in their twenties or thirties sitting next to the car.
When someone obviously needed help, Sang Luo would not act tough just because she was embarrassed. She smiled and said, "Two brothers, this grain bag is too heavy. Could you please give me a hand?"
This was quite common when delivering grain. When someone asked for help, the two big men saw that Sang Luo was a petite and delicate girl and knew that she was too weak to lift the grain bags.
One of them asked, "Why did your family ask you, a young lady, to come out to pay the grain?"
It was just a question, and Sang Luo smiled. He didn't seem unhappy, so he didn't even ask Sang Luo to carry the bags. He and his brothers each carried a bag and walked to the yard.
Sang Luo couldn't just stand there and watch, so she gritted her teeth and tried to carry a bag herself. However, she couldn't lift it, so it was more like moving it.
The big man who had carried a bag of food in and turned around said, "This job is not something you girls can do. Stand aside. We two brothers will help you carry it in."
As he spoke, he picked up the bag of grain that Sang Luo had moved with difficulty and carried it on his shoulder and went inside again.
Sang Luo thought to herself that she had really met a good person.
The two big men carried half a cart of food in a few steps. Sang Luo thanked him again and again, but the big man waved his hand and said, "Don't be polite. Go in."
Sang Luo entered the yard and found that the county government's granary was a courtyard of its own, surrounded by high walls on three sides, and had no windows except for the doorway.
The grain delivery took place at the outermost courtyard. Sang Luo couldn't see what was inside, nor did she have time to see. She walked quickly forward and smiled at the two Douji officers in charge of collecting the grain.
The other side said in a businesslike tone: "Show me your household registration."
Sang Luo handed over the household registration that she had prepared early in the morning. The eight copper coins in her hand fell into the hands of Dou Ji under the cover of the household registration: "Thank you for your hard work!"
The other party raised his eyebrows, smiled, took the money and registration book calmly and began to check the tax bill.
Sang Luo did not fall behind in the fight. While moving the grain bag with her back to the crowd, she stuffed eight copper coins into the man's hand and said, "Thank you for your hard work."
"No problem." The clerk collected the money very smoothly. He took it, weighed it, and put it into the secret pocket of his waistband. Then he turned around and asked the one with the book: "Did you find it? How much should I pay?"
The man looked at several lines at a time, and soon his eyes settled, and he said, "Four stones, four!"
"Okay."
The other one started to work, opening the grain bags and pouring the grain, and he did it very smoothly. The rewards were given in place, and there was no extra tricks. Sang Luo paid the rent, taxes and profits neatly, collected the tax payment documents, blew dry the ink, folded them and put them in the purse, then collected her empty grain bags and the two jars and two bushels of millet left in the cart, and pulled the cart away.
The first stop was naturally Yongfengzhai. This time, there were more than 360 pieces of crystal jerky. Sang Luo needed money urgently, so she brought them all with her.
When she came out of Yongfengzhai, she received 365 coins from Manager Yan as payment for goods. Together with the original 700 coins she had, Sang Luo now had more than 1,000 coins on her.
She pulled the cart and went straight to the cloth shop.
In her original memory, she had picked out fabrics with her mother in a cloth shop, but the fabrics they picked were all good ones, and she was not in charge of things like paying the bill, because Sang Luo really didn't know the price of cotton.
After entering the cloth shop and asking, she took a hoarse breath.
At present, cloth shops have two choices for filling cotton-padded jackets or quilts. The expensive one is silk, or silk cotton. There is no need to think about it. The price is too high to even ask, so you can't afford it.
The cheaper one is cotton, which is what later generations called kapok. It is the cotton produced by a tall flowering tree, and is called cotton here.
It is sold by ounce, and one ounce of cotton costs one hundred coins.
Sang Luo finally understood why poor people stuffed willow catkins and reed fluff into their quilts and jackets, because they really couldn't afford to wear them or cover themselves with them.
It’s too expensive.
For children like Shen An and Shen Ning, a jacket and pants would cost at least a pound of cotton, and the money would be gone.
Two children cost two jin, and an adult like her, who is taller, would need one and a half jin.
Well, just to make a set of cotton jacket linings for three people, the cotton would cost three thousand five hundred dollars.
This cannot be considered a big item; the big item is the quilt.
Although it is in the south, in late autumn and early winter, you need a quilt weighing four to six kilograms, right? The quilt cover and quilt lining can keep out the cold, so if you are more economical, you can fill a quilt with four kilograms of cotton.
If you want to survive the winter, eight kilograms? Even if it's a thinner one, with the cotton-padded jacket pressed on the quilt, you still need to prepare six kilograms.
Sang Luo felt it was not easy just by thinking about it. She finally understood what it meant to lose everything to make a fortune.
How many families' wealth was built up bit by bit from scratch just like hers?
Save it.
She took out ten strings of money and said, "Please weigh one pound for me."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
