Chapter 171: Beautiful as Can Be!
Next was Lu Xiangshui’s family.
His family had supplied two tubs of fish, which looked to be around seventy to eighty catties. Auntie Lu had weighed them all and made a record, and everyone had signed to confirm it on the spot. Since large fish and small fish were priced differently and the species varied, the math was calculated to give an average of about four yuan a catty. Seventy-six catties came to a total price of 304 yuan.
Lu Xiangshui felt this was a bit low. After all, fish sold better than ducks; hauling a truckload of fish to the market could easily net several hundred catties in sales a day. Besides, some people specially came all the way from the town just to fish in his pond. That crowd of anglers was rich—as long as they could catch something, they were perfectly willing to buy it even at a dozen yuan a catty!
Lu Xiangshui asked rather reluctantly, “Can’t you make it a bit more? Sometimes I sell them for five or six yuan a catty at the market.”
Hu Da’s expression chilled. Just as he was about to speak, Lu Xiangshui’s wife rushed out from the crowd and slapped the back of his head.
“Shut your trap!”
Then she hurriedly put on a fake smile for Hu Da, Jian Xingxia, and Auntie Lu.
“Xiaxia, Secretary, don’t lower yourselves to his level. My Xiangshui has a single-track mind and a brain like a dog.”
“Four yuan a catty is a very reasonable price. I’ll sign.”
Hu Da glared at Lu Xiangshui. “Does your wife’s word count?”
Lu Xiangshui rubbed the back of his head. His wife possessed massive strength, and the slap left the back of his head stinging like fire. He said sheepishly, “It counts, it definitely counts.”
Lu Xiangshui signed his name. Jian Xingxia collected the slip and transferred 304 yuan to him.
Only after settling the account and squeezing out of the crowd did Lu Xiangshui say to his wife, Zhao Meihua, “This price really is a bit low! We even gave her snakehead fish! Snakehead fish goes for eight yuan a catty at the market! During holidays and festivals, it can sell for ten yuan!”
Zhao Meihua was so angry she gave Lu Xiangshui another slap.
“So you know you ‘even’ gave snakehead fish? And you know it only sells for eight or ten yuan ‘during holidays and festivals’?”
“Then why didn’t you look at the carp, crucian carp, and grass carp mixed inside?”
“Why didn’t you calculate how many dead fish are left at the end that can’t fetch a price when we haul fish out to the town?”
“Why don’t you look at what season it is right now? Is it New Year’s, or is it a festival?”
“Market price indeed! Why don’t you compare it with the supermarket? The supermarket can even sell snakehead fish for fifteen a catty! We sold these right by the pond; don’t you have any idea what price they can fetch?”
Zhao Meihua felt exasperated by his failure to meet expectations. “Our family isn’t the only one raising fish in the village. Liu Xushan and his family are keeping a close watch! Didn’t you see Auntie Lu even praise Liu Xushan?”
The more Zhao Meihua thought about it, the angrier she became. “Why did they give you four yuan a catty? You just scooped up whatever you caught—a chaotic tub of big and small ones. Auntie Lu even scolded you when she collected them, saying your work wasn’t meticulous.”
“Look at Liu Xushan! He picked tilapias that were all around one catty. In truth, his supply can’t compare to our family providing snakehead fish and grass carp, but he knew to pick them all of the same size.”
“If you were Xiaxia running a restaurant business, would you prefer a tub of chaotic fish of all sizes, or tilapias that are exactly one catty each?”
“Just you watch! His tilapias will sell for a higher price than our snakehead fish!”
Zhao Meihua was truly furious—she had only taken the child to the town to get a shot for the afternoon, and she returned to find Lu Xiangshui turning a perfectly good thing into such a mess! If the fish hadn’t already been sent up the mountain, she would have hauled them back, properly apologized to them, and exchanged them for good ones.
Lu Xiangshui felt a trace of regret inside, but his mouth remained stubborn. “That shouldn’t be possible, right? Tilapia is so cheap…”
“Hmph, you don’t believe me, do you? Just wait. There are only four people left until it’s Liu Xushan’s turn.”
Lu Xiangshui stood on his tiptoes. “Then I’ll watch.”
The line to settle accounts moved quite quickly, and before long, it was Liu Xushan’s turn.
Watching Liu Xushan from across the crowd, Lu Xiangshui caught sight of his grin splitting almost to the back of his head from afar, giving him a bad premonition. Sure enough, Liu Xushan emerged from the crowd in high spirits.
Lu Xiangshui sidled over to probe, “How many fish did you supply? They’re all tilapias, so they couldn’t fetch much of a price, right?”
“No, the price was actually quite suitable.”
Collecting and handing out money was all public, so Liu Xushan had nothing to hide. Besides, hehe, he had long known that Lu Xiangshui was too lazy in his work. Although Lu Xiangshui held the advantage of contracting the good pond first, the income gap between the two families over a year wasn’t that grand.
“Xushan, how much did Xiaxia give you per catty?” Zhao Meihua pushed past Lu Xiangshui and asked.
“Five yuan a catty.”
“All tilapias?”
“Hehe, see for yourselves… I still have things to do, so I’ll head out first.” Liu Xushan wasn’t that foolish to tell them everything. Let them blindly guess!
But since they were all in the same village and everyone had been watching the supplies for Jian Xingxia’s guesthouse these past two days, Zhao Meihua had found out long ago. Besides, Auntie Lu had specifically praised Liu Xushan. Now that Auntie Lu was Xiaxia’s dedicated procurement manager, whoever she praised was equivalent to being included in the supplier list.
What Liu Xushan supplied was tilapia, and all of them were around one catty! The quantity wasn’t as grand as their family’s, but Auntie Lu had said she wanted the same next time.
Zhao Meihua was so angry she punched and kicked Lu Xiangshui all over again. “How was I so blind to marry a piece of trash like you!”
“In the future, don’t you dare touch anything Xiaxia’s manor needs. I will deliver it! If you dare touch a single finger, see how I deal with you!”
Lu Xiangshui said sheepishly, “Well, they’re sold anyway, who cares.”
“Get lost!”
Jian Xingxia was busy handing out money and had no time to manage these trivial matters.
Hu Wu, who ran the chicken farm, had supplied one hundred catties of eggs over the three days. Hu Da and the accountant calculated it at five yuan a catty, and Hu Wu had no objections. This even saved him the loss from driving out to deliver them! His family’s farmed chickens also netted four hundred yuan.
The price for free-range chickens was higher, but the number of free-range chickens wasn’t grand; each household supplied only one or two, so they didn’t collect much money.
“The village potatoes are calculated at one-fifty a catty. Qin Yanyan, your family gave fifty catties, so collect seventy-five yuan.”
“Old Great-Aunt, you supplied thirty catties of potatoes, so that’s forty-five for you.”
“Shaohua, your family supplied two hundred catties of sweet potatoes, also calculated at one-fifty. Go ahead and collect three hundred yuan.”
“Jiang Ling’er, the market prices for pickles aren’t unified, and when you gave them, it was by the jar. With the jar and the brine, it can’t be weighed. We’ll count one jar as sixty yuan for you, is that alright?”
Jiang Ling was highly delighted. “Yes! Sixty is fine. Does Xiaxia want more? I’ve pickled several more jars. Not to boast, but my pickles are the cleanest and most delicious in the whole village. Whether it’s our village, my uncle, my aunt, or my cousin, they all ask me to make a few extra jars every year…”
“Alright, alright, that’s enough. Right now we are calculating the money for the previous supplies; we’ll talk about collecting new goods in a bit. Go ahead, three jars is one hundred and eighty, go collect your money.” The accountant was busy registering and hurried Jiang Ling away.
Jiang Ling wasn’t angry either—she could barely contain her joy at collecting the money, so why be angry?
Her single jar of pickles, by a rough estimate, probably held about twelve or thirteen catties of vegetables. The vegetables were all grown by her own family, and they were the crooked radishes and yellowed cucumbers with poor appearances—the kind that no one would even spare a glance at if sold as fresh vegetables. But then again, this kind actually tasted delicious when made into pickles; the texture was tender, crisp, and resilient.
The vegetables cost nothing; it was just a matter of boiling the pickle brine with salt, Sichuan peppercorns, chili peppers, white vinegar, and alcohol. Just like that, a single jar of pickles could sell for sixty yuan!
Three jars were used up in three days, and Auntie Lu only collected pickles from her family—because she made pickles year-round and was famous for her skill and love of cleanliness. Furthermore, precisely because her pickles were good, the storage time was short and relatively fresh. Some old grandmas in the village couldn’t differentiate between pickles and preserved vegetables; what they pickled last year had already grown mold, but they just skimmed the mold off and were still eating it this year. Auntie Lu hadn’t collected a single one of those.
Jiang Ling thought to herself with pure bliss—
If the guesthouse’s business was good and needed one jar of pickles a day at sixty yuan, that would be one thousand eight hundred a month! Heavens, it practically caught up with the wages of a waitress in the city!
When she went to work in the city previously, she made 3,300 without room and board, working ten hours a day. The ones with room and board included paid only 2,800 a month! And it was exhausting to death. Now, staying at home wasn’t tiring, she could look after the children, and by easily making pickles, she could sell one thousand eight hundred a month!
There was nothing in the world more beautiful than this!
