Chapter 196: Taoya and Xing’er’s Small Pouches
The three children lined up at the city gates for half the afternoon. After receiving a round of porridge and seeing no sign of Lin Sanniang, they headed home.
Taoya said to Brother Shu, “Our family carries grain now. Coming to line up for porridge is merely to let people see us, so they think our family also lacks grain and goes hungry.”
“But we don’t need to fight others for this porridge. We just need to take one bowl, drink it, and go home. Leave the remaining porridge for those who need it more.”
Brother Shu only half-understood.
Xing’er, however, nodded her head repeatedly. “Exactly, exactly. We lined up for a full watch just to get a single bowl of thin porridge; it wasn’t even enough to quench our thirst.”
“With that time, it would be better to stay home and make a few more pouches. A single pouch can be sold for seven or eight wen!”
Taoya and Xing’er were willing to put in the effort. Currently, though their embroidery skills couldn’t be called exceptionally grand, sewing a pouch or embroidering the edge of a handkerchief to set up a small stall by the roadside was still passable.
However, Lin Sanniang temporarily refused to let them sell them outward, storing them all inside a large chest at home instead.
Lin Sanniang had said, “At this moment, everyone still can’t eat their fill, so pouches and handkerchiefs won’t fetch a good price. If we wait until the grain harvest comes and everyone can eat their fill, the price can rise a bit. At that time, there’s no saying they might sell for fifteen to twenty wen.”
A difference of a few wen was like the distance between heaven and earth to young children. Xing’er decisively chose to listen to her mother.
But now that Lin Sanniang held a “formal” job and the household faced no difficulties, her heart grew increasingly desirous to compensate the children. She didn’t want to mistreat them, forcing Taoya, Xing’er, and the others to hold back, endure, and wait. Thus, Lin Sanniang engaged in an advance “acquisition.”
“Sell your pouches and handkerchiefs to Mother first. For those with excellent workmanship, Mother will acquire them at eight wen each; for average workmanship, it will be seven wen. This money is given to you first, but hide it from others when you spend it.”
Currently, there weren’t many people selling snacks on the streets, but there were some. Additionally, as the children grew older, they always held things they wanted—sometimes a hair ribbon, sometimes a kite, or a small clay figurine. Even if they bought absolutely nothing, having money in their hands allowed them to feel confident and generous when playing with the other children in the alley. Having money but choosing not to buy felt entirely different from having no money and being unable to buy.
Therefore, Taoya and Xing’er were incredibly happy now. They went out once a day to fetch porridge, and spent the remaining time staying at home, practicing their embroidery alongside their household chores.
The two sisters didn’t forget to pull their little brother along either. Brother Shu was only five years old and couldn’t hold a needle steadily, so Taoya and Xing’er had him act as an assistant, helping to organize threads, thread needles, and cut material. Occasionally, if there was a particularly dirty piece of cloth, they would have Brother Shu take a small basin, fetch some water, wash it twice, and hang it neatly on the rope to dry. By doing this, for every pouch Taoya and Xing’er completed or handkerchief they embroidered, they would also give Brother Shu one wen.
It had been about a month since Lin Sanniang brought back the cloth scraps and taught the three children needlework. From mid-May onward, Taoya and Xing’er could produce pouches, making one every two or three days, and slowly, they had amassed twenty or thirty of them.
Having earned money, Taoya and Xing’er bought cloth and thread from Lin Sanniang in turn. Their tiny bit of money was naturally insufficient to buy cloth, but Lin Sanniang felt this was excellent, just like her situation at the manor. Working more or less was a matter of personal capability, but working to receive wages and items was the rule and proper logic. Lin Sanniang thus charged a symbolic two wen per piece of cloth. The thread was also cheap, left to their choosing; giving one or two wen each time was enough.
The cloth scraps provided by Jian Xingxia were all the cheapest pure cotton remnants, with dimensions basically at 40*60cm. Shifting to the calculation of the Great Liang Dynasty, that was a cloth square a bit over one foot long and slightly under two feet wide, capable of making three or four pouches.
Taoya and Xing’er had just learned the craft, so their work wasn’t particularly beautiful yet, and they carried no idea how to hide the patchwork seams in the fabric scraps. But such pouches were still usable; ordinary commoners couldn’t afford satin pouches with embroidery anyway, preferring this coarse cloth style as long as it was made sturdy.
One thing leading to another, the three children also amassed some private savings. The children were sensible; since their mother told them to spend it carefully, they never advertised it to the outside world. Only when they truly couldn’t restrain themselves would they go to the small stalls in front of the City God Temple to buy a small cup of peanuts or a handful of melon seeds. One or two wen was enough to make the three children happy for an entire day.
Brother Shu knew his earnings relied entirely on his two sisters’ subsidies, and being young, he held no real mind for saving or spending money, so he was highly generous, always buying treats to invite his two sisters to eat.
Living their lives behind closed doors, the outside world merely assumed Lin Sanniang’s family was so destitute they carrying no way to survive, unaware that their family’s days were spent a whole abundance better than those of ordinary people.
Clutching two large lotus leaf bundles of food, Lin Sanniang walked through the darkness toward home.
Today, because she helped construct the chicken coop and arrange the wages for Da Hei and Shang Yue, she hadn’t returned to the Great Liang Dynasty until night fell. Fortunately, after green shoots appeared in the fields, the number of government soldiers inside and outside the city increased, and traveling pedestrians grew more numerous as well, making the roads slightly more peaceful than before.
People could eat wild vegetables now. Although eating them made them hungrier, at least their stomachs held something. Wild rabbits and field mice in the fields, along with birds in the sky, gradually grew more abundant, and the common folk caught them to eat. At long last, the horror of exchanging children to eat was no longer seen.
The local government also distributed porridge at the city gates daily, with four large vats boiling simultaneously. Inside the waist-high water cisterns sat clear porridge that could reflect a person’s silhouette. The distribution lasted from the beginning of the mao hour until the end of the you hour.
When Lin Sanniang returned, the people distributing porridge at the city gates were still packing up their things. Lin Sanniang felt secure in her heart, using the moonlight to guide her home along the path.
Nearing home, Lin Sanniang’s footsteps grew increasingly light and joyful. After elevating to a “formal worker,” the young mistress owner said her “welfare benefits” had improved. Now, aside from eating her fill at the manor daily, she could bring back two portions of “welfare meals.” A single welfare meal only deducted two yuan from her. Yet she could carry back a full lotus leaf bundle of food.
Even when there were no guests dining at the manor for a few days, the plump auntie still cooked quite a bit of food, letting them eat their fill and carry a lot back.
At first, the auntie had been a bit restrained—with no guests and only the young mistress and the few of them, should the cooking be kept brief and simple? But the mistress spoke up frankly: “No need to be simple! The guests are human, and we are human too. Whatever the guests eat, we eat.” The mistress also said to the auntie with a grin: “Your wages aren’t grand, so don’t be polite when it comes to eating. Eat your fill and eat well.”
Hearing these words, Lin Sanniang and the auntie were entirely at a loss for words. The auntie couldn’t keep the words in: “My goodness! Miss, you truly carry no idea how difficult the world is! You call these wages of ours not grand? I won’t say working one day equals a year, but saying working one day equals a month is a solid reality!”
The auntie felt the mistress was simply too wealthy, completely unaware that for poor commoners like them, they could only taste a bit of meat at the turn of the year during the Spring Festival. Cutting two ounces of meat back, they might even divide it into two dishes to stir-fry! A single chicken could be stewed from the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month—the chicken head, feet, and rear were all strictly counted. Once the chicken was eaten, the chicken broth still had to be used to cook vegetables and noodles to be eaten as a semi-meat meal. If it was fish, it was kept entirely untouched; only after the first lunar month passed did they dare move their chopsticks.
The auntie doted on her own child: “When my Dahong had her birthday, her grandparents couldn’t bear to give her a single egg to eat. It had to be her father and me quietly scraping one out from a hen’s rear…”
The Manor Owner didn’t understand why the auntie insisted on scraping an egg from a hen’s rear. But Lin Sanniang understood perfectly—the chicken coop must be watched and guarded by the auntie’s in-laws; the moment an egg dropped into the nest, it would have been snatched away by them long ago. They could only seize the moment when the old hen was strolling outside and the egg was about to drop but hadn’t yet to scrape it out.
Sigh, it just caused the old hen to suffer.
Lin Sanniang turned her head to look at Da Hua. Born at the manor, Da Hua was truly the happiest hen in the world, with a continuous supply of insects, vegetable leaves, and grain daily, bound to lay an egg every single day. Sometimes she laid two, and the mistress even felt bad for her, specifically buying some kind of powder to improve soft shells for Da Hua, mixing it with vegetable leaves for her to eat.
My goodness, a human truly can’t compare to a chicken…
