The Spirited Daughter-in-law and the Mountain Man

She discovered that it wasn’t quite right for the men of the Qian Zhang family in the village to have searched for medicine in the mountains for two days and only sold it for ten cents, even if it was ordinary medicine that wasn’t expensive. It was more profitable than selling vegetables.

Could it be that they were taking advantage of the villagers’ ignorance of medicine, and offering low purchase prices?

Anyway, she had learned the prices of many ordinary medicines sold.

After listening for a while, the pharmacy shopkeeper came out and yelled at Su Qingyue, “Hey, you beggar, stop standing in front of my shop, you’re driving away my business!”

Su Qingyue was dissatisfied, “Who are you calling a beggar?”

“You!” The shopkeeper glanced at her disdainfully, “Get out, you’ve been standing here for so long, it’s been bothering me for a while now.”

Su Qingyue looked down at herself and her patch-riddled coarse cloth clothes, feeling depressed, but even she thought that although her clothes were clean, they were so old that they didn’t look any different from a beggar’s. She couldn’t blame anyone else.

Who told her that she didn’t even have a decent set of clothes?

Originally, her third brother was helping her make two sets of new clothes, but he fell ill and became weak. The clothes were left unfinished.

Sigh.

People need clothes, and even Buddhas need gold clothing. She carried her basket and went to a shop that sold various bottles and jars, and asked, “Shop owner, I want to buy a few jars.” She pointed at a smoothly surfaced big jar, “How much is one of these?”

“Thirty-five cents. ”

“That’s so expensive… do you have something cheaper?”

The owner glanced at her shabby clothes, and could tell that she was poor, but she was a customer, so he didn’t refuse her business. He pointed to a corner of rough jars, “The big ones are the cheapest, sixteen cents each.”

“Fifteen cents, okay?”

“Not less, I’m not giving you any discount. If I were giving a discount, I would say twenty cents.” “How many jin can that jar hold?”

“About sixty jin or so.”

“I’ll take six, will you sell them for fifteen cents each?”

“Six, huh…” The shop owner hesitated for a moment, “Alright.”

She asked again, “What about pots for holding soy sauce? Something big. Nothing too expensive…

She bought eight more inexpensive pots, which she intended to use for storing seasonings and for making medicine, spending thirty cents. She also bought fifty cents worth of salt and oil, and one hundred cents worth of white sugar. She was left with forty-one cents.

She couldn’t carry all the stuff back by herself, so she asked the shop owner, who gave her some addresses where she could rent cow carts. However, a trip to Wushan Village would cost at least twenty cents.

She went to ask the disabled Wang of the same village, who said fifteen cents was enough, because they were from the same village, and he was going back anyway. Ten cents would also work.

Today, there were a total of five people from the village, including Su Qingyue, who came to town by cow cart. Three people, due to bad business, couldn’t afford the return trip, so they walked back instead.

One person went to another village.

Although Wang Crippled usually drove cow carts to town early in the morning and only returned to the village in the evening, if there were people who wanted to return early, he would go back before evening. As for those who didn’t catch a ride, they would go to Wang Crippled’s usual waiting spot. If they didn’t see anyone, they would know that he had left early with the cart. Those who missed the cart would either walk back or hire another cart.

This was the inconvenience of transportation in ancient times.

Wang Crippled drove the ox cart to the tile jar shop. The shop’s waiter helped arrange the various bottles and jars on the cart, then gave them a rope to tie everything securely, preventing the jars from falling due to the bumpy ride..