Chapter 44: Treasure Shop

“I’ll cook and do the housework at home.”

“Mm.” Guo Yuelin gave a soft reply and buried his head in his meal, his ears a little red.

Feng Mian thought, since he was doing heavy work, she gave him two extra bowls of rice.

In the afternoon, Guo Yuelin went back to work, and Feng Mian planned to go to the city for a stroll.

First, she wanted to sell the bicycle ticket, watch ticket, and production coupons that Guo Yuelin had given her before the New Year, then buy some candles.

She really had enough of kerosene lamps.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she held her phone and searched online.

Sure enough, on that big e-commerce platform she found old candles for sale—the “Guangpian” brand old candles, made from beeswax, a specialty of that era.

The data recommendations were interesting; whenever she opened her phone now, it mostly recommended products with historical meaning.

Amazing—she even found a shop selling ration tickets.

All kinds of tickets were available, and the shop owner swore on the product detail page that these were genuine old items, no counterfeit fakes.

The owner said these tickets were invalidated by the relevant departments but hadn’t been distributed or destroyed in time. Implying they were from insiders at those units, with tickets from the 70s through the 90s, all sorts of years, and lots in stock, quite cheap—dozens of tickets for a dozen or so yuan.

She checked the reviews; everyone said they were real.

This owner was something else—not only old tickets from different years but also old currency.

But the old currency was way too expensive.

Feng Mian calculated the depreciation; it was pricey but still definitely worth it.

The 4th series 1980 version, a 1-yuan note, sold for 9.9 yuan excluding shipping.

Too bad she couldn’t use the 4th series soft currency yet.

She kept browsing the store and found the 3rd series.

That was a rip-off. The same 1-yuan face value, but asking for 600 yuan per note?!

Feng Mian crossed her legs and gritted her teeth.

But then again, the 4th series wasn’t that rare—many families had them.

The 3rd series was different—that was really hard to find.

Feng Mian kept exploring the shop and saw that different versions of the 3rd series varied widely in price, and not all versions were outrageously expensive.

Scarcity made it valuable—maybe those with fewer prints were worth more?

She quietly took note: if she found rare versions in the future, she wouldn’t spend on them but save them for appreciation.

Overall, the 3rd series was not cheap in any version.

Buying in bulk wasn’t cost-effective; if you needed it urgently, buying a few would do.

Better to wait for the 4th series to be released—that’s when the fortune would come.

Wait, suddenly she remembered—these tickets were consecutive serial numbers.

They were real, but in a way, also fake.

Who knew how many things this parallel world shared? These things, like gold, she couldn’t touch.

Without realizing it, an hour had passed while she scrolled.

She bought everything she needed and put it into her space in advance.

She sorted the huge pile of tickets by date, took out the ones she might use and put them separately, then planned to have Guo Yuelin the ticket dealer sell them later.

Finished with that, she rode her bike to the county seat.

The road was only about four li (roughly two kilometers), so biking took just over ten minutes.

At this time, the policy forbade ordinary people from privately reselling tickets for profit, but private exchanges were still common.

Production-related and cloth tickets were a bit easier; this year you buy a bike, gather some friends, next year buy again, gather some more—anyway, these tickets expired every year.

Food tickets were tightly controlled.

The planned economy arranged things reasonably so that even if people were poor, they wouldn’t starve.

If food tickets could be casually resold, then the poor would truly starve.

The tickets Feng Mian held were about to expire. The watch ticket, bicycle ticket, and the needed industrial tickets were all chosen by a well-dressed older woman who was about to marry off her daughter-in-law.

“These are almost expired. Can you give me a better price?” she asked.

“Okay, how about fifty yuan?” Feng Mian replied.

Both of them acted furtively and seemed quite nervous.

The older woman said, “Alright, fifty it is. Let’s go somewhere more private.”

They went into an alley with no one around to make the deal. Since the woman was marrying off a daughter-in-law, Feng Mian took the opportunity to ask, “Auntie, do you want cloth tickets or cotton tickets too?”

“Yes, do you have any?”

“I have some. How many do you need?”

“How many do you have?”

This…

“Wait a moment, let me check.”

She turned around and used her mind to pull out all the tickets she had set aside for different years. It wasn’t much—cloth tickets enough to make four or five sets of clothes, cotton tickets enough for two quilts.

“That’s all I have. Do you want them?”

The older woman was very happy and said repeatedly, “Yes, I want them all.”

The woman spent another ten yuan to buy these tickets.

Looking at the woman’s crooked smile, Feng Mian felt she had sold them cheaply. In the planned economy era, cloth tickets were truly limited.

If a family wanted to get married, they basically had to borrow half the village’s yearly cloth tickets to afford the wedding.

Before selling the industrial and bicycle tickets, Feng Mian had asked Guo Yuelin about the prices, and indeed nearly expired ones were cheaper.

But she didn’t know the value of cloth tickets or cotton tickets.

From now on, she decided to leave this job to the ticket dealers—she wasn’t suitable for it.

Spring had arrived, and some nylon stockings were already on the shelves of the general store.

Feng Mian found a business opportunity. Tomorrow was market day, and she planned to sell old Shanghai nylon stockings.

Determined, she went to the newspaper stand to buy the latest papers.

Without the internet, relying on memory alone only helped her recall vague time points. To get first-hand information, one still had to read the newspapers.

After buying the papers, she rode her bike home—it was already past four o’clock when she arrived.

Guo Yuelin finished work at five, so she needed to prepare the meal first.

She started the fire, boiled a pot, cooked rice, spinach soup, and stir-fried cabbage hearts.

No need to eat meat every day—there had been too much over the New Year and she was already tired of it.

Seeing another meal of plain rice, Guo Yuelin quietly started worrying again about running out of food at home.

His wife could eat little on her own—only a small bowl per meal.

But he worked hard and was especially hungry, eating three bowls of rice at a time. Would he eat the family into poverty at this rate?

After finishing his meal, he asked Feng Mian, “Where do we keep the rice at home?”

She casually pointed, “In that big jar in the back.”

What a huge rice jar.

Feng Mian had ordered it alone online, and it was filled to the brim with rice.

He looked at it, seemingly relieved at first, but then his brows furrowed tighter and tighter.

“This is the best rice I’ve ever seen. Where did you buy it?”

Feng Mian’s heart skipped a beat as she finished the last sip of soup.

She turned to look at him and said, “Hey, did you forget the contract? Doesn’t it say you can’t ask me about my private matters? And I haven’t asked you where you get your tickets from.”

Guo Yuelin was slightly stunned. “Isn’t the rice for both of us? How is that your private matter?”

“Of course it is. Didn’t you see the note at the back?”

“Note?”

“Yeah, anything I don’t want to tell you is my private matter. If you don’t believe me, I can show it to you again.”