Chapter 11

When she reached the age of eleven, the first time she heard her mother call her by her full name, Dayan’s eyes reddened with emotion.

Not far away, her sister Erya, who was stacking stones to build a chicken coop, froze, her eyes moistening.

In the past, their mother called their three younger brothers by their full names, which filled them with envy.

Even though they knew that, as daughters, they couldn’t be compared to their brothers, they still hoped that their mother would recognize them as daughters in her heart — they didn’t dare to think about receiving the family’s wealth, but at least they wished their mother would treat them the same in terms of names and verbal acknowledgments.

“Mother, you, you…”

“Yanqiu is a lovely name. Now that our family has moved out, we don’t need to live under your grandmother’s shadow anymore. I will call you two by your full names, just like your three younger brothers.” Shuiqing thought her evil mother-in-law was like a brick that could be moved wherever needed, making her quite useful.

Dayan and Erya nodded understandingly. Yes, their grandmother disliked their father calling them by their full names, saying it wasn’t necessary for just a name.

But they liked the names their father had carefully chosen. Now their mother also recognized them as Fan Yanqiu and Fan Xinghui completely.

“Mother, don’t worry. I recognize mushrooms! I will only pick the skirt mushrooms and bamboo mushrooms in the bamboo forest, and won’t pick any others.” Fan Yanqiu’s face lit up with a bright smile as she picked up a bamboo basket and ran towards the bamboo forest on the hill.

With little food at home and their father’s book-copying work being unstable, they had no money left. If she picked more mushrooms, they could save some grain for dinner.

Seeing her eldest daughter running away lightly, Shuiqing didn’t follow. She wasn’t good at finding mushrooms and recognized very few types, mainly the commonly eaten enoki mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms. The more expensive ones were chicken mushrooms, bamboo fungi, and matsutake mushrooms. She didn’t even know what bamboo mushrooms and skirt mushrooms looked like, so going would be a waste of time. Now the family was short-handed, and she had to hurry and work.

“Xinghui, I’ll stack the chicken coop. You go to the village to see if there are any extra vegetable seeds, and take a few eggs to trade.” Shuiqing walked towards her second daughter.

She had just arrived and her memories from the original owner were fragmented and incomplete. If she went to trade, she might give herself away.

Fan Xinghui, who had just heard her mother call her elder sister, now heard her mother calling her. She responded loudly and then said, “Mother, moving stones is tiring. You got hurt and bled this morning. Please rest for a while.”

Shuiqing looked at her second daughter, thin as a bamboo pole, using all her strength to move the stones and couldn’t lie down. Seeing her mother rolling up her sleeves to work, Xinghui looked at the sun in the sky and said, “Mother, I can handle the chicken coop alone. You should dig a stove pit, so when big sister returns with the mushrooms, we can cook.”

Digging a stove pit was less tiring than moving stones. Since her mother was injured this morning, she shouldn’t be exhausted.

Shuiqing looked at the sun and saw that it was indeed time to prepare dinner after digging the stove pit and gathering firewood. People in Shanshui Village had two meals a day during the slack season and three meals during the busy season. Now, at the end of August, the autumn harvest was over, and winter wheat had not yet begun, making it the slack season. The first meal, called lunch, was around ten in the morning, and dinner was around four or five in the afternoon when it was still light. After dinner, they washed while it was still bright, so they didn’t need to light oil lamps. Lamp oil was expensive, and villagers would not easily light oil lamps.

Shuiqing had eaten half a black bread bun in the morning, and now she was almost out of energy. Thinking of her daughters’ thin porridge that could reflect their shadows, she felt even hungrier!

“Alright, I’ll dig the stove pit first and make you a delicious dinner later.”

Hearing there was good food, Xinghui was happy at first. Then she thought of the family’s limited food and sensibly said, “Mother, you need to replenish yourself because of your injury. Just make the good food for yourself! Don’t we still have a sack of wheat bran? Big sister and I can fill up with mushroom soup and wheat bran.”

Shuiqing always thought it was good for children to be sensible. Now, hearing her blood-related daughter’s overly sensible words, she felt her nose tingle. That wheat bran was hard for an adult to swallow, let alone a child!

She patted her second daughter’s rough, yellowish hair and softly said, “From now on, the whole family will eat the same food. If we have good food, we’ll eat it together, and if it’s bad, we’ll eat it together too.”

No separate meals. No better food for men than women, or sons than daughters, splitting the family into different ranks. A family that didn’t respect each other couldn’t be united. That was a dream.

Xinghui saw her mother’s determined eyes and opened her mouth, finally saying, “Okay.” Mother is really good.

·

After digging the stove pit, Shuiqing went to the back mountain and, after some effort, finally found a flat stone slab. It was about the size of a large flat-bottomed pan, perfect for making pancakes. Yes, she was going to use this stone slab to make pancakes.

They had split from the Fan family with only a clay pot for boiling soup. They had no iron pot, and in her memory, a large iron pot cost six to seven hundred coins, while even a small one was three to four hundred. Reading novels before, Shuiqing thought less than one tael of silver was cheap compared to the jewelry costing dozens or hundreds of taels. But now, penniless, she experienced the difficulty of a hero without a single penny.

Shuiqing, who had cleaned the stone slab, returned to the cooking place and began digging a second stove pit next to the original one. Looking up, she saw her fair-skinned and delicate husband holding two loofahs, bringing back the thin Xinghui.

The loofahs were probably given by the Li family. Both of them looked dejected, and Xinghui seemed on the verge of tears.

“What happened?” Shuiqing asked during a break from digging.

“Mother, many households in the village have already sown seeds, and there are no extra vegetable seeds. Those who have seeds don’t have much. Look, I only got these.” Xinghui handed over the vegetable seeds wrapped in leaves.

There were seven or eight leaf packages, much more than Shuiqing had expected. After all, it was seven or eight kinds of vegetables, right?

She casually said, “It’s fine. Seven or eight kinds of vegetables are enough to eat.”

Xinghui was not as optimistic as her mother. Thinking of winter, she worried, “It’s not the variety but the quantity. There aren’t many seeds inside.”

Originally hoping to plant many vegetables and carefully tend them, she wanted to eat more vegetables in winter to fill their stomachs. But now, without enough seeds, what could they do?

Fan Jin was planning to go to the city to take on more book-copying work. He initially wanted to build the straw hut at home first, but now it seemed he needed to earn money for the seeds first, so planting wouldn’t be delayed. The family lacked too many things: an iron pot, fire sticks, clothes, quilts, food, oil, and salt…

Shuiqing wasn’t too worried, as she had always relied on herself to go from nothing to something. Now, all she thought about was making money, more money, and lots of money!

“Mother, Father, look! I picked a lot of mushrooms!” Fan Yanqiu came running with a large basket of mushrooms.

“Dingdong, authentic wild chicken mushrooms, 1 jin 4 liang detected, 2 jin of bamboo mushrooms. Do you want to sell them?”