Chapter 46

Shuiqing didn’t know how to comfort Fan Jin.

Sometimes, family members don’t support each other but are the ones who can’t stand to see you doing well.

Ultimately, people are different, and some are rotten to the core.

After a moment of silence, she changed the topic: “The day after tomorrow, when we go to the market, I will ask my father if there are any wealthier merchants in the distant city. We can use their names.”

Fan Jin softly acknowledged and reminded her, “I know that all of Guangning, Nanning, and Xingning Prefectures are under the jurisdiction of the Southern Capital. There is the Bai family in the Southern Capital, known as Bai Ban Cheng.

The Bai family’s businesses are countless. If we use their name, first, they are far from us, so it’s hard to verify;

Second, the Bai family has a high status, few members, and the masters are very precious. They won’t easily meet people, so we don’t have to worry about my elder brother and cousin verifying it.”

With the status of her elder brother and cousin, they should not be able to meet the wealthy and influential Bai family.

Of course, they would not meet them either.

But because of this huge difference, Master Bai would never know that someone in the remote Shanshui Village was using his name to collect small lily seeds.

Shuiqing thought this was feasible.

With the excuse ready, after lunch, villagers started coming one after another to exchange lily seeds.

Seeing the brand-new ox cart and the strong ox, they were full of envy.

“The Fan family is really going to change its status.”

“They’re not the same as us anymore.”

“Fan’s second son is a scholar, he was always different from us. Look at the eldest son of the old village chief’s family, Changlin, can he be the same as our kids?”

Now their kids can still run around playing, but Changlin is studying. You can’t see the results now, but in less than ten years, Li Changlin will at least become a bookkeeper or copy books like Fan Jin, both of which are easy jobs.

Their kids can only scratch a living from the soil, suffering from the wind and sun like them.

The topic suddenly became heavy. Someone sighed and said, “Speaking of which, we are all benefiting from Fan Jin and Shuiqing. How many days has it been? Every household has exchanged more than a hundred pounds of rice, right?

When we get more the day after tomorrow, we can take it to Niutou Town and exchange it for hundreds of pounds of black flour. We won’t have to worry in winter.”

“It’s really good to have a capable person in the village. Even those of us who are not capable are better off. Isn’t this what the storytellers call ‘chicken and dog rising to heaven’?”

“See, you pretend to be literate but you’re not. It’s called ‘chickens and dogs ascending to heaven’!”

“Oh right, I still can’t read.”

“We owe our good days to the Fan family. From now on, no matter what happens, we stand by them!”

“Of course, no need to say it.”

…

A group of people exchanged rice and walked home laughing and chatting, reaching a unanimous agreement.

They knew who treated them well.

They knew who to follow to have food to eat.

The people of Shanshui Village were busy, and Shuiqing’s family was not idle either.

With their own ox cart, Fan Jin changed ‘carrying rice’ to the afternoon.

He used the morning to teach five children basic knowledge. In the afternoon, he went out to carry rice, and the five children worked in the vegetable garden and did housework.

Shuiqing was responsible for the logistics—cooking.

She varied the meals to provide nutrition for the family, trying to improve their health.

Indeed, once the diet improved, people’s recovery ability was strong.

The children obviously gained weight, their sunken cheeks gradually filled out. Though still thin, they were no longer alarmingly so.

Even Shuiqing and Fan Jin looked much better.

Shuiqing felt a great sense of accomplishment, and her enthusiasm in the kitchen was particularly high.

The family learned, worked, earned money, and supplemented their nutrition… everything was progressing simultaneously without neglect.

·

On the morning of September 5th, the family got up early.

Yan Qiu, following her mother’s instructions from last night, lit a fire and cooked a pot of cornmeal porridge, and boiled a dozen eggs. The family’s old hens, inherited from the separation, along with the ones compensated by her aunt and occasionally bought by her father, now totaled thirty-seven hens in the coop!

They could collect over fifty eggs of varying sizes in a day.

Their hens seemed particularly prolific, perhaps because of the added bran.

Her mother said these eggs should not be exchanged for salt but used to supplement the family’s nutrition.

Boiled eggs were easy to carry, so they boiled more for the outing today.

Xing Hui, taking advantage of the early light, first tied up her hair and then neatly combed and tied the hair of her three younger brothers.

Fan Jin was feeding the ox.

Shuiqing took out a stack of new clothes from the wooden bed and called out to the five children, “Come, come, get your new clothes.”

These were made from the fabric Fan Jin bought the first day he went to town.

Everyone except Fan Jin had a set.

She had secretly asked Aunt Li from the village to make a set of clothes for each of them, keeping it a surprise for the children.

Yan Qiu, Xing Hui, Jiang, He, and Hu slowly turned their heads, thinking they had heard wrong.

New clothes, for them?

Not clothes patched from adults’ worn-out ones?

Previously, they wore clothes first worn by Da Zhu and Er Zhu, which were then handed down to them. Now that the family was separated, they didn’t have to wear Da Zhu and Er Zhu’s old clothes, but they were happy to wear their parents’ hand-me-downs!

“Mother, why do we need new clothes?”

“Yes, Mother, don’t you and Father have old clothes?”

We can make do with those.

“It’s not the New Year yet.”

Not that they got new clothes even at New Year!

Shuiqing said, “We are going to your grandfather’s house, of course, we should dress well. We should go clean and tidy, so your grandfather, grandmother, and uncles can have face, right?”

Yan Qiu, Xing Hui, Jiang, He, and Hu: … Mother seems to have a point.

It seemed that wearing good clothes was not just for them, but also to bring honor to their uncles!

“Come quickly, try them on.” Shuiqing continued to call.

The five children eagerly ran forward, carefully reaching out to touch their very own new clothes.

“Big sister, they’re so soft.”

“Not linen, not coarse cotton. Mother, is this fine cotton?”

“Fine cotton indeed, no wonder it’s as soft as cotton. So comfortable.”

The children touched the clothes repeatedly, their eyes full of surprise.

Fan He looked up and said, “Mother, you should have told me earlier so I could have been happy for more days.”

Shuiqing snorted, “I was afraid if I told you earlier, you wouldn’t just be happy but so excited you couldn’t sleep.”

Fan He thought it was probably true, and grinned, “Mother understands me best.”

Yan Qiu and Xing Hui changed into their pale pink outfits, Jiang, He, and Hu wore light blue short jackets, Shuiqing wore a sky-blue skirt, and Fan Jin still wore his half-new, half-old long robe.

After breakfast, Fan Jin brought the ox cart, loaded the gifts prepared for his father-in-law, and the family sat on the cart, heading towards Niutou Town in the morning sun.