Chapter 11: Business Keeps Getting Better

After a brief discussion, the mother and daughter each went about their own tasks.

After dinner, Xu Meng ran to Chang Xi’s place and pulled her along to review their studies.

Chang Xi wasn’t someone who enjoyed studying, but she couldn’t resist Xu Meng dragging her into the grind, so she had no choice but to read along.

When dusk fell, Xu Meng refused to keep studying. She had to take care of her eyes, after all.

In the evening, she pulled Chang Xi to read for another hour or so, and by a little after nine, they both went to bed early.

Early the next morning, Feng Yanwen got up at the crack of dawn to go wholesale tourist maps, while Xu Meng waited at the intersection for Zhang Guifen. In addition to settling the payment for yesterday’s watermelons, she took another fourteen today. After thinking for a moment, she added one more watermelon—this one was for herself.

Zhang Guifen’s lips were curved in a smile the whole time. “I’ll come a bit earlier tomorrow.”

Xu Meng smiled and said, “No need to come that early. We head out late anyway. Just deliver them to our doorstep around this time. I’ll settle today’s payment with you tomorrow.”

Once the fifteen watermelons were unloaded from the cart, it felt much lighter. Zhang Guifen left in high spirits.

The three kids were very well-behaved. They knew their sister had hidden a watermelon in the house, definitely for eating tonight. One helped fetch water and carry a small bucket, another helped pack the watermelons, and the third quietly played without causing trouble. They were all good kids. As soon as everything was ready, Feng Yanwen returned, bringing back two hundred tourist maps.

“It’s my first time getting stock, so I didn’t dare take too much,” Feng Yanwen explained. “I originally planned to take only a hundred copies.”

Thinking back to her first time buying watermelons, she was worried that two hundred might not be enough. Now that she was someone who could earn over forty yuan a day, she gritted her teeth and took two hundred copies.

Xu Meng asked where the wholesale point was. It wasn’t far.

In those days, the urban area was quite centralized—everything was clustered together in one area. The place Feng Yanwen mentioned was only about a half-hour walk away. “If it’s not enough, I’ll go buy more. I just didn’t dare buy too much at first. If we can’t sell them, these things can’t be eaten or returned, right?”

Feng Yanwen let out a sigh of relief. Unconsciously, she had come to value Xu Meng’s opinion a great deal.

When the two of them arrived at the train station, it was about the same time as the day before.

No one could resist Xu Meng’s lively shouting. Some people who came over just to watch the commotion couldn’t help but buy a slice and stood nearby eating. Xu Meng would strike up a conversation with them, and if they were tourists, she’d take the opportunity to promote the tourist maps. Before long, more people came over, listening to Xu Meng explain the tourist attractions in the capital while chatting and eating watermelon.

It felt a bit like livestream sales from her previous life!

When livestream shopping was popular in her past life, Xu Meng often held her phone and watched those streams. She was extremely familiar with it and now imitated the way those streamers acted.

In her last life, Xu Meng had done all kinds of work—she had even worked as a tour guide for a while. When it came to introducing tourist spots, she didn’t feel the slightest bit out of place. Soon, a crowd of people gathered around her, eating watermelon. Many were drawn in by her eloquence and wanted to hear her talk about travel tips, and most of them would buy a map while they were at it.

The map’s price was about the same as what other vendors charged nearby—each one brought in about two mao (0.2 yuan) of profit. But who else could do it like Xu Meng, complete with a sales pitch, delivering one smooth explanation after another?

Feng Yanwen had never imagined that the daughter who had never seemed particularly outstanding before could be so articulate.

Tourist maps were something out-of-towners pretty much had to buy when they came to the capital.

By noon, all two hundred copies had been sold.

They even realized that maps were easier to sell—and more profitable.

Having earned some money, Xu Meng was like a little mouse that had found its way into a rice jar, bursting with enthusiasm for life.

“Little girl, you’re out of maps?”

“They’re all gone, really gone. But there’s a newsstand outside that also sells them.”

“Tch, the person at the newsstand doesn’t have your gift of gab, though. Still, thank you. Even though I didn’t buy anything, you let me listen for quite a while.”

“I just talk, you listen for fun. Whether or not you buy something is entirely up to you,” Xu Meng said with a cheerful grin.

The person felt a bit embarrassed and ended up buying a slice of watermelon—after all, this pretty young girl was just too likable.

“You see? I can even handle taking payments,” Xu Meng quickly said to Feng Yanwen. “You better hurry back and get more maps.”

Feng Yanwen thought to herself that if she had known selling maps would be even more profitable than selling watermelons, she should’ve bought more in the morning. But there’s no such thing as knowing everything ahead of time—missing a chance to earn money was no small matter.

She had no choice but to make another trip to the map wholesaler. This time, she brought back five hundred copies. Because she bought in bulk, the unit cost was two fen (0.02 yuan) cheaper than before. Sold together with the watermelons, they wrapped up around four in the afternoon once the watermelons were all gone. Though the maps weren’t completely sold out, they could be kept and sold the next day.

In the evening, the mother and daughter sat down to tally their earnings. With the addition of the map business and having sold two more watermelons than the day before, their income was over twenty yuan higher than yesterday. Feng Yanwen was clearly less giddy than she had been the day before.

Xu Meng thought to herself, good—Mom is starting to gain some perspective now.

She heard Feng Yanwen sigh, “Mengmeng, if making money is this easy, why don’t more people know about it?”

Xu Meng smiled. “You just don’t know. There are plenty of people out there making big money. We’re only making a bit of pocket change.”

What she said wasn’t wrong. While that amount of money seemed like a lot to Feng Yanwen, at this time, ten-thousand-yuan households^[1]Ten-thousand-yuan households (万元户): This term refers to families in China who, during the late 1970s and 1980s, managed to accumulate savings of over 10,000 yuan—a remarkable achievement … Continue reading were already common. In retail alone, many of the future bosses of shoe and clothing factories in Zhejiang Province were already handling tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan. Compared to that, their business, which brought in profits of just a few mao or fen^[2]Chinese currency:

The basic unit is the yuan (元).

1 yuan = 10 mao (角)

1 mao = 10 fen (分)

So, 1 yuan = 100 fen. at a time, was hardly worth mentioning.

But that wasn’t because Feng Yanwen was shortsighted. There were far more people who couldn’t make money at all. For people in the 1980s and 1990s, most hadn’t yet stepped out into the world. Opportunity and risk always came hand in hand. She and Feng Yanwen didn’t have much capital to begin with and had simply happened to go to the train station that day with a watermelon to cool off. Isn’t there a saying—when the wind is strong enough, even pigs can fly?^[3]“When the wind is strong enough, even pigs can fly” (风口上的猪都会飞): A popular Chinese metaphor meaning that in the right circumstances or trends, even those without special skill … Continue reading

As summer vacation arrived and the weather grew hotter, Xu Meng’s watermelon-selling business also boomed.

Ever since they started selling maps, they sold around twelve or thirteen watermelons and three to four hundred maps a day. Though it was exhausting running around in the sweltering heat and still needing to study in the evenings, the returns were substantial. Their daily income was steadily around seventy to eighty yuan.

Very soon, the two of them had five hundred yuan in hand.

Once they had five hundred yuan, they naturally wanted to earn even more.

In this era, doing business could be highly profitable, but it was also about seizing the right opportunities. Not everyone selling maps at the train station could achieve such booming sales. Every day after returning home, Xu Meng would reflect on what she hadn’t said well enough and where she could improve. Over the past few days, she even organized all the regular bus routes in the capital, wrote them on small notes, and stapled them to the maps. It was because she put more heart into it than anyone else.

Xu Meng said, “The watermelon business probably won’t be as good after the summer ends. Once school starts, we’ll pause the business for a while. By then, you can just set up a stall here and sell maps. Even if it’s not as popular as now, it’ll still be enough to get by.”

Feng Yanwen had also been thinking about this. Once Xu Meng returned to school, she would take over selling the maps.

No matter the time, there were always plenty of tourists coming to the capital.

In the future, there would be GPS and maps would become obsolete, but when people traveled, who wouldn’t bring along a local tourist map?

Xu Meng organized several major locations in the capital and also compiled a guide to the city’s public transportation and commuting options. Then she found people to hand-copy the information.

Yes—handwritten, one copy at a time.

Printing was far too expensive at the time, but labor was cheap. Just in the alley where Chang Xi lived, there were plenty of middle and high school students doing part-time work during the summer. Give them two yuan a day and they could copy like the wind.

Because of this, her maps were different from everyone else’s—and sold even better.

What made Xu Meng feel lucky was that people in this era didn’t have such strong imitation skills. Besides, no one really knew what kind of profit she was making from selling watermelons. So even after selling like this for over ten days, no one had tried to copy her.

After renting a new place, life for Xu Meng and her mother was getting better and better.

It wasn’t as noisy as it had been at the Xu family home, and Xu Meng now had much more time to study. Even Feng Yanwen felt less exhausted than before.

Yes, running a business all day long hadn’t tired them out. What had been more draining was when they used to handle all the housework back home. Housework, unlike other tasks, didn’t show visible results. Take Li Xiuzhi for example—why did she look down on Feng Yanwen? Wasn’t it because Feng Yanwen was always busy at home, yet no one could see what actual contribution she had made to the household?

When Feng Yanwen left, Li Xiuzhi had even been somewhat gloating, hoping to see her return defeated and covered in dust after being knocked around outside.

But they waited once, and she didn’t come back. Waited again, still no sign of her. Instead, Xu Jiefang ended up resenting her. When he wasn’t doing well, the old lady wasn’t nearly as pleased as she had imagined she would be.

Originally, they just wanted to knock some of Xu Meng’s spirit down a notch. But instead, they drove her away—and once she left, it was as if she had vanished completely.

At first, Granny Xue was quite composed, even forbidding Xu Jiefang from going to look for them. She had made a bold statement: “If she dares come back, just watch—I’ll break one of her legs.”

In the end, after waiting over ten days with no sign of them returning, Granny Xue felt utterly humiliated.

“What are you doing, really? Drinking porridge all day long. Don’t think I don’t know—you’re out there eating well on your own,” Granny Xue barked while holding her cane, scolding people outside again.

In the past, Feng Yanwen would always switch things up. If they had porridge in the morning, she’d make noodles at night. If they had noodles in the morning, she’d cook rice for dinner.

But after Feng Yanwen left, the task of cooking naturally fell to Wang Meili and her sister-in-law.

Those two were both equally delicate. Over the years, aside from pitching in during holidays to make a big dish or two, they rarely ever stepped into the kitchen. Let alone making buns, dumplings, or noodles—on the first day they tried to cook rice, it came out burnt, leaving Granny Xue so furious she cursed nonstop.

Later, the two of them figured out a trick: just cook porridge. It was the easiest option.

In the morning, they would cook a big pot of porridge and drink it from morning until night.

The others didn’t mind too much—they all had work units that provided lunch, but the old lady didn’t have that.

Life had become even harder than before. Granny Xue had endured hardship all her life, so how could she possibly tolerate this? So every mealtime, she would start shouting. Eventually, she yelled so much that even the daughters-in-law stopped siding with her. They didn’t even bother cooking porridge anymore—everyone just ate outside.

How could Granny Xue possibly put up with that?

“Just look at you all—can’t even cook a meal. What did I bring you into this family for? You think you’re all ladies of leisure now or something? One after another, a bunch of shameless hussies. Did your mothers die, or did you dig up your ancestors’ graves, that you’re too busy to even cook a meal?”

Li Xiuzhi was the first to take offense at her words. She came out from the house and started arguing with her. “There are so many people in this household—why is it that only the two of us are expected to cook? I go to work and earn money too. And you, with nothing to do all day, just wander around here and there. You expect us working people to cook for you? Don’t you feel even a little ashamed? Stop using your age to act superior. Granny Sun next door is five years older than you and still handles three meals a day just fine. We all know who’s acting like a landlord’s wife here!”

Left with one comment about going to work, right with another about having nothing to do—all this condescension could only come from the eldest sister-in-law, Li Xiuzhi.

Li Xiuzhi worked as a bus fare collector, one of the so-called “Eight Key Workers^[4]Eight Key Workers (八大员), is a term from the 1970s–1980s in China referring to eight types of workers with relatively stable and respected jobs, such as bus fare collectors, train conductors, … Continue reading” in the old days. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was a job with decent perks.

Though the public transportation company still operated much like before, there were now plenty of high-paying jobs out there. Fare collectors were no longer considered cushy positions, but Li Xiuzhi had clung to her sense of superiority for half her life and remained a respected figure in the household. Her mindset was still stuck in the ’60s and ’70s, and she looked down on Feng Yanwen, who taught English. In her eyes, Feng Yanwen was just a poor, pretentious intellectual.

Cooking? Back then, that was out of the question.

Li Xiuzhi used to be someone who could hold her temper, but now she didn’t care about keeping up appearances at all. All sense of elegance was gone. She had become the very type of woman she used to despise—a shrew.

And that old woman still expected to be waited on?

She’d had enough of this whole big family. Sure, her Dawei was doing well, but that didn’t mean they could keep dragging this entire household along.

Back when the family had a class enemy^[5]Class enemy (阶级敌人), is a political term used during Mao-era China to label individuals or groups seen as threats to socialism—such as landlords, rich peasants, capitalists, or … Continue reading to unite against, everyone had a common target. But now that Feng Yanwen was gone, Granny Xue found fault with everything the two daughters-in-law did.

“What kind of thing is that to say? In which family does a daughter-in-law not come in to enjoy life? Only someone as unlucky as me still has to worry about this and that.”

“Fine, then you don’t need to worry about anything anymore. In your forties, lying around eating and lounging all day — the kind of life where even breathing feels like too much effort for you,” Li Xiuzhi said sarcastically. “Then stop breathing, why don’t you?”

Even if Granny Xue was lazy, she couldn’t stand being called lazy by her daughter-in-law. Enraged, she grabbed her cane and raised it to strike.

“No respect at all! Is that any way to speak to your elder?”

“This is exactly how I talk—so what?” Li Xiuzhi retorted. “If you’re hungry, don’t you know how to cook a bowl of noodles for yourself? Just sitting there with your neck craned, waiting to be served. Whoever wants to wait on you can go ahead, but I sure as hell can’t keep serving this living Buddha.”

Granny Xue tried to strike her again, lifting her cane to start swinging.

But in her fury, she failed to notice a piece of watermelon rind on the ground. One misstep, and she slipped—falling flat on her back.