ch 33 – The Ill-Intended Mrs. Gu (2)
All the other women surrounding them, who also had their eyes on this piece of fabric, all gasped at the same time. Two hundred wen? That’s the cost an entire roll of fabric, enough for eight or even nine sets of clothes!
Even third grandma was a little hesitant. Mountain goods went for around 2 wen per jin (close to one pound, or 500 grams). Their family would have to sell a whole 100 jin to be able to recoup the cost of the piece of fabric. But the quality of the fabric was top notched, the color was bright. If her daughter have it on, she’d most definitely be pretty like a flower.
“Third Aunty, this fabric was find cotton from the south, look at the labor and the dye job. A lot of the wealthy in town couldn’t even get their hands on them even if they wanted to!” explained Shopkeeper Qian ad he started rewrapping the fabric. HE wasn’t being pushy about it, he was merely explaining why it was so expensive. After all, he did buy for that his wife; he never intended for it to be merchandise.
When Third Grandma heard that, she gritted her teeth and stomped her feet and said, “Okay, I will take it, Shopkeeper Qian. I will pay you after all the mountain goods were sold.”
The family that the brother had spoke to for the daughter was a decent family, and close to town. Her daughter was quite fair as well. If only she could wear clothes from this fabric, this betrothal would be a done deal! If her daughter could marry out of this poor, remote village and have a decent rest of her life, it was worth the money!
All the other women from the village were gathering around picking out needles, threads, and other household items. Those with some spare money would also pick some fabrics for making new clothes for the kids before the end of the year. There would not be any more merchants visiting them before the year was over.
Mrs. GU, on the other hand, was not part of this group. She merely looked at the merchants and their merchandises from afar. She had her own plans in mind; she would be going into town in the next couple of days; the merchandises in town were cheaper than what the merchants brought with them. She wasn’t about to pay extra for them. As for her mountain goods, the only reason she was doing business with the merchants was because she didn’t have any mules. Otherwise, why would she be so dumb as to let the merchants made money off of her?
Qingshan Village had roughly thirty or so families. By the time all of the mountain goods have been weighted and paid for, it was already night time. Shopkeeper Qian and his men stayed the night in the village and the caravan started their trip back the next day.
Gu Ye had been waiting just outside of the village since earlier that morning. At her feet was a basket filled with dried games.
Naturally, Shopkeeper Qian was familiar with Gu Ye. He had heard all about her from the villagers all along. In his mind, she was a poor child who had been abused by her step mother.
He was quite surprised when he found her stopped them in the path of the caravan. He walked up to her and asked, “My child, do you have something you want to sell?”
Gu Ye nodded and removed the leaves she had been using to cover up her basket. She asked lightly, “I wonder whether Shopkeeper QIan would purchase dried pheasants or rabbits?”
“Of course!” There weren’t a lot of proficient hunters in the few surrounding villages. Families like Hunter Zhang usually owned their own mules, making it easy for them to delivery their catch themselves. So it was unusual for Shopkeeper Qian to come across items like that.
He thought about it for a moment and said to her, “Tell you what? The going rate for dried pheasants and ducks is 20 wen a jin. I will pay you exactly that and not make money off of you.”
“Thank you, Shopkeeper Qian!” Even though Gu Ye was not familiar with the going prices of air dried game meat in town, but she did know that Shopkeeper Qian had always been fair with his pricings and that he would not try to cheat a little kid like her.
Gu Ye kept taking out the dried games one after another. Shopkeeper Qian got progressively more startled as time went on. Inside the basket there were 8 pheasants, 5 wild rabbits, and a few pigeon-liked birds. After weighting them, it was close to 40 jin. Where did this kid got all these game from?