nucmednet Chapter 158: Small Money is Still Money
Chapter 158: Small Money is Still Money
As one of the "bosses", Bai Jingzhou's words still carry a lot of weight.
With his words instilled in them, the highly paid master craftsmen worked extremely seriously. They put in their utmost effort to do this task, fearing that they would lose this highly paid job due to a single mistake.
While they were busy doing this and that, on the other side, Bai Jingzhou and Gu Wenxuan also organized two teams to go out and sell goods.
One team would naturally follow Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou to other counties to sell the relatively good quality mountain products to places where their value could be better utilized.
Another team will travel back and forth between several nearby towns, surrounding villages and Qingshan County to help sell persimmon cakes, candied haws, sugar-roasted chestnuts and other secondary processed nuts.
Sugar-roasted chestnuts taste best when they are hot, so they are not processed directly in the workshop, but are fried and sold when other things are sold.
Therefore, this second team not only includes young and middle-aged men who are smart, eloquent, good at accounting, driving a carriage, and fighting, but also young boys specially trained by Bai Jingzhou to make sugar-roasted chestnuts.
Considering that most villagers had little money, Gu Wenxuan also told the team responsible for covering that area of the village that they could collect both cash and grain.
Of course, they don't collect all kinds of food.
Clean and dry new grain this year is the basis. In addition, they only harvest five kinds of grains: millet, sorghum, wheat, soybeans and mung beans.
Bai Jingzhou had calculated in advance how many copper coins each type of grain was worth. People who went to the villages to sell roasted nuts, persimmon cakes, and candied haws only had to collect the new grain according to the amount he gave.
The autumn harvest and winter storage operations have just ended. Now is the time when everyone has the most money. The villagers are also willing to buy some delicious snacks for their children to satisfy their cravings, so the goods of those who run to the village are sold out quite quickly.
The situation in the county town and several nearby towns was similar. The nuts and candied haws they made were of many varieties, and not only children but also adults would want to buy some to try. Soon, the slightly inferior mountain products collected by the two towns were all sold out.
At the same time, the batch of mountain products that Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou led their team to transport were sold at a good price after experiencing some minor setbacks.
The two used the money to buy a lot of goods and brought them back to Liulin Town. They then quickly sold the goods to the villages and towns around Liulin Town.
Thanks to them, the villagers of Baijia Village all earned some money by selling mountain products and working for the two families.
Next, they can not only have a good New Year, but also store more food and salt to make life better at home.
Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou worked hard for sixteen or seventeen days and even missed the important festival of Winter Solstice. After counting the food exchanged from the villagers, they earned a total of over sixteen taels.
Bai Jingzhou, who worked even harder but got nothing in return, sighed, "It's totally incomparable to making wine or going into the mountains."
Gu Wenxuan smiled, "It's not bad to earn 16 taels in more than half a month. Didn't you see that the other people in our two families are very happy?"
It is impossible that every business can be like wine, bringing them huge profits that others cannot imagine.
It’s okay for people to want to make a fortune, but just because they want to make a fortune or have made a fortune before, they can’t ignore the small amounts of money that come in the long run.
"Come, have a frozen pear." Gu Wenxuan did not preach in a connoisseur's way. Bai Jingzhou was an adult whose thoughts were completely formed. He did not need her to pull his ears and instill her own ideas in him like she did with her younger brothers.
Most importantly, she believed that Bai Jingzhou, who had experienced the end of the world due to natural disasters and the death of his parents, would not become arrogant and incompetent just because he had made a fortune.
Slurp, slurp, slurp. Gu Wenxuan held the frozen pears with an intoxicated look on her face. She didn't mind the icy taste at all and ate three of them happily.
She loved eating nuts and candied haws of various flavors made by Bai Jingzhou, as well as persimmons, dates, oranges, etc., but in her heart, none of these were as good as her favorite frozen pears.
Because she loved it so much, Bai Jingzhou decided to keep all the flower-shaped pears that they collected and were suitable for making frozen pears.
Thanks to him, Gu Wenxuan achieved the freedom of frozen pears.
After expressing their feelings a few times, Bai Jingzhou and Gu Wenxuan divided the food and money they had obtained equally between the two families according to the records in the accounts.
Each of the two families received about 1,000 kilograms of grain, and 326 cents of silver each.
Thinking that the twelfth lunar month was approaching, Bai Jingzhou and Gu Wenxuan each took out twenty taels of private savings and gave them to their family.
The first reaction of Bai Chong and his wife, Mr. Gu and others was, "We have money at home, we don't need you to give it."
The two children do not spend money indiscriminately. When they have money, they save it to buy houses, shops and land. This style makes the elders of both families happy to give them the right to be the masters of the family.
Bai Jingzhou and Gu Wenxuan insisted on giving it, and their reasons were very good. It was almost the twelfth lunar month, and the family would have huge expenses in the future.
Not only do they need to prepare more New Year's goods for their own family, but their relatives also need to prepare generous gifts. In addition, by the beginning of next spring, Gu Wenxuan's house should also be renovated a little, otherwise, if it rains later, their house might become uninhabitable.
As for building a house, we will have to wait until "the world gets better" as Gu Wenxuan said. Fortunately, it shouldn't take too long.
In addition to these expenses, their family also has to deal with the inevitable social interactions.
People in the village like to arrange marriages for their children in the winter when they have more money. The two families have to spend a lot of money just on gifts to relatives and neighbors.
Ever since Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou started helping the villagers, the relationships between the two families have become exceptionally good.
Bai Jingzhou's family is a member of the Bai clan. They used to have dealings with most of the families in the village, but now everyone is becoming more and more friendly to them, so the change is not particularly obvious.
Because Gu Wenxuan's family didn't have much contact with the villagers in the past, it seems that they have gone from being "deserted" to being "hot".
As a result, Grandpa Gu and others were frequently invited, and no matter it was a wedding or a funeral, every family in the village liked to invite the Gu family.
Gu Wenxuan didn't like to get involved in the trivial matters of interpersonal relationships, so apart from paying the money, she didn't care about anything else. She just focused on leading others to study and practice martial arts every day.
Of course, she still attended the weddings of her relatives.
When her cousin Fang Youcai married his second aunt's niece Xiao Liu, Gu Wenxuan not only attended the wedding, but also went there with others a few days in advance to help the Fang family.