Chapter 22: Buy, Buy, Buy

Chapter 22: Chapter 22: Buy, Buy, Buy

On the way, Uncle Xie had to make a detour into town. Worried that Ji Huan might be in a hurry, he asked if she wanted to catch a ride back first with someone else from their village.

Having just earned some silver, Ji Huan needed to purchase a few things. Her original plan was to return to Xie Ditch and go to town with Widow Xie, which would allow them to head straight back to Dafeng Village after their shopping.

But seeing the sun already slanting toward the mountainside, she worried there wouldn’t be enough time and suggested going into town with him.

After spending half the day with him, she could tell Uncle Xie was a steady and honest man, so she wasn’t worried about flashing her new wealth.

Once they arrived in town, Uncle Xie went to the blacksmith’s to get some farm tools repaired, while Ji Huan headed for North Street.

The seven necessities of life are firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. She was short on everything but firewood, so her first stop was the grain and oil shop.

Items like oil and salt were quite expensive, but as essential provisions, she had no choice but to pay the price.

Four jin of soybean oil cost one hundred and sixty cents, and four jin of refined salt was over sixty cents. She had also planned to buy some soy sauce and vinegar, but she was stunned when she heard the price—the two of them together would cost four or five hundred cents!

The young shop assistant proudly explained that these were the latest trend from the capital. He claimed ordinary families couldn’t get their hands on them and that their Shopkeeper had to pull some strings just to bring them to Juyong Town for sale.

’This is strange,’ Ji Huan thought. ’As far as I know, vinegar appeared very early in history. While it started as a luxury for the nobility, it became quite common by the Song and Ming dynasties.’

’I thought this era was similar to the Song and Ming dynasties, but it seems there are some differences after all.’

As the assistant chattered on, Ji Huan lifted the lid of each vat to take a look. The color wasn’t right. She leaned in for a sniff—the aroma wasn’t rich, either. Deciding against them, she went to pay for her other items.

The assistant seemed a little disappointed but still rang her up with a smile.

Next door to the grain and oil shop was a rice and flour shop.

Northerners more commonly ate wheat flour and millet than white rice, so flour wasn’t much cheaper than rice. Rice was eight cents a jin, while flour was six cents a jin. Ji Huan bought two dou of both rice and flour, spending a total of two hundred and eighty cents.

She had been decisive while making her purchases, but now she was dumbfounded. ’How am I going to get all this stuff home?’ At that moment, Ji Huan desperately missed the shopping carts from her past life.

"Let me help you. Where does this need to go?" The young assistant from the grain and oil shop saw her standing on the street in a predicament and called out to her from behind his counter.

’What a nice guy!’ Ji Huan quickly told him the address.

The young assistant turned and disappeared into the back courtyard connected to the shop. A moment later, he emerged with a wheelbarrow, loaded all her things onto it, and set off.

"Wait!" Ji Huan called out, pointing toward the shop.

’The shop door isn’t even closed. Is it really okay for him to just leave like this to help me deliver my things?’

"Don’t worry about it! I know everyone around here; they’ll help keep an eye on things. There aren’t many customers this late in the afternoon anyway. To be honest, you’re the only customer I’ve had all afternoon."

The young assistant was cheerful, chattering nonstop the whole way. She had initially thought he was just talkative for the sake of making a sale, but now she realized he was simply a chatterbox—a kind and pleasant one, at that.

As they passed a clothier’s shop, the young assistant stopped.

"Didn’t you say you needed to buy cloth? This shop is a good one."

Seeing how familiar he was with every part of the town, Ji Huan had asked him for a recommendation a moment ago. She had planned to drop her things off at the blacksmith’s and then come back, but she hadn’t expected him to be this helpful.

Ji Huan wasn’t the type to be overly modest, so she thanked him and walked briskly into the shop.

The shop wasn’t large, and its selection was rather plain. Half of the shelves lining the walls were stocked with fine cloth and cotton, while the rest was mostly coarse fabrics like burlap and ramie—all relatively affordable materials.

There was some silk and satin, but it was relegated to one corner of the counter, protected by a layer of fine gauze. ’It makes sense,’ she thought. ’Expensive things like this would only sell well in the county seat. In a rural town, they’re less popular than burlap and linen.’

Generally, silk was the most expensive, followed by cotton, and then linen-type fabrics. A quick inquiry with the Shopkeeper confirmed it. A bolt of thick silk cost six mace of silver, while a bolt of fine cotton was four hundred cents, and a bolt of coarse linen could be bought for 150 cents.

One bolt of cloth was about thirteen meters long, enough to make six or seven outfits. Ji Huan ordered three bolts of coarse linen and two bolts of fine cotton. Seeing he had a major customer, the Shopkeeper eagerly tried to lead her to the gauze-covered counter.

Ji Huan shook her head. ’I’m just a village girl now. Wearing silks and satins would be too conspicuous—no different from hanging a silver ingot from my neck and parading through town.’

However, she did remember one other thing she needed to buy.

"Shopkeeper, do you sell cotton here?"

The Shopkeeper clapped his hands. "Of course we do! It was just harvested this autumn. It’s clean and fluffy, come have a look if you don’t believe me."

The Shopkeeper lifted a door curtain and led her into a room in the back courtyard, where a pile of cotton took up nearly half the space. Ji Huan reached out and touched it—it definitely wasn’t old, stored cotton.

’Winter is coming. I’ll need two sets of quilts and bedding, so one can be aired out while the other is in use, and I can double up when it gets colder. I’ll need two sets of padded winter clothes, too.’

’All told, I’ll need about thirty jin of cotton. To be on the safe side, I’ll buy fifty jin. Better to have too much than not enough. But cotton isn’t cheap—it costs forty cents a jin.’

With the cotton, she also had to buy quilt linings, quilt covers, and bedsheets. Since she’d need to wash them, she bought two sets of everything. Between that and the cloth she’d bought earlier, she ended up spending nearly four taels of silver all at once. Ji Huan felt a real pang in her chest.

She could only comfort herself repeatedly. ’It’s fine, it’s fine. If I convert it, it’s only a little over a thousand dollars. Just a little over a thousand dollars... that’s all.’

After leaving the clothier’s, she stopped at a butcher’s stall and had them cut three jin of pork and ten jin of leaf lard. The pork was eighteen cents a jin, while the leaf lard was cheaper at twelve cents.

Leaf lard is the thickest layer of fat from a pig’s belly. Farming families most commonly used the fat rendered from it for cooking. Compared to the slightly more expensive soybean oil, pork lard went further, so nearly every household kept two oil jars by the stove: one for vegetable oil and one for animal fat.

Having bought nearly everything she needed, she arrived at the blacksmith’s shop just as Uncle Xie was coming out.

"I was just about to come find you. I’ve already... Whoa, that’s a lot of stuff!"

The wheelbarrow was small and narrow, so her purchases had been piled up like a small mountain. Uncle Xie and the young assistant worked together to move everything to the mule cart, where the load suddenly looked half the size.

The young assistant wiped the sweat from his brow and turned to leave with his wheelbarrow.

Seeing him about to leave, Ji Huan quickly called out, "Thank you so much for all your help today! How about I treat you to some tea...?"

The young assistant scratched the back of his head. "N-no need to thank me! It was no trouble... I have to get back to the shop... Just give us your business again in the future, and that’ll be enough."

Whenever Ji Huan thanked him, he would flash that same bashful smile, a far cry from the sharp-witted boy he was when making a sale. She couldn’t help but find it endearing.

Inside the blacksmith’s, Uncle Xie had already picked out a pot, a knife, a ladle, and a spatula for her. The large iron wok cost nine hundred cents, the kitchen knife was eighty cents, and the spatula and ladle were sixty cents each.

Ji Huan couldn’t help but sigh. ’Manufactured goods are so expensive in an agrarian society!’

She paid the blacksmith, then went across to the general store to buy bowls, plates, wooden basins for washing up, and other daily necessities like a toothbrush and tooth powder. By the time she was done, Uncle Xie’s tools were repaired, and the two of them got back on the cart to head for Xie Ditch.