After the Double Ninth Festival, all the villagers in Dongchen Village, including the Jiang family, were peeling cotton seeds at home.
Yingbao thought about it for a whole night and sorted out the plot of the book. She found that it focused on the story of the heroine and did not describe many peripheral characters.
He didn't even mention his parents and brother, who were just tools, let alone Chuchu and others.
However, the book does describe the process of cotton farmers ginning and weaving, saying that they use a cart-driven cotton gin to remove the seeds from the seed cotton, which is very fast and much faster than picking them out manually one by one.
It is said that a bookshelf is fixed on the table, with a wooden axis and an iron axis installed horizontally on the top of the shelf.
The iron shaft is on the top and the wooden shaft is on the bottom. A crank is installed on the right side of the wooden shaft. A flywheel cross-shaped wooden frame is installed on the left side of the iron shaft.
During operation, the two shafts are pressed against each other, and the seed cotton is added between the shafts with the left hand. The cotton is brought out in front of the machine, and the cotton seeds fall behind the machine.
Yingbao took a charcoal pencil and drew the shape of the cotton gin on paper. Some details were roughly like that, and the carpenter probably needed to figure out more.
"Dad, we can use this to squeeze out the cotton seeds. It should be faster than picking them up by hand." She handed the drawing to her father.
There was so much cotton at home that collecting the cotton seeds was a huge project. The whole family had to work on it, and it would take at least one or two months to complete.
Jiang Sanlang took the picture his daughter handed over, looked at it carefully, and nodded: "I'll ask Wang Ke to make one to try. If it works, we'll make a few more to use."
Now that he is the village chief, he has to take care of all the big and small matters in the village, and cotton ginning is a big deal.
Because Sun Lizheng kept urging him to sort out all the cotton seeds as soon as possible, some of which he would keep for his fellow villagers and the rest would be sold to the county government.
It is said that the imperial court attached great importance to this batch of cotton seeds and asked the county magistrate to send someone to deliver a batch of cotton seeds and cotton to the Ministry of Revenue in Kyoto.
Yingbao suddenly remembered something and asked, "Dad, why haven't the two looms we ordered from Manager Zhou arrived yet?"
"I asked Manager Zhou, and Zhou Mao said that he would definitely be able to bring it when he came to collect the golden ears this time."
Jiang Sanlang often took his wife to the county town to visit his eldest son, so he had more contact with Zhou Mao.
Yingbao nodded.
Her own golden ears will be ready for harvest in half a month, so she would go to the county town first, spend a few more days there, and come back after she has dealt with the shop's affairs.
At noon, Jiang Quan loaded several baskets of chestnuts onto the carriage and hung several large gourds on the roof.
Each of these gourds is as big as a bathtub, and it is really scary to see them hung on both sides of the carriage.
Erni climbed onto the carriage with a bag on her shoulder and sat with her little cousin.
Today, her uncle asked her to accompany Yingbao to the county town, and Erni was so happy.
She had never been to the county town even once in her life, so she had to spend a few days wandering around the county town.
"Bao'er, take Xiao Hei with you. Dacheng said that having a dog at home can protect us from thieves at night." Chunniang carried Xiao Hei to the carriage and said, "Xiaojie also wants to see Xiao Hei. We will leave him in the county town from now on."
"Okay." Yingbao held Xiaohei in her arms and waved to Chunniang: "Mother, I'm leaving."
"Be careful on the road."
"knew."
Jiang Quan whipped the carriage and drove away, soon leaving the village.
After rushing all the way, we finally arrived at the shop in the county town before dark.
The shop was closed at this time, but fortunately Jiang Quan still had a key.
Jiang Quan and Erni unloaded the chestnuts and gourds and put everything into the shop. Then they closed the door and led the carriage into the backyard.
There were a lot of bricks and tiles piled up in the backyard, almost filling up the huge yard.
"Where's my brother?" Erni walked into the thatched cottage and didn't see Jiang Cheng. She couldn't help but ask Jiang Quan: "Doesn't he stay here at night?"
"Brother should go to Meihua Lane." Jiang Cheng usually sleeps in the shop. Probably because he knew that his second brother would come back today, he went to Meihua Lane by himself.
Jiang Quan lit the oil lamp with a tinder and said, "You guys stay here tonight and come back to Plum Blossom Lane tomorrow."
"Yeah." Erni had no objection and took the oil lamp and shone it around.
The room was fairly tidy and clean. There was a wooden bed and all the bedding was available, barely enough for two people to rest.
"Don't people in the county build kangs?" Erni asked, "Isn't it cold in winter?"
"I don't know. Anyway, we don't feel cold even though we don't sleep on the kang."
Jiang Quan: "You and Yingbao, don't run around in the house. I'm going to go out and buy some food. What do you want to eat?"
Ying Bao said, "I want to eat sweet-scented osmanthus dumplings and donkey meat hotpot."
He turned to Erni and asked, "What do you want to eat? Let your second brother buy it for you."
Erni had no idea what else to eat, so she said, "Just the same as you."
"Okay." Jiang Quan took out three hundred coins and went out happily.
The advantage of living in a county town is that you can eat many kinds of delicious food every day, and as long as you have money, you can buy everything.
The little black dog kept barking at the back of him, as if to say that it still existed.
Yingbao ran to the door and shouted in the direction where Jiang Quan disappeared: "Second brother, buy something more for Xiaohei to eat."
"I know!" Jiang Quan ran away.
Erni sat down beside the bed, touched the edge of the bed, and asked her little cousin: "Yingbao, where are we going to play tomorrow?"
Yingbao thought for a moment and said, "I'm not going anywhere tomorrow. I need to tidy up the shop and order some things. I'll take you out to play the day after tomorrow."
"Okay." Erni didn't mind.
She was already very satisfied to be able to go to the county town. Besides, she really didn't know what fun places there were in the county town.
After a while, Jiang Quan bought back a lot of delicious food.
There are donkey meat hot pot, osmanthus rice balls, mutton buns, pepper grilled skewers, and mutton wontons.
Except for rice dumplings and mutton buns, Erni had never eaten the others.
"Wow! It smells so good!" Erni picked up a mutton bun and took a bite.
Jiang Quan brought a few ceramic bowls, filled them with glutinous rice balls and wontons and handed them to his two cousins, while he himself held the ceramic pot and ate the wontons.
A bite of pepper kebab and a spoonful of wontons, it’s so delicious.
Yingbao picked up a bowl of glutinous rice balls and ate them. She said to her second cousin, "Where did you buy those fruit baskets from? I want to order a batch of bamboo boxes to pack the preserved fruits."
Jiang Quan took a bite of the skewer and said, "I bought it from a hawker before, but then I saw that the price at the bamboo shop was about the same, so I bought it there. I'll take you there tomorrow."
The next day, Jiang Cheng rushed over from Meihua Lane and brought a basket of steamed buns he had made himself.
Seeing that his second brother was spending money to buy food outside, he couldn't help but say to him, "We have rice, noodles, and eggs at home, and we also grow a lot of vegetables over there. Why don't you cook something yourself?"
Jiang Quan muttered, "Aren't Yingbao and Erni here? I didn't buy too much."
Jiang Cheng snorted, took the steamed buns to the kitchen to cook porridge, and Erni hurried to help light the fire.
After dinner, Jiang Cheng looked after the shop while Jiang Quan took his two cousins to the bamboo shop to order bamboo boxes.
Yingbao took a fancy to an exquisite bamboo box as big as a book, and asked the bamboo craftsman to make it a little bigger and give it an exquisite lid.
"If I weave it according to your requirements, eight cents per piece will not be cost-effective." said the bamboo craftsman.
Yingbao: "How much do you want?"
Bamboo craftsman: "At least twenty-five cents a piece."
"It's too expensive." Ying Bao said seriously, "My family wants to order hundreds of them, and it's a long-term order. Your price is too outrageous. Forget it, I'd better go to other places. There is more than one bamboo shop in the county."
After saying that, he turned and left.
Erni and Jiang Quan followed closely.