Chunniang hesitated and refused to open the door: "My husband is not at home, I am afraid it is not convenient to let you in."
The visitor smiled and said, "You must be Jiang San's wife, right? We are from Jinxiu Cloth Shop in Simen Town. We heard that you have two large gourds at home and wanted to see their true appearance. Look, we have traveled dozens of miles, can you let us take a look?"
Yingbao poked her head out from behind A-niang, tugged at A-niang and whispered, "Let them in."
Maybe these two are big customers.
Chunniang touched her daughter's head and walked forward to open the bamboo fence door.
The two men walked in and bowed to Chunniang: "Sorry to bother you."
Chunniang didn't let them into the house. She moved the big gourd herself and placed it on the stone slab in the middle of the yard for them to see.
The two of them gathered around the big gourd and marveled at it. They looked at each other and asked with a smile, "I wonder if this gourd is for sale?"
Yingbao answered first: "Of course I will sell it, but not if the price is not right."
Chunniang nodded and said, "Several people have already wanted to buy this gourd in my house. I wonder how much money you can offer?"
One person asked back: "How much do you want to sell it for?"
Chunniang was speechless.
She also didn't know how much the gourd could be sold for.
Yingbao also asked back: "Do you want to give us as much as we say?"
The man choked, then burst into laughter, "You are such a funny little girl."
Another person said, "We sincerely want to buy it, but it's not worth it if it's more than thirty taels."
Yingbao smiled and said, "Thirty taels, then."
She has plenty of these things in her cave, and selling one for thirty taels is already a sky-high price. She must not be too greedy, as greed will lead to being struck by lightning.
The two men were also straightforward. They took out three ingots of ten taels of silver from their sacks and placed them on the small table under the apple tree: "These are ten taels of silver each. Take a good look at them."
He thought the peasants didn't know the silver ingot, so he pointed to the words printed inside the ingot and showed it to Chunniang: "Silver made by the Luzhou government office, ten taels. Did you see it?"
Chunniang nodded: "I see."
The two of them picked up the gourd and were about to leave, but Yingbao stopped them and said, "Take out the seeds first before you take them away."
The man laughed and said, "You little girl are really smart. If there is no seed in the gourd, it is not worth even ten taels."
After saying that, he walked out of the yard quickly, placed the gourd carefully on the mule cart, jumped on the cart, waved the whip, and drove away from the village quickly.
Yingbao chuckled and muttered while touching the silver: "If I didn't say this, you would still think you got a bad deal. Humph."
Chunniang was regretting, "Yeah, why did I forget to dig out the seeds first." Even a few seeds would be fine, it would be great if I could plant some at home.
Yingbao: "Isn't there a big gourd on the south slope? Why don't we dig out the seeds from that gourd and plant it?"
At worst, she still has many more caves.
"Yes, yes, yes!" Chunniang took the silver back to the main room and asked her daughter, "Do you keep the money or does I keep it for you?"
"I'll leave it with you." He still had more than forty taels of silver left in his cave, so it would be better for his parents to keep these thirty taels of silver.
When Jiang Sanlang came back in the evening, he was also stunned to hear that his gourd had been sold for thirty taels. "Who bought it?"
"It is said that there is a cloth shop over at Simen." Chunniang told her husband everything that happened today. "Let's dig up the gourd seeds over at the south slope and plant some, you see..."
"Okay! I'll go to the south slope to dig out the gourd seeds tomorrow." Since this thing is so valuable, you might as well plant some at home. What if it can grow into big gourds? That would be another source of income.
As a result, before he even left the house the next day, the clan leader and the village chief came to his door.
"Sanlang, I heard that you sold the magic gourd in our village?"
Jiang Sanlang: …
How did his gourd become the one in the village
Chief Chen Fu had a sad face and said, "Sanlang, that is the sacred object of our village. How can you sell it just like that? Hey, what about the other one? You can't sell it anymore."
He hadn't touched the gourd for a day and his waist felt sore that he had difficulty walking, and his legs were cramping with pain from his old rheumatism.
Just as Jiang Sanlang was about to speak, he heard Chen Sanyou say, "Sanlang, why don't you give the seeds of the other gourd to our villagers? It's not for free. You can see how much it costs and we can buy it."
Chen Sanyou knew that he and others could not stop Jiang Sanlang from selling gourds, but it would not be too much to ask him to leave some seeds.
Jiang Sanlang thought about it and nodded, "Okay, wait until I take the seeds out of the gourd."
So, Jiang Sanlang went to the south slope and carried the big gourd back. He made a hole in the top and took great pains to take out the seeds inside.
Clean the pulp and peel out more than thirty plump seeds.
While he was digging out the pulp, more than a dozen villagers gathered around him, and even the clan leader and the village chief sat on a low stool and watched.
There are a total of 28 households in Dongchen Village. That is the number of households registered in the household registration, but there are still many households that have been separated but not yet divided. If you really count, there are actually about 40 households with only one door and one household in the village.
There are only more than 30 seeds in total. How can we distribute them to each household
"Or, let's divide it according to household registration." Village Chief Chen Sanyou waved his hand and said, "One for each household."
Jiang Sanlang had no objection, but how to collect the money became a problem.
If he collected too much, the villagers would definitely be unhappy, and it would be difficult for him to survive in the village in the future. After all, the villagers have helped him a lot.
For things like building houses and digging ponds, the family didn't pay a penny for the work, but just provided them with two meals a day.
If there is not enough, it is better to give it to them. They are all fellow villagers. It is just a few seeds. If they cannot be grown, you can't blame yourself.
Yingbao saw this scene when she came home from school. There were a lot of people crowded in her yard, and they all stretched their necks to look towards the center of the yard.
I squeezed in and took a look. I saw a handful of gourd seeds on the small table and a few grown men were leaning against each other, discussing something.
Finally, Jiang Sanlang said, "Okay, then it's ten cents per seed, but whether you can grow it depends on your luck."
He originally wanted to give them away for free, but the clan leader and Muramasa disagreed, so Jiang Sanlang set a price for the seeds that was neither too high nor too low.
Ten cents is not a small amount in the eyes of the villagers, but they can still afford it.
Everyone agreed happily, even Aunt Wang Er, who was always fussy, didn't say anything, because her family could also get one, while the three sons of Chen Cunzheng's family all lived separately, but only got one gourd seed.
Even the family of the richest Chen clan leader in the village only has one. You have to know that this is the seed of the magic gourd.
Hehe, there is no harm without comparison. Aunt Wang actually felt more relaxed than ever before.
Not long after the gourd seeds were distributed, someone came to buy gourds. Jiang Sanlang sold the empty gourd and got twenty taels.
Many villagers watched this event and were immediately excited, wishing they could go home and plant the gourd seeds immediately.
But now it is the beginning of autumn, which is not the season for planting gourds. Everyone can only suppress their eagerness, carefully collect the gourd seeds, and hope that next spring will come soon.
Just after the Ghost Festival in July, Jiang Erlang was preparing to go to the south slope to harvest golden ears. When he opened the gate of the courtyard, he suddenly saw a woman with disheveled hair standing outside the gate.
Jiang Erlang was startled. He took a closer look and his face darkened instantly. "Why are you here? What are you doing here so early in the morning?"