All day long, the whole village sat at their doorsteps, and there was not a single house without a mountain of shells in front of its door.
By the afternoon, people started pushing carts to deliver goods to the dock. Sitting at the door, they could see the carts in the distance.
As time went by, there were more and more cars. Some people who didn't have carts used shoulder poles to carry their goods. As a result, the line became longer and longer, stretching more than a hundred meters from the dock.
This is unprecedented, and the ranks continue to grow.
They were all shocked by what they saw.
"This... there are so many people here? How can we sell this? It's unlikely that we will be able to sell it today." Ye's mother stretched her neck and kept looking in the direction of the dock.
Ye Yaodong looked at the corner and saw that there were still two bags left that had not been picked. His efficiency was really too low.
His parents were busy repairing the roof and settling the pig in the old house. They came to help at two o'clock. The old lady helped to look after the child. When he was hungry and needed feeding, she called Aqing. The two of them could only be considered half laborers.
How could the two children sit still? After dinner, they ran off to play. Only Lin Guangyuan and he were picking. However, Lin Guangyuan couldn't tell whether the ones had meat or not. He could only sort and classify the ones with shells. He had to pick the scallops himself.
He and Lin Guangyuan worked too slowly, and they collected more shells than others, two more bags than his eldest brother and second brother.
They have more goods than others, but fewer people working. The queue at the dock is very long, and they can only sit at the door and stretch their necks to watch.
His elder and second brothers had just finished their selection and went to queue up first.
"Once we're done sorting, we'll pile them up in the yard and sell them tomorrow to save us the trouble of queuing. They won't go bad if we keep them for a day," Ye Yaodong craned his neck to look at the long line, "it'll be good if we can collect half of them today."
Father Ye looked at it worriedly, "I'm afraid the price won't be as high tomorrow as it is today. Suddenly there are so many scallops, disrupting the market."
"There's nothing we can do about it. We have to get them from the dock. Let's sort them out first. Fortunately, some of them have been delivered this morning."
"Dad, Adong, come here and help carry these shells to the corner over there and pile them up."
After cleaning the door, Mrs. Ye packed all the empty shells into sacks and tied them up, then quickly called the two remaining men in the house to help carry them.
Mrs. Ye had almost finished packing and was tying the bag. She also said, "Help me carry it later."
The father and son quickly got up to help carry the shells.
Some people come to collect these empty shells. Although they are not valuable, it is better than throwing them back into the sea. They can at least sell for some money.
In the future, those who farm oysters will need to use these scallop shells to string them together, but no one is farming them at this time.
However, feed factories will grind the shells into powder and add it to duck or chicken feed to supplement the nutrition of poultry.
Or you can burn the shells into powder and spread it on the fields to kill bacteria, which will help the growth of crops.
Nowadays, scallop shells are used to pave roads in many places. Paving roads with scallop shells can harden the road surface and make it very strong.
After cleaning up, Mrs. Ye and Mrs. Ye II brought small stools over to help them pick and chat. Three or four older children were also sent over to help.
Ye Chenghe's butt was twisting and turning as if it was greased, and his eyes were always on the four little ones gathered at the door. He really wanted to go over and play with them!
"What are you looking at? Pick them up quickly and call it a day." Seeing that he was dilly-dallying and even holding a clam in his hand for a long time, Mrs. Ye quickly kicked him.
"I don't want to do it anymore, okay? I've been sitting for the whole afternoon and now I have to work. My butt hurts." His heart had already flown away to somewhere else.
Ye Chengjiang would occasionally turn around and look at other people playing, feeling unbalanced, "Why can they play while we have to sit here?"
"Why do you have so many opinions? You're the older ones, so you just want to play all day long. You talk so much when I ask you to do a little bit of work."
"No matter how big it is, I will get tired and my butt will hurt if I sit for a long time. I don't want to do this anymore."
Mrs. Ye raised her hand and wanted to hit someone, but the old lady quickly stopped her, "If you don't want to work, go play. There are so many adults who don't need you anymore. There aren't many left anyway, so go play!"
Normally when they teach their children, the old lady won’t stop them. She will just beat them and then coax them. But today, they seem to be really well behaved and have been helping for a long time, so it’s no use if she beats them again.
When an old lady spoke, a few people took a look at their mothers' faces and immediately ran away in dismay.
They were busy until almost dinner time when they finally sorted all the shells.
At this time, the line outside the dock had stretched 300 meters along the shore, and some people were still standing at the intersection watching and talking.
Several neighbors nearby had gotten more than others because they had been ahead of their time and had also sorted out their belongings at this moment. They were all standing at the doorway, hesitating.
"How long will this damn long line last?"
"I guess this will take an all-nighter, right?"
"No need to sleep. I guess we need to line up? The whole village has come here to line up. People from the neighboring village are coming too, right?"
"Guess so."
"I guess there are still people who haven't lined up yet? Such a long line is scary to look at."
"Hey, hey, hey~ Three tractors are coming over. They must be here to pick up the goods..."
People who were queuing and chatting in groups of three or four made way for the tractor when they saw it coming. Fortunately, people often pushed carts to and from the dock, so the road was quite wide.
Ye Yaodong pushed all the shellfish back to his yard, and after stacking them, he said to his father: "Let's go to the dock and take a look. It seems that the speed of receiving the shellfish is very slow."
"Well, that's what I was thinking. I don't know when I'll receive it."
The father and son didn't stop for a moment and went out to the dock.
Unable to ignore their concern, they sorted out two large bags, one and a half bags of smaller ones, and three bags of empty shells.
Other shellfish were also sorted into several baskets, but none of them were full. There were quite a lot of them, and he estimated that they took up about two or three bags.
It took them a little more time because the sorting was very careful. In the morning, when they went to sell goods outside the dock, they also had to sort them. The big ones had a big price, and the small ones had a small price.
When the father and son hurriedly walked to the outside of the dock, they saw that there was chaos outside and everyone was cursing.
"Isn't this quite big? What's wrong with putting it inside a big one?"
"We have sorted them out carefully, but you still want to pour them out and pick them out. What a waste of time. They didn't even have to do that before..."
"That's right, time is wasted by you guys, that's why it's so slow, the line behind us is so long."
Ah Cai was so angry that he jumped up and down, spitting and cursing: "You bastards, I thought there were too many people at first, so I wanted to collect them quickly to save the villagers from queuing for too long. Who knew you were so cunning, mixing the small ones into the big ones, and even the empty shells."
Agui from another purchasing point was also cursing, "You bastards, I trusted you guys, you're all messing with us, Selinmu, at least add ten kilograms of it to the 100 kilograms..."
People at other purchasing points were also cursing, "Damn it, they could have collected it faster, but now it takes so long to sort it out. The ones from Selinmu and the ones at the back, you guys should pick them out first and then weigh them."
"I have even invited three or four people to come over and help you choose..."
The villagers also retorted, "How can it be mixed? We have sorted the big and small ones separately..."
"That's right. Sometimes old people have blurry eyes and can't tell the difference between big and small, or between fleshy and empty shells. That's normal. How can it be so clean?"
"Yes, everyone picked the items well, it's normal to pick the wrong ones occasionally..."
Ah Cai scolded again: "Are you guys wrong about a few? Look at all the shells on the ground, don't you feel guilty? We asked you to sort them properly? If you made only a few mistakes, we wouldn't say anything. Who the hell would waste time arguing with you about those shells..."
"They are all so treacherous, Sailinliang, don't you know how much you have involved?"
"If you hadn't refused to cooperate, would it be so difficult to pass the scales after such a long time?"
"I'm so angry. The tractor driver just came back and said that the ones just dumped out from the market weren't as pretty as the ones delivered this morning. I picked up a bag at random, but I didn't expect to pick up a bunch of empty shells."
“Well… just because others do this doesn’t mean I should do the same. I chose carefully…” Some people stiffened their necks and said with confidence.
Ah Cai raised his eyebrows and said, "There are honest people, but there are also cunning and deceitful people!"
Suddenly, Agui was furious and said, "Whose stuff is this? It's almost 30% adulterated. Do you think we'll be blind when it gets dark? Is that what you said about the old man's poor eyesight? Did he pick a few wrong ones?"
"Are we all blind, or just stupid birds?"
"We need to discuss the price of the goods."
"ah?"
"Yes, we have to discuss it. Because the goods we sent out earlier were not up to standard, we directly gave them a discount. Now all the goods to be sent later will also be discounted."
Suddenly the crowd was in an uproar, everyone was talking and making a fuss...
"We can't help it. The market is trying to lower the price. They just picked a few people. You saw what happened, didn't you? Especially that guy. He actually mixed in almost 30% of the money. The little guy even mixed in with the big guy. He treated us as blind and stupid..."
…
Ye Yaodong and Ye's father looked at each other. No wonder the team hadn't moved for such a long time. It turned out that this was the problem.
These... these people who are sneaky and like to take advantage of small opportunities are everywhere and there is really no way to avoid them.
Just because you haven't adulterated anything doesn't mean that others haven't done the same.
"It's all over now... How long will it take to pick them all out?" Ye Yaodong suddenly felt that it was difficult to deal with such a large number.
Father Ye also frowned, "Surely we can't pick them one by one? If we pick them one by one, we won't be able to collect many by tomorrow morning."
"Isn't this too cruel?"
"What can we do? We have all chosen carefully."
"See what they are discussing. They are discussing it now."