Jiang Yunzhu took over the shop for thirty taels of silver a year and signed a ten-year lease, with the rent increasing by 8% every year thereafter.
"We will leave here early the day after tomorrow," said the old man.
"Then I'll come and send you off at the same time." Jiang Yunzhu said.
After putting away the deed and coming out of the shop, Jiang Yunzhu decided to go to the north of the city to pay the rent to Jiang Lin and Jiang Wu.
This matter went very smoothly. The enlightenment class started on the 20th of the first lunar month.
Today is the 17th day of the first lunar month. The old man and his family left on the 19th and will be in time for school starting on the 20th. The yard will certainly be messy, but it's OK as long as people can live there. They lived in a dilapidated temple on the way to escape famine and also lived on the hills. Compared with then, it is much better now.
After this matter is done, it is time to renovate the store. It would be better to wait until the old people leave before doing this, otherwise it would seem like she is driving them away.
However, there was one thing that could be done in advance. Jiang Yunzhu looked at the shop next to her and walked in.
This is a shop that specializes in making plaques.
"Girl, do you want to make a plaque?" A young man came up to her enthusiastically.
"Yes." Jiang Yunzhu agreed, and suddenly remembered that she had not yet measured the size of the shop, so it seemed that she could not make a plaque.
"Girl, you want to do business in the county town? Almost all the shop signs in the county town are made by our family." said the young man.
Jiang Yunzhu's heart was slightly moved. "There is a Hengyuan calligraphy and painting shop on the street of Wenyuan Academy. Did you make the plaque for it?"
"Girl, you are asking the right question. Their family plaque has always been made in my house."
"Then do you know the size of their shop?" Jiang Yunzhu asked again.
"I know." The young man was suspicious. What? Did this girl want to make a plaque to give to someone else
"I rented that shop and wanted to make a plaque." Jiang Yunzhu said.
The clerk reacted quickly and immediately congratulated her, "The shop is big and spacious, young lady, your business will surely prosper in the future."
Jiang Yunzhu smiled. No wonder this store was doing so well. Just look at this clerk.
"What is the name of your shop? Does it have an inscription? If so, we can carve it into a plaque in the shop. If not, we can also ask for an inscription for you. The price varies from 500 coins, one tael of silver, three taels of silver, five taels of silver, or ten taels of silver."
Going further up, the guy said nothing.
The price is, of course, one cent for one product. If you want 500 wen, you can ask the scholar next door to write it, as he has a good handwriting. If you want 10 liang of silver, you can ask a famous gentleman in the county to write it, as his handwriting is naturally better than that of the scholar, and it will be more prestigious to hang it up.
Jiang Yunzhu was in a dilemma. She opened a shop opposite the academy, and her main customers were the students and teachers of the academy. She couldn't write the words on the shop's sign too badly, otherwise people would think the shop was not good and would not come in to eat.
In this era, these scholars are really aloof.
But when she went to buy the calligraphy, she had a total of more than fifty-eight taels. Thirty taels was spent on renting the shop, and sixteen taels was spent on tuition. Now she only had more than twelve taels left, and she still had to renovate the shop. How could she have the money to buy the calligraphy
Go and ask Gu Yanzhou for help? I had already declined his marriage proposal last time, so it would be bad to ask him for help now.
At this moment, an icy voice said, "Let me write it. What do you want to write?" It was Shen Fengming.
Jiang Yunzhu turned around. He wanted to help her write a plaque
"Miss Jiang, do you think my handwriting is bad?" Shen Fengming asked.
Jiang Yunzhu quickly shook her head. Of course his handwriting was good, but if the handwriting of the commander of the Qilin Guard was hung as a plaque on a restaurant by her, what would happen if people knew about it... She didn't know that Shen Fengming had been promoted to the left commander-in-chief at this time, otherwise she would be even more panicked.
"Thank you so much for your help." She said embarrassedly.
"Miss Jiang took care of me, cooked for me, and made medicine for me, and she never complained about the hard work," said Shen Fengming.
I think so too.
The waiter over there had thoughtfully prepared rice paper, brush and ink. Shen Fengming walked to the table, picked up the brush, dipped it in ink, and looked at Jiang Yunzhu.
Well, Jiang Yunzhu thought for a moment and said, "Let's call it 'Qishanju'. I can live in the mountains, listen to the rain, and read thousands of books at my leisure."
Shen Fengming wrote these three words quickly with his pen.
"Sir, you write really well!" As soon as he finished writing, the waiter couldn't help but praise him. He often helped customers to ask for calligraphy, and he himself had read some books, so he really developed a keen eye. The three characters of Shen Fengming were vigorous, powerful, and majestic, and they were a hundred times better than those written by the famous masters in the county.
Of course, this young man was also outstanding in appearance. The clerk wondered when such a person appeared in Wuling County.
Shen Fengming looked at Jiang Yunzhu.
"Good handwriting." Jiang Yunzhu also praised. She only hoped that in Wuling, a small place, no one would recognize his handwriting, otherwise...
It shouldn’t be. Shen Fengming’s handwriting seems to be rarely seen outside. In her dream, she was in Anping Marquis’ Mansion. If he hadn’t come to the mansion, she would never have seen his handwriting.
Thinking of this, Jiang Yunzhu laughed again. With such a plaque, those scholars would not be able to find any fault with it.
"Make something delicious for lunch," she said.
"Yeah." Shen Fengming's voice was clear.
After finishing all the things that needed to be done in the afternoon, Jiang Yunzhu went to the market. She loved to go to the vegetable market when she had nothing to do, but it was a pity that Wuling County was still too small and the vegetable market was too small.
Jiang Yunzhu was thinking about it when she suddenly stared at the thing in front of a vendor opposite. That thing, could it be
She walked straight towards the stall.
This is a stall selling fish, but it is different from other stalls. This stall sells frozen goods. There is fish on the left. It looks like fish, but the fish looks strange. It is long and strip-shaped, with a silvery surface, and looks like a white jade belt.
On the right side there is a strange thing with many legs. There are many small discs on its legs, which look bumpy.
"Come and buy some delicious knife fish and octopus, all fresh from the south, and they're sold at a low price!" The stall owner was a young man in his twenties, wearing brown clothes and pants, with a clever look between his brows.
While shouting, as if to prove that the two kinds of fish were really delicious, he set up a charcoal stove, skewered a hairtail and an octopus on it and grilled them.
But he didn't cook it properly, and the fish had a strong sea smell when grilled.
Wuling County is located inland and transportation was not well developed at that time. The people had never eaten seafood, so when they suddenly smelled the fishy smell, they covered their noses and hid far away.
"Hey, Hu Er, what are you doing? It's such a weird smell. Stop it. It's making my vegetables stink." A middle-aged man who was setting up a stall next to the young man said with disgust.
“This is called seafood, it grows in the sea, what do you know about it?” The young man named Hu Er snorted.
“Sea, have you ever seen the sea?” the middle-aged stall owner said.
"Of course, this is what the sea smells like, why don't you smell it?" Hu Er said as he put a skewer of grilled octopus in front of the middle-aged man's nose.
The middle-aged man dodged backwards while saying, "Take it away, take it away." After Hu Er took the things away, he stood back and sneered, "With this smell, even if you say it was pulled out of the Dragon Palace, no one will buy it.
Hu Er, you made a mistake this time."
Hu Er specialized in selling things that no one had ever sold before. He was the first to sell, so naturally he would sell them at whatever price he wanted. Often, something that might only cost three cents elsewhere would cost him twenty or even thirty cents in Wuling County.
This really made him a lot of money.
Of course, not all new things can make money. For example, this strange fish and this strange thing, he has put them on display since the beginning of the year, and only a few people have bought them. One of them was returned to him not long after the purchase, saying that this strange thing cannot be fried at all.
Hu Er was disappointed. He had indeed made a mistake this time. He looked at the two large blocks of ice on the stall and felt worried. What should he do
"Boss, how much are these knife fish and octopus?" Jiang Yunzhu asked with suppressed excitement. What a hairtail and octopus. Let's not talk about the octopus first, but the hairtail. She didn't know until she arrived in the capital in her dream that the Xia Dynasty had developed maritime affairs and that fleets had already been to Java, Sumatra and other places. Naturally, someone would catch this deep-sea fish.
But at that time, not many people knew about this fish, and even fewer people ate it.
When Jiang Yunzhu met this kind of fish in the capital, she was very happy for a long time. She didn't expect that she would see this kind of fish so soon this time.
Hairtail does not require too many seasonings, just fry it in oil and sprinkle a little green salt on it, and it will be a rare delicacy.
Hairtail has little fat, so the vendor grills it without applying any oil, so of course only the fishy smell is left.
"Miss, do you want to buy these two kinds of fish?" Hu Er immediately became excited when he saw someone asking.
"How much?" Jiang Yunzhu naturally wouldn't let him see what she was thinking, lest he raise the price.
Sure enough, Hu Er saw this and thought she was just asking out of curiosity, so he lowered the price first, "Knife fish is 18 cents per catty, and octopus is 25 cents per catty."
The price is twice as high as local fish and it doesn’t taste good, no wonder no one buys it.
Jiang Yunzhu smiled, "If I want to buy more, can it be cheaper?"
"How much does the girl want?"
"Tell me the lowest price first. If I think it's cheap, I'll buy more."
Hu Eryi gritted his teeth and said, "If the girl buys all of these, the knife fish will be 15 cents per pound, and the octopus will be 22 cents per pound."
"Do you have any more at home?" Jiang Yunzhu asked.
"Yes, there is still half a car at home."
"About how many pounds, not counting the ice."
"The knife fish weighs more than 200 kilograms, and the octopus weighs more than 100 kilograms."
"Well, I'll take them all. The knife fish is twelve cents a pound, and the octopus is eighteen cents a pound." Jiang Yunzhu said.
Hu Er was stunned. "You want them all?"
"If you think the price is right, I will..."
"It's right, it's right." Hu Er was pleasantly surprised. Although he didn't make much money at this price, he still made some money. The main reason was that he thought he would lose all these fish. Now that Jiang Yunzhu bought them all, he felt like he had made a profit for nothing.
Jiang Yunzhu didn't have to do anything. He knocked the hairtail and octopus out of the ice, weighed them, and put them in the car for Jiang Yunzhu.
"Where do you live? Once I prepare the fish at home, I will deliver it to your home." Hu Erdao.
Jiang Yunzhu told her home address and then asked, "Are the fish in your house the same as these? They haven't gone bad, have they?"
"Don't worry, it's better and fresher than these. I went to Jeju, and it was also very cold at this time of year. Although the water was not frozen, there were ice chips. I picked the fish myself at the dock, and they were all the best. I went back that night. The further north we went, the firmer the fish was frozen, and it would never deteriorate." Hu Er patted his chest and said, he had experience in doing this.
Jiang Yunzhu felt relieved and waited for him to deliver the fish.
Not long after she returned home, Hu Er came by car to deliver fish. But this time there was a problem. The fish were still frozen in the ice. Was he going to knock them all out for her
There was no place to put them all, Jiang Yunzhu shook her head and just left them there.
How do you measure the weight
"You should have weighed them when you bought them, right? To tell you the truth, I'm going to open a restaurant in the county town, and I'm going to order these fish and meats often in the future," said Jiang Yunzhu.
Hu Er understood, and he asked Jiang Yunzhu how come she bought so many fish at once since she lived in the village.
This is a big customer. Once he gets it done, he won’t have to worry about selling his products. He weighed the fish before buying them. After deducting the ones he sold, he knew the remaining weight.
"There should be 215 catties of knife fish left, let's say 210 catties. There are 160 catties of octopus, let's say 150. According to your price, the total is 5 taels and 2 cents of silver. You just need to give 5 taels." Hu Erdao.
"Okay." Jiang Yunzhu also felt that it was about right, and then she added, "If you have anything new in the future, you can send it to Qishanju in the county town. If I think it's good, I will buy it."
"Of course, of course." Hu Er said repeatedly. After selling these fish, he got rid of a worry. He would prepare to go to the south to sell new things tomorrow.
Hu Er left happily, and the Jiang family's floor was covered with frozen fish.
"Yunzhu, what should we do?" Chen asked.
Jiang Yunzhu naturally had a plan in mind. She smiled and said, "It's cold now, so just put these fish in the backyard and cover them with straw mats. When the restaurant opens, we'll have a good use for these fish."
The new store has opened, so it’s a good opportunity to serve two new dishes.
She thought the fish weren't enough! In fact, she almost asked Hu Er to buy more fish from the south, but she thought that the weather would get warmer after the first month of the lunar year, so she decided not to.
Jiang Yunzhu missed the ice cellar in Anping Marquis Mansion a little. She thought about digging an ice cellar for herself after she made some money this year. This way she could not only store things but also have ice drinks to drink next summer.
This was her plan. Now, of course, she would cook hairtail fish and octopus for dinner.
There are more than a dozen ways to eat hairtail fish, but perhaps influenced by her modern grandmother, Jiang Yunzhu’s favorite is hairtail fish wrapped in pancakes.
Clean the hairtail, marinate it with cooking wine and other seasonings, then fry it in a pan.
There will be a fishy smell at this time. In modern times, you can just turn on the range hood, but in ancient times, there is also a way. Light a candle next to it and the smell will basically disappear.
Put the fried fish into a clay pot and simmer for another hour until the meat is crispy and the bones are tender, then you can serve it.
Here, nothing is added to the pancakes except oil and salt. The finished pancakes are steaming hot, with six or seven layers of filling, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.
Wrap the hairtail in such a pancake and take a bite, it will naturally be extremely fresh and fragrant.
Octopus is even easier to cook. Jiang Yunzhu made spicy octopus today.
In addition to these, she also made some dishes suitable for rolling up, so at noon the Jiang family had pancakes wrapped with vegetables, meat, bean sprouts, green vegetables, fungus, hairtail, and octopus, as you wish.
It was also the first time for Jiang Cheng and others to eat hairtail. They felt that the meat of this fish was particularly tender and had a special flavor.
"Is this the taste of the sea?" Jiang Lin asked curiously while eating hairtail.
Jiang Yunzhu smiled, "Maybe. If we have a chance in the future, we can go to the beach and see for ourselves."
"This octopus is quite delicious. It has a very chewy texture," said Chen.
"I think it tastes good too. It will definitely sell well if it's sold in the store." Jiang Cheng said with a smile. He couldn't wait for the restaurant to open.
The hairtail and octopus received unanimous praise from the Jiang family.
As for Shen Fengming, Jiang Yunzhu remembered after she came back that seafood is an irritant and Shen Fengming was still sick, so how could he eat it? So she made some light food for him.
Shen Fengming, who received special care, felt that today's sunshine was particularly good.
On the morning of the 19th day of the first lunar month, Jiang Yunzhu took some cakes and fruits to give to the store owner and his family.
There were five carriages, but some things could not be taken away, so they had to be given up with reluctance.
The old man and his family stood in front of the shop for a long time before getting on the carriage and leaving Wuling County.
They left in a hurry and didn't have time to pack up many things, and they left a lot of things behind. Jiang Yunzhu checked around and had a preliminary grasp of the situation in the store.
"Dad, please move your things here. Jiang Lin, Jiang Wu and the others will start school tomorrow and will live in the county." She said to Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng also looked at the shop from front to back, and was very excited. It had only been half a year since they fled from Changfeng Prefecture, and they had no roof over their heads at that time. Who would have thought that they would open a restaurant now!
"Okay, I'll go right away." Jiang Cheng went back and brought Chen and others over.
From today on, they will live in the county town.
"We can't abandon that place either. I still raise chickens. When spring comes, I can plant fruits and vegetables in the yard and save a lot of money." Chen said as she packed her things.
"Well, we still have to continue our business over there." Of course we have to go back often, Jiang Yunzhu said.
Speaking of this, Xue Jing shivered, "Boss, when will you transfer me to the county town?" It's not that he thinks the village is bad, but he wants to follow Jiang Yunzhu. He can always learn something by staying with her.
Jiang Yunzhu smiled. She remembered that she had made big promises to him at that time, saying that she would do business in the county. She didn't expect it to come true so soon.
"I'm the only one running the restaurant, so I'm definitely overwhelmed. But I can't abandon the business in the village. So, when the business is stable, I'll hire someone else..."
As soon as she said this, Xue Jing said, "Boss, if you want to recruit someone, I have a good candidate. He was my former partner at Yunhe Tower. He is also a very good cook. Of course, he can't compare to you, boss."
Jiang Yunzhu believed Xue Jing, and the person he recommended should be right. However, "Let's wait and see about this matter. Let's open the restaurant first."
"Yes, boss." Xue Jing smiled. As long as there is hope, it's fine.
Everyone was busy cleaning up the backyard, while Jiang Yunzhu came to the shop in front to think about how to decorate it.
She still has more than seven taels of silver in her hand, so she has to spend it sparingly.
In this case, do things yourself that you can do yourself.
She plans to decorate the store to be quiet and elegant so as to meet the needs of the target group.
She was standing there planning when a young man came in with a few paintings. When he saw her, he was stunned.