Chapter 111: Bovine Chewing Peony_1
Auntie looked at Sun Yanyan incredulously, “Didn’t you receive five pounds already? That’s not little! You young people just spoil your kids. Ziyi is so young; if she eats all that in one al, wouldn’t she burst?”
“Next ti you can’t eat like that, good stuff should be savored, you can’t… whatever…”
She spoke earnestly,
“Chewing peony like a cow.”
Sun Yanyan’s face went numb.
Just then, Mao Li got on the car, and with a sardonic smile, said, “His auntie, you don’t know, Tantan is really sothing selling vegetables now!”
“That Milk Vetch from last ti, sothing we wouldn’t even care about in the fields as kids, she actually sold for twenty yuan a pound.”
“I intended to go to the market to support a relative’s business, but I didn’t expect she wouldn’t discount a cent and even made
lose face…”
“If you ask , we are just poor relatives now, not worthy of eating such expensive stuff!”
“What?!”
Auntie raised her voice suddenly, “You an the one sent over last ti, twenty yuan a pound?!”
Uncle Zhu Jun sitting beside her was also full of shock, rembering how delicious the Milk Vetch stir-fried with pork belly was. He and his son’s family of three had finished it in two als, which was too reckless!
Mao Li, sensing their astonishnt, silently exhaled.
She thought: Finally, soone sees Song Tan’s smug face! This kid starts showing off the mont she earns a little money, not respecting the elders at all. It serves her right to have her aunt go back and play the villain to give her a good lesson.
Little did she expect that the aunt was now full of regret,
“Oh dear! Tantan this child, why is she so honest?! What kind of vegetable can’t you buy in the market? She just had to send such nice stuff!”
“With the vegetables being so expensive, it’s unacceptable to sell them. Twenty yuan can buy so much! This child is just too generous!”
She clutched her chest, distressed at the thought of having finished off a hundred yuan’s worth of vegetables in just a al or two, bleeding inwardly, not bothering to ponder the hidden aning in Mao Li’s words.
Mao Li: …
Instantly, she was seething with frustration again.
The car drove off in the awkward atmosphere, and halfway through, Uncle Song stopped the vehicle to join the aunt in buying so joss paper and such.
Sitting in the car, Mao Li thought for a long ti and decided that they couldn’t just fall out like this. After all, the trunk still had the eldest’s plastic crate, which could hold a good thirty or fifty pounds of vegetables, couldn’t it?
If the kid’s aunt didn’t take it, and she was the only one to carry it, it would look so bad. It’d seem like they, now living in the city, still had to co back to the village to scrounge.
As she was pondering, the aunt had already opened the car door, sat back down with a couple of yellow joss paper stacks and a black plastic bag, in quite a good mood.
Sun Yanyan, being in tune with her mother-in-law Mao Li, started the conversation, “During the holidays, joss paper isn’t cheap, is it? The prices have risen so quickly nowadays.”
“That’s right!” Auntie, dissatisfied, said to Uncle Song at the driver’s seat, “If you ask , it’s all because you don’t pay attention. I called you early on, telling you to buy before the prices went up!”
“You insisted it wasn’t urgent, and now look, they’re exploiting our need to spend, and not giving in even a bit.”
As if her bargaining skills were seriously lacking.
But then turning to Mao Li, she boasted, “However, their asking price was too unrealistic. I haggled with them for half a day, and in the end, added five yuan, got a pack of Gold Ingots, and a stack of US Dollars—each of those items would cost five yuan if sold separately. Might as well let grandpa and grandma go abroad for a trip.”
Well, then.
Sun Yanyan’s mind full of drafts instantly knotted up and ca to an abrupt halt.
She sat there feeling stuffy, but thankfully, her mother-in-law was present.
At that mont, she saw Mao Li also put on a show of approval, “Hongi, you really know how to bargain. Everything is expensive now; life in the city is tough too, with prices soaring so quickly. Even buying vegetables is so costly…”
If they continued on this topic, it would seem perfectly natural for them to bring back more vegetables from the village, right?
But the big cousin did pick up on the conversation, though not completely.
She too, agreed wholeheartedly, “Exactly. The price of eggs has gone up so much. My pancake stall uses not only flour but eggs, green onions, and even wraps around sausage. Earning four or five yuan doesn’t amount to much anymore.”
“Big sister, I’m not criticizing you, but the kids are under a lot of pressure too. You should think about saving more.”
“Like that last ti I went to your place, it was tidy enough, but you’ve got such a big balcony going to waste!”
When it ca to saving money, no one was better than the big cousin, “Let
teach you; get so empty oil bottles, dig up so soil from the community, and plant garlic sprouts and green onions. It’s simply beautiful!”
“The green onions for my egg pancakes, a lot of them co from my own garden.”
“In our old neighborhood, nobody cares. If there’s no space at ho, just carry a few oil bottles and line them up along the hallway downstairs. If the neighbors want so, let them pinch a few, and you can save a bit too. Onions don’t cost much…”
Mao Li: …
Mao Li no longer had the desire to continue the conversation.
The group traveled in silence, hastening and slowing their pace, and by the ti they returned to their old ho, it was already past nine, almost ten o’clock. Wu Lan and Wang Lifan were at ho, busy sorting out the vegetables.
After all, there were now eleven people to feed, and adding their two families, the al portions for twenty people wouldn’t be small; it was no easy task.
Uncle Song’s car smoothly pulled up to the courtyard entrance. Sun Yanyan got out and noticed that her younger uncle’s family’s place still looked the sa, apparently, they hadn’t improved anything despite earning money.
The courtyard seed to have changed but also appeared unchanged, the only new addition being three plump and robust local puppies.
“Oh my,” she exclaid in feigned surprise:
“Auntie, why keep these few local dogs?”
Wu Lan greeted them with a smile, casually saying, “Qiaoqiao picked them up by the road. Just right, we needed a guard dog, so we’re just keeping them.”
Sun Yanyan then laughed, “Auntie, Qiaoqiao doesn’t understand these things. These little local dogs could be any mix; who knows how big they’ll grow.”
“If you really want a dog, spend so money and buy a breed. Those German Shepherds and the like, they’re not expensive. I know soone who sells them, you can manage to get one for just five or six hundred yuan…”
Wu Lan laughed heartily, “You young people are all about breeds. Tantan insisted these little dogs were useless and went on to spend three thousand yuan to buy a few…”
A few…
Although she didn’t know what breed was bought, the sudden willingness to spend and keep so many dogs ant the family must be more comfortable financially, right?
Sun Yanyan felt uneasy in her heart.
Uncle Song and big cousin’s father started moving the at and oil they had bought back to the old courtyard, while Mao Li wandered around in this courtyard.
Seeing that next to the kitchen there were several large iron basins filled with bundles of greens and Chinese cabbage, she couldn’t help but express her surprise:
“Oh my, it’s just us family here, why prepare so many vegetables, that’s too polite!”
At the sa ti, she quickly sidled up to Wang Lifan, “Mom, at your age, you should be enjoying your ti at ho. Why are you still working?”
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