Chapter 32: 32. Extract key points_1
The Little Pika pickup truck, costing 23,000 yuan, roared with power as it climbed hills and dipped into valleys with particular smoothness on the winding mountain roads. The truck bed was filled with heaps of wild vegetables, and all four family mbers sat in the cab.
Wu Lan sat in the back seat, watching her daughter skillfully drive to the town, no longer anguished over the more than 20,000 yuan spent on the vehicle. Instead, she proudly said,
“I was right to insist on spending big money. Look how convenient it is for us now! We don’t have to pay for a hired car to go to the urban area anymore. That’s 200 yuan, what a loss that was!”
Song Sancheng imdiately countered, “You disagreed at the ti. How is it that we listened to you? Besides, you keep saying you want to get your driver’s license, but you haven’t even done any practice tests these past few days!”
Wu Lan sneered, “But you’ve been practicing every day, and I bet you still don’t score as high as I do on the mock exams! I got 81, what about you?”
Song Sancheng fell silent.
...
His mory wasn’t good, and those test questions were hard to read; he’d only scored 75.
Song Tan, at the wheel, smartly stayed out of the conversation, but Qiaoqiao suddenly asked, “Mom, where is my Peppa the Pig?”
Song Tan couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
She knew what Qiaoqiao was asking about—their upcoming trip to grandma’s house to fetch so straw, as Wu Lan planned to fetch the piglet the next day. Qiaoqiao had been looking forward to it for a long ti, her heart set on her little pink pig family.
In the rearview mirror, Wu Lan’s face turned dark, and she answered irritably, “Just wait! I’ll go fetch it tomorrow! Then you can sleep with your pig mom!”
Instantly, Qiaoqiao cheered, “Yay! I’ll give Peppa a bath!”
It was Song Sancheng who smiled, pleased, “Good, I’ve connected a water pipe down the back hill, so it will be easy to flush out the pigpen. Once it gets hot, Qiaoqiao can even play there.”
Wu Lan: …
So she was the only one upset?
…
They reached the town in their vehicle, and the family stopped at a at stall for groceries while Song Tan went to the express delivery station alone.
The doctor and his lifesaver were both due ten pounds of wild vegetables, and just packaging them was going to be quite the task. The young man at the express station hesitated over the large batch of cleaned vegetables,
“Do you really want to add this air column bag? The foam box needs to be ice-packed too? That’s quite a bit more expensive, you know! Actually, you don’t need the ice; most of our destination cities have overnight delivery.”
“Your wild vegetables look really fresh, and the weather isn’t hot right now. If I pack them in a foam box, I can deliver them to the urban area right away, and they can be shipped out tonight. When they arrive, they should still be quite fresh.”
The wild vegetables weren’t worth much, and ice-packing would be like selling tofu at at prices, wouldn’t it?
Wild vegetables could be found everywhere in the mountains nowadays. Even in Imperial City… Imperial City has wild vegetables for sale too!
Song Tan sighed too. She didn’t want to spend more money, but there was no helping it; there’s a difference between sothing fresh and crisp and sothing less so.
If she was going to sell at a high price, she might as well ensure the quality through and through.
She took out a business card, “If I start to ship in large quantities with ice packs in the future, can you give
a discount?”
“Also, do you offer pickup services?”
The young man was taken aback; they didn’t provide ho pickup services in the surrounding villages and towns, but that wasn’t to say they couldn’t make arrangents, “Where are you from?”
“Yunqiao Village.”
The young man’s face crumpled like a bitter lon, “That place is not easy to get to… How about this: if you have more than fifty orders, I can make a special trip. Is that okay?”
“If you exceed twenty orders, I’ll give you the lowest rate.”
Their express service was nationally known for its speed and door-to-door delivery, even if it was expensive, and they didn’t get many orders in the small towns.
However, he had contracted this station himself, and if he could secure such a sizeable business, he was willing to put in the effort.
“I don’t have the disposable dry ice bags here. I need to leave by 2 p.m. to get the express packages to the city. If you trust , you can give
a deposit. I won’t pack them now and will do the unified packaging in the city.”
“I’ll calculate the price for you then.”
After so thought, Song Tan directly transferred five hundred yuan over: “I’ll definitely have more express deliveries in the future, we can settle any difference later.”
“Once we have more parcels, we can settle monthly.”
Although the courier boy didn’t think these wild vegetables had the potential for monthly settlent, that didn’t stop him from agreeing for the ti being.
By the ti he had arranged all the express deliveries, Song Sancheng and Qiaoqiao were already waiting with big piles of at.
Qiaoqiao was also holding on to his pocket with one hand. Song Tan smiled, “What did you buy?”
He quickly smiled wide and pulled sothing out of his pocket—two small plastic tubes that looked like tubes of paint, each accompanied by two thin plastic sticks.
Qiaoqiao’s proud expression was very evident. With his slight, dark hair hanging softly, his fair skin and bright eyes were even more pronounced:
“Bubble blowing!”
Song Tan saw it—weren’t these the bubble blowing tools that were popular when she was in school? How co, after so many years, they were still being produced?
Isn’t it all about bubble machines now?
But then she thought, with Qiaoqiao’s five yuan, he couldn’t buy a bubble machine anyway.
So, she also beca interested, and while restarting the car, she negotiated with Qiaoqiao:
“You’ll have to blow two bubbles for your sister later, okay?”
Qiaoqiao nodded vigorously: “Two tubes, one for each of us!”
Wu Lan and Song Sancheng watched the cheerful siblings and suddenly felt that it might not be so bad if Tantan stayed in the village all the ti.
Just one thing—it’s not easy to find a partner in the village!
And so the Mother began to worry again, and when she looked at Song Sancheng, who was indifferent to everything and only knew how to be happy, she felt even more depressed.
However, no one could alleviate Wu Lan’s depression, except for the eighty-year-old grandma who was delighted to see the siblings:
“Tantan is back?”
“Qiaoqiao is here too!”
The siblings quickly went inside with grandma.
The first thing they saw upon entering was a neatly tidied courtyard. Grandpa was sitting in a wheelchair under the corridor, his hair white and his face wrinkled, but his eyes were filled with joy.
The other half of the courtyard was where Uncle Wu Chengtao lived, in a two-story house. Now that it was the slack season for farming, he had gone to play cards at a neighbor’s house, and only Auntie was at ho, extrely enthusiastic:
“Tantan is back? Looking better and better! So stylish, like a celebrity… Oh my, Qiaoqiao has grown even more handso!”
Seeing the at Wu Lan and the others were carrying, she couldn’t help but laugh:
“Why bring at when coming over? We’ve already got so in the fridge.”
Wu Lan handed the at over and called Qiaoqiao to carry the vegetables in, laughing loudly: “Hey Aunt, Tantan isn’t working in Ning City anymore, she’s co back to go into agricultural planting.”
“These are the new wild vegetables, selling for twenty yuan a kilo, and still in high demand! But Tantan was thinking about her grandma and you all, so she didn’t want to sell this last batch. She brought it especially for everyone to try together!”
This statent was a lot to take in. Auntie stood there digesting it for a while before she was able to grasp the main point—
Her niece, the beautiful and clever university graduate, had quit her good job in the provincial capital and now had returned to her hotown to farm!
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