CH 19

Mo Yan got back home. She saw that her sister wasn’t at the fields, so she handed over the remainder of the wrap she hadn’t eaten over to her. “Sis, try it. It tastes really good and it could probably be sold for a tidy profit.”

Mo Ling rolled her eyes at her, “Did you get this from the Lu family? If mum found out you’re begging for food from them, she’d probably slap you!”

“Lu Junming forced me to eat this!” Mo Yan explained hurriedly. She felt a wave of embarrassment wash over her, and thought, I’m not accepting any food from them ever again!

“Sis, eat it quickly so mum doesn’t find out then.”

She took the wrap and finished it in a few bites. “You’re right, it tastes great!”

“It’s called a wrap, and you can put anything in it. It’s also really easy to make. Hypothetically, if we were to sell it, where would we make the best profit?”

Mo Ling thought for a bit before answering, “Definitely not in the village. You’d have to sell it in the city, probably on the street. After making the wraps, you’d put them in a basket and sell them to people so they can eat on the road.”

“So let’s do that then!”

Mo Ling spread open her hands, “Well, we don’t have the funding.”

There was still some leftover porridge in one of the pots in the kitchen for Mo Yan. She served herself half a bowl to eat and left the rest in the pot to be mixed in with a new batch of porridge for another meal.

Suddenly, there was shouting outside their home. Mo Yan couldn’t hear the exact details, but Mrs. Liang immediately rushed out of her room, grabbed the broken halves of a bowl from the kitchen, and left their home. [1]

“Wait a second!”

So the shouting was someone advertising a bowl repairing service. Mo Yan thought it was interesting, so she went over to have a look.

An old white-haired man was standing by the side of a wheelbarrow. Mrs. Liang handed over the broken halves of the bowl and asked, “Can you repair this?”

He inspected the broken bowl and replied, “Yes, but it won’t be able to contain water anymore. It’ll leak.”

“That’s fine. How much will it cost?”

“Two dollars.”

“Deal!”

The old man grabbed a stool from the wheelbarrow and went to work. Then, the door of the home directly next to the Mo family slammed open. Mrs. Zhang came out and glared at Mrs. Liang viciously, saying, “Aren’t you earning a lot of money now? You still can’t bear to throw away a broken bowl?”

Even Mo Yan could understand what she was implying between the lines. This was obviously due to Mrs. Liang being employed by the Lu family.

Mrs. Liang was unwilling to back off and slowly replied, “No matter how rich you are, you still need a capable woman to keep a watchful eye over your wealth.”

Mrs. Zhang sneered, “It doesn’t matter how capable the woman is if she’s shameless!”

“Who are you calling shameless!”

Those words instantly sparked the flames of war.

“You! The Lu family hired me to be their domestic helper, and you just had to compete with me. I’m your neighbour! How could you be so shameless?”

Mrs. Liang kept her voice calm, “The Lu family gave me the job offer first, I just hadn’t accepted yet so they hired you temporarily. Now I accepted their job offer, they’d naturally hired me and not you. After all, what would you cook for them?”

Mrs. Zhang couldn’t beat her and became infuriated, “You shrew! You’re still being so righteous after stealing someone else’s job. When your husband comes back, let’s see how he deals with you! He might even divorce you!”

The eldest son of the Zhang family Dagan came out when he heard his mum arguing with Mrs. Liang, and tried to defuse the situation, “Mum, why are you yelling at her? Come back!”

She looked at her son bitterly, “I lost a job that paid five hundred dollars a month! How could I ever get that back?”

Dagan didn’t understand, “Well, you can’t control who Sir Lu employs. What would arguing with Mrs. Liang change?”

“If she hadn’t competed with me, how would I have lost my job? Why did I ever give birth to you? You’re big and strong, but you’re less useful than the Mo family’s youngest daughter.”

She was blaming Mo Yan! Mo Ling, who had been standing on the doorstep for quite some time now, stepped out and said, “Mrs. Zhang, why are you dragging a child into an argument between adults? I never knew our Yan’er was that competent!”

Mrs. Liang supported her daughter. “That’s right. You lost your job because you’re not as good as me, and now you’re blaming my youngest daughter?”

Mrs. Zhang was so filled with rage, her eyes filled with tears. However, she didn’t want Mrs. Liang to see that so she dragged her son back into their home.

After the old man finished repairing the bowl, he took the money and instantly ran. He was afraid Mrs. Liang would nitpick about some minor defect and force him to refund her.

Mrs. Liang returned home with the repaired bowl happily as she talked to herself, “You can buy a lot with eight hundred dollars every month!”

Mo Yan followed behind her, “But this isn’t a long-term solution. Sir Lu won’t hire you anymore after Lu Junming leaves the village.”

“Wait, is he leaving soon?”

Mrs. Liang thought, Am I losing my job that quickly?

“No, but he might, so we need a back-up plan in case that happens.”

“Everyone wants to earn money, but it’s hard to in this small backwater.”

“Mum, we only grow wheat and sorghum in our fields. It’s not even enough to keep ourselves fed, so why don’t we grow something more valuable?”

“What do you want to grow, money?”

“Medicinal herbs! They’ll definitely sell for more than wheat and sorghum.”

“No, those two acres of field can’t be wasted. If the medicinal herbs can’t be sold, we can’t even eat them! It’s better to stick to what we’re growing now.”

In her opinion, it was best to harvest medicinal herbs from the wild and sell them. Mrs. Liang would only change her mind if she saw money, and wouldn’t be able to be convinced via words.

The medicinal herbs in their courtyard had finished drying. Mo Yan collected the chinese foxgloves and put them in a bag, then did the same with the dandelions in another bag.

Mr. Cao went to his clinic in the mornings, and would only return to the village during the afternoon or sometimes only late at night. He was the only person who could determine whether they could be sold or not.

During lunchtime, Mrs. Liang went to cook lunch at the Lu family’s, taking a small bowl of sauce along with her. As they were paying her eight hundred dollars every month, she felt like it was appropriate to bring them some salted eggs or sauce every few days.

The food on the Mo family’s kitchen table was the same as always. However, Mo Yan was more talkative now Mrs. Liang wasn’t here.

“Sis, do you know about the large patch of land by the outskirts of the village?”

“Yes, I’ve dug for wild vegetables there in the past.”

“Is it really ownerless?”

“Yes. It’s far away and comprised mostly of saltland, so no one bothered to claim it.”

It was such a big waste, but they didn’t have any oxen or horses. It was too hard to till the fallow land without them.

“There are a lot of medicinal herbs there, we can go harvest them there!”

“Sure. Check with Mr. Cao first to see whether or not the herbs can be sold for money. If they can, I’ll go harvest them with you every day. It’s not like there’s a lot of work in the fields.”

Post-edit notes: Why did they harvest so many medicinal herbs if they’re not even sure if they can be sold?

[1] Wow, I nearly forgot about the broken bowl. The author of this story really remembers all these small details…except for the fact Mrs. Liang is supposed to have a cough.