Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 20
The First Sum of Money
In the afternoon, Mo Yan laid on the kang as she desperately racked her brains for money-making methods.
The medicinal herbs might be able to be sold for money. Selling the eggs from their ducks however, won’t happen for a bit longer. And growing medicinal herbs was even further off than that. The only stable money-making method they had was the eight hundred dollars a month from the Lu family. Mo Yan hoped from the bottom of her heart Lu Junming wouldn’t leave Chenzhong Village anytime soon, as if he left, her mother wouldn’t be able to receive that eight hundred dollars a month anymore.
We can’t just sit there and wait to die!
“Sis, let’s sell wraps. We can make the flatbreads and fry the eggs ourselves. Aside from that, we could also use mum’s salted eggs and her sauce. At most, we would only need to buy some cooked meat from the market to add to the wraps.”
Mo Ling put down the needle and thread in her hand, “Ok, I’ll buy some cooked meat when the next market day rolls around and we can test if the wraps would be profitable by making a few to sell.” She really wanted to make more money and escape from their current situation as well, and had thought of many money-making methods in the past. However, she had to give up as Mrs. Liang didn’t agree to any of them and she had no start-up capital. Now Mo Yan had proposed a good idea, she wanted to give it a try. If it let them have an out, she can feel at ease when marrying someone else.
“We don’t need a stall, just a wheelbarrow or even a basket to hold the wraps so we can sell them anywhere.”
The two sisters did the calculations for how many flatbreads and eggs they’d need, what other food would be offered, how much a wrap would cost, and even when they should wake up on the next market day.
The more they discussed this, the more excited they got, to the point that they couldn’t fall asleep for their afternoon nap. [1]
In the afternoon, Mo Yan grabbed the two bags of medicinal herbs and went to the Cao family. Mr. Cao had just returned from his clinic in the city then.
“Mr. Cao, could you help me see if these medicinal herbs can be sold?” Her voice was timid and quiet, completely different from when she was telling stories.
He smiled and inspected them, and replied, “They’re all very clean and can be sold. The market value of chinese foxgloves is four hundred dollars for a kilogram, and it’s eight hundred dollars for a kilogram of dandelion.” [2]
After receiving a definite answer, Mo Yan instantly gained some confidence. “Then I’ll go harvest some more!”
Mr. Cao had a faint smile on his face as he shook his head, “These are all common medicinal herbs. I’ll take them, but my small clinic doesn’t need a lot of them.”
“Then where can I sell these? A medicinal herb market?”
“The medicinal herb market is far away from Chenzhong Village, and it’s probably not worth going there if you don’t have a lot of medicinal herbs to sell. If you harvest more, you can try to sell them at various clinics, or I can introduce you to some medicinal herb traders.
“Then I’ll have to thank you, Mr. Cao!”
Mo Yan knew that part of the reason Mr. Cao bought her medicinal herbs was out of goodwill. If she sold them to other people, it wouldn’t go as smoothly.
Mr. Cao noticed her bandaged hand and asked, “What happened?”
“I accidentally cut myself when harvesting medicinal herbs. Sir Lu applied some medicine to my wound and I’m alright now.”
“Ah! If the Lu family’s golden sore medicine has already been applied to your wound, then you’ll be fine.”
Mr. Cao went and weighed the medicinal herbs. She had a kilogram of chinese foxgloves and just over half a kilogram of dandelions, which would sell for nine hundred dollars.
Mo Yan cupped her hands in front of her and a string of nine hundred dollars dropped into them. This was the first sum of money she’d earned with her own hard work!
On the way back home, she clutched the money in her hand tightly. Her heart was full of joy.
Mrs. Liang wasn’t at home, and her sister was cooking dinner in the kitchen. She waved the money in front of Mo Ling, “Sis, we have start-up funds now! We can open our own business and make even more money!”
Mo Ling took the money, but didn’t display any happiness. She searched the entire kitchen for a piece of string, and split the string of nine hundred dollars into two separate strings.
“If mother found out about this money, she’d definitely pocket all of it. Quick, think of a good excuse so she won’t suspect a single thing.”
Mo Yan thought for a bit before replying, “I’ll reduce the market value by a half for both medicinal herbs, two hundred dollars for a kilogram of chinese foxgloves and four hundred for a kilogram of dandelions, and reduce the quantity of them. After all, we don’t have a scale at home, so she can’t accurately figure out the quantity of medicinal herbs we actually had.”
“Let’s do that then. Mr. Cao isn’t a big gossip so she probably won’t suspect anything.”
They divided the money, leaving four hundred dollars on the kitchen table and hiding the other five hundred dollars inside the house.
Mrs. Liang returned from cooking at the Lu family, saw the money on the kitchen table, and asked, “Where did this money come from?”
“Mr. Cao gave this to me after I sold him the medicinal herbs.” Mo Yan took the initiative to say.
Mrs. Liang took the money and laughed, “We’ve been on a roll recently! Not only do we have the eight hundred dollars per month from the Lu family, we can probably sell medicinal herbs for a decent amount too. We can eat meat during meals from now on!”
Mo Feng had just entered the house and only heard the word ‘meat’, ignoring everything else, “Meat? Where?”
Mrs. Liang was still smiling as she replied pleasantly, “Be patient, we’ll be able to buy all the meat you’ll ever want to eat soon.”
Mo Yan grabbed a bowl of sauce as always, “Mr. Cao doesn’t need a lot of medicinal herbs for his clinic. He told me to try and sell to other clinics nearby, and if we harvest a lot, he’ll introduce us to some medicinal herb traders.”
“Other clinics,” Mrs. Liang thought for a bit before replying, “Aside from Mr. Cao’s clinic, there are two others in town. One of them is on the main road, and the other in the residential area. There are other clinics in the Li family manor, Zhao family manor, and also your uncle’s Zhang family manor, you can go and ask.” [3]
“Ok, we’ll go harvest more medicinal herbs tomorrow.”
Even though Mo Yan had decided to go for runs by the pond in the mornings, it wasn’t easy waking up early every day. The sun was already high in the sky and Mo Yan was still fast asleep. Mo Ling had to call her name several times before she woke up groggily and lazily replied, “I’m awake!”
She quickly washed her face before stumbling towards the pond and started running as her eyes threatened to close. Suddenly, someone held her in place. Mo Yan had to look twice before recognizing him as Lu Junming.
“What are you doing, I’m running!”
Lu Junming didn’t let her struggle and put his hand in front of her mouth. “Open your mouth,” he said, and she blearily opened it, and the taste of meat came across her mouth.
“It’s marinated pork!”
Mo Yan’s drowsiness evaporated instantly. She looked at Lu Junming with wide eyes, and he smiled, “Do you like it? It’s pork, I intentionally chose a lean cut of meat for you.”
The meat was already in her mouth and she couldn’t spit it out. Mo Yan couldn’t refuse it, so she couldn’t do anything but slowly chew and savour the flavour of the marinated pork.
After seeing Mo Yan swallow the piece of meat, Lu Junming took out a paper bag and placed it in front of her. This time, she shook her head, “I’m not eating it.”
Lu Junming knew he wouldn’t be able to convince her with words. He put a piece of marinated pork right up to her lips. Mo Yan intentionally avoided it, and Lu Junming tried again, saying, “This piece of meat has already touched your lips. You have to eat it.”
He force-fed her another three cuts of pork using this method, and then stopped, knowing that she might upset her stomach because she ate too much.
On the way back home, Mo Yan kept thinking about the meat she just ate. If we put marinated pork in our wraps, they’ll definitely sell well.
After they had breakfast, the two sisters set out to harvest medicinal herbs. Mo Yan’s wound on her hand hadn’t completely healed yet, so Mo Ling handed her a small shovel, “You just focus on digging up chinese foxgloves. I’ll harvest the dandelions with the scythe.”
Because the patch of unowned land was far away from their home, Mo Ling took their wheelbarrow there, with water and dry rations placed in it. If there were really a lot of medicinal herbs there, they wouldn’t have to return home for lunch.
There was a small stream from the road to the unowned land which they couldn’t push the wheelbarrow through, so they left it there, taking their baskets instead.
After moving through the tall weeds, the sea of flowers came into view again, and even Mo Ling said they looked pretty.
But they weren’t here to look at the flowers, and hurriedly lowered their heads to look for medicinal herbs. Mo Ling had harvested a large mound of dandelions quickly, and Mo Yan had already dug up half a basket of chinese foxgloves.
“This place really has a lot of medicinal herbs!” Mo Ling said as she straightened her back.
The sky was clear and the sun was hot today. Mo Ling was afraid Mo Yan would get heatstroke again, so told her to put the chinese foxgloves on their wheelbarrow, drink some water, and rest for a bit.
PS: Edited Feb 14th, 2024, to try and get the rest of the story up to the current standards. This includes using the current terms and polishing up the translation. Valentine’s probably isn’t the day I want to be editing, but why not?
[1] People in China used to take afternoon naps regularly…it’s allegedly common nowadays as well, but I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing it.
[2] It should be measured in jin, but according to my personal principles of using the closest Western translation, a jin is roughly half a kilogram, so I just went with kilograms and doubled the numbers.
[3] Manor like the Western medieval manors, with a lord having control over the entire thing and peasants working for them. This is due to the Chinese direct translation only; I don’t think there’s any mention of a lord of these places at all.