That evening, Lin Mao took him to a newly opened hot pot restaurant near the market. The restaurant was having a promotion when it opened, with one hot pot per person and unlimited drinks and food, all for only forty yuan per person.
This kind of cheap hot pot restaurant is very popular in their small county. Luckily they arrived early, otherwise they would have had to wait outside for a long time.
While waiting for the food, Lin Mao couldn't help but ask about Jiang Xiaoman's current situation. Logically speaking, Jiang Xiaoman should have already graduated from university and started working, so why was she still at home? If it was because she was building a house back home, that would make sense.
"There's no job available. Our major is completely dead this year. Graduation means unemployment, haha. I'm going back to my hometown to start my own business. I plan to sell some agricultural products and local specialties online." Jiang Xiaoman smiled.
"Opening an online store? That's great! Actually, our county can really do some online business. For example, there are the wild mushrooms and dried goods that come down from the mountains every year, and our local honey. Seriously, if you really make it big and need to hire people, could I work for you?" Lin Mao raised his glass to clink with Jiang Xiaoman's, downed half a glass of ice-cold beer in one gulp, then put down his glass and sighed—
"Xiaoman, you have no idea how tough it is to do business in the wholesale market these days. The price war is fierce, and some people are too lazy to go to the market and just order online. I've checked online, and some online stores sell things for less than in our store. Although the quality isn't as good as in the store, it's convenient! You can order and have it delivered right to your door!"
"Have you ever thought about opening an online store?" Jiang Xiaoman looked at him with a hint of sympathy. Actually, he was also the kind of person who often tried to get freebies online. There was no other way; he was poor! Even saving a dollar was good if he couldn't make any money.
"It's tough! I've heard that you need to have a large volume of packages to get a good price for express delivery. Otherwise, if you use a regular courier service, the frozen food is heavy and the delivery fee alone can be terrifying. Besides, people who run online stores usually have their own cold storage facilities, unlike us wholesalers and retailers who rent cold storage facilities. We can't afford to do that."
"Okay! I'll call you if I need anyone then, but I'm worried your parents might not approve." Jiang Xiaoman smiled. "I see you're almost at the age to get married, haven't your aunt and uncle been pressuring you to go on blind dates?"
“After you get married, you’ll definitely live in the county town. Putting aside everything else, just the children’s schooling is much better in the county town than in our countryside. If you dare to take your children to the countryside to study, I reckon your aunt and uncle will break your legs.”
"Who says otherwise? They're always urging me to go on blind dates!"
Lin Mao looked sorrowful and picked up his glass to down half a glass of ice-cold beer.
Jiang Xiaoman looked at her old classmate with sympathy, and couldn't help but feel fortunate that her father hadn't yet pressured her to get married.
So being poor has its advantages. Because his family was so poor, his father knew that no one would be willing to marry into the family through matchmaking, so he simply gave up on pressuring them to get married.
What's the use of urging them? It's not like they're in a hurry; their daughter just wants to marry into the family.
At that moment, Jiang Xiaoman felt gratitude for her impoverished family for the first time!
Honestly, he has absolutely no desire to get married!
He'd rather get rich overnight than get married and have kids...
Chapter 68
"Frozen chicken drumsticks, five pounds a box, that'll be thirty yuan a box; chicken thighs are a bit more expensive, forty-five yuan a box; don't buy chicken wings, they're too expensive. If you're going to make braised dishes, I suggest you buy duck wings, they're cheaper, only thirty-five yuan a box. Five boxes will be enough for you, and with some duck gizzards and feet, it's delicious and cheap."
"I've got you ten pieces of frozen beef shank, twenty boxes of ribbonfish, and ten boxes of frozen shrimp. I also have some frozen whole Sanhuang chickens and factory-farmed ducks. These are fattier and cheaper than the free-range chickens and ducks you buy and slaughter yourself. I've seen people buy these when they hold banquets in the countryside. Why don't you just buy these too?"
Lin Mao pulled out several lists of customers who frequently came to the store to purchase goods from the store's supplier list. These people often went to the countryside to hold large-scale rural banquets and purchased in large quantities. Moreover, they made their purchasing lists based on the side dishes. Jiang Xiaoman was overjoyed and copied a set of homework, and even added some things that he had missed before.
When he finally calculated the price, it was almost three thousand yuan cheaper than he had originally budgeted!
"Old classmate, thanks a lot! Come visit me in the mountains sometime! I'll kill a chicken and stew it with mushrooms for you! It's authentic free-range chicken from the bamboo forest!" Jiang Xiaoman patted Lin Mao on the shoulder gratefully.
"Hehe~ I won't stand on ceremony with you, old classmate! When you start your own business and become your own boss, remember to call me to work for you! If you become rich and powerful, don't forget me!" Lin Mao reluctantly saw him off to the car.
After leaving the frozen goods market, Jiang Xiaoman asked the driver to take the car to the dried goods market across the street. Their county has many mountains and forests, and the resources of various mountain products are actually quite abundant. However, Jiang Xiaoman did not come to buy mountain products. He came to buy melon seeds, peanuts, and some candies and snacks for entertaining guests.
Lin Mao is right. In recent years, the county has been quite strict in controlling prices. The prices on each store's signboard are actually the same as the daily price list that is played on a loop at the gate, so there's nothing to ask.
However, Jiang Xiaoman still visited several more stores and found one with the lowest wholesale price.
I bought two large bags of roasted sunflower seeds (each weighing 30 jin), two bags of spiced peanuts, and 30 jin of raw peanuts. I'm going to make fried peanuts to serve as a snack for the guests. Each table will eat two plates when entertaining guests.
For the wedding favors for moving into the new house, Jiang Xiaoman specially bought sorghum candy and orange gummies, which the elderly love, as well as Golden Monkey milk candy and preserved plum candy, which are popular with children.
In addition, there were also essential items for moving into a new home, such as cloud cake, sesame candy, glutinous rice balls, and honey horn cakes; I bought a whole box of each.
During the three days of entertaining guests, many guests will bring their children. According to their old custom, the pastries and sweets on the table must never be run out. Guests can only take as much as they want to eat, but they cannot take it all.
Jiang Xiaoman had heard his father say that if you eat candy from someone else's house, you can only speak well of the host for the rest of the day and not say anything bad about them, otherwise the candy will turn into poison and cause diarrhea...
Because of his father's words, when Jiang Xiaoman was a child, he was always very sweet-talking when visiting other people's homes, and he received a lot of candy from the hosts. When he grew up, he realized that his father had deliberately made him sweet-talking to please others.
Most candy stores also sell cigarettes and alcohol, but Jiang Xiaoman asked about the prices and then decisively directed the driver to set off.
"You're having a wedding and you're not buying cigarettes or alcohol?" the driver teased him when he saw that he had only bought melon seeds and snacks.
"Hehe~ Driver, drive forward, I'll go somewhere else to buy it." Jiang Xiaoman directed the driver to go around to the street behind the wholesale market.
He had asked Lin Mao about it during dinner last night. Many people from the surrounding towns and villages who hold banquets like to come to this area to buy cigarettes, alcohol, and tea. Sure enough, this row of shops are all wholesale, and the prices are cheaper than the candy shops they used to sell.
Jiang Xiaoman bought a lot and even asked the store to give her a pack of lighters and about ten beer bottle openers as a gift. The driver couldn't help but give her a thumbs up.
"You're pretty good, kid. You're even better at managing a household than my wife!"
"No choice, life forces us to, haha~" Jiang Xiaoman also loaded the cigarettes and alcohol into the car. They already had tea at home, so there was no need to spend money to buy it.
When Jiang Xiaoman set off from the county town, he called his father. When the car arrived at the village entrance, he saw Jiang Youliang with about a dozen people he had hired to help. They were carrying carrying poles and baskets, squatting under the wall outside the school, smoking and chatting.
"Xiaoman! Have you bought everything?" Jiang Youliang stood up, beaming.
For generations of people in the mountains, the two most important things have been getting married and building a new house.
Although he never got married in his life, he now has a son and a new house, and he's living a very comfortable life. Just now, everyone in the village was praising him for his good fortune in the future.
"Don't worry, Dad, you don't trust me? There's always more than you can handle!" Jiang Xiaoman told the driver to open the truck bed. The villagers who were helping jumped onto the truck bed, two of them carrying things down, while the rest were below to catch them. In no time, they had unloaded everything.
"These five barrels of soybean oil, five boxes of salt, and two barrels of dish soap over there are all for the school. Dad, you can move the school's things inside first." Jiang Xiaoman specially separated the things she was bringing for Jiang Baichuan. After thinking for a moment, she opened the box of candy, grabbed some of all kinds of candy and snacks, filled a large plastic bag, and took it inside for Jiang Baichuan to distribute to the students, so that they could share in the joy.
To his surprise, his classmates also had "honeymoon gifts" to give him.
"Brother Xiaoman, these are orchids I dug up from my home!"
"This is a pillowcase my mother embroidered for you!"
"These are salted eggs that my grandma pickled!"
"And this!" With Chu Mengluan's help, several girls together unfurled a scroll that was over a meter long.
The unfolded image is a cartoon version of Jiang Xiaoman wearing an apron and a chef's hat.
The chibi version of himself is wielding a large ladle, with several large bowls in front of him, and a group of children are lining up with bowls and chopsticks next to him. There is also a line of large characters written in calligraphy above: Congratulations to Chef Jiang Xiaoman on moving to his new home!
"Pfft~" Jiang Xiaoman couldn't help but burst into laughter.
This drawing is incredibly lifelike; students definitely couldn't have drawn it. It's likely that Chu Mengluan helped with the initial sketch, and then several female students colored it in with colored pencils.
Such a large painting, I wonder how long they secretly painted it during their lunch break.
"Great! Xiaoman loves this gift! I'm going to do a live stream soon, so I can use this as a backdrop. I won't even need to buy a backdrop anymore, and I can use the money I saved to treat you guys to candy!"
As she spoke, Jiang Xiaoman opened the plastic bag in her hand and struck a practiced pig-feeding pose: "Everyone line up! Xiaoman's brother's new house is finished, and we're treating everyone to wedding candy~"
The children cheered and quickly lined up according to their grades. Two older students also ran over to help Jiang Xiaoman. One helped open the plastic bag, and the other maintained order. Jiang Xiaoman handed out handfuls of wedding candy to her classmates.
Even Jiang Baichuan, who usually liked to criticize him, came over with a smile and ate two pieces of wedding candy.
Moving into a new house is a joyous occasion in the countryside, and arguing and fighting are not customary. As long as Jiang Xiaoman doesn't destroy the house these days, his uncle definitely won't scold him.
What's more, Jiang Xiaoman really made him look good this time: when she went to the county town to buy things for the banquet, she didn't forget to bring some back for the school as well. Everyone in the village said that Jiang Baichuan was lucky.
Although he never married or had children, Jiang Xiaoman, his eldest nephew, is clearly a filial son. How could he possibly neglect his uncle in the future?
Jiang Baichuan isn't old yet, but because he wants to start a school, his nephew Jiang Xiaoman has been carrying buckets of soybean oil to the school. I heard that he paid for it all himself. Even a biological son might not do that much.
Take Jiang Cancan, who recently appeared on TV, for example. Her father is inhuman. Her mother is blind, yet he left her two daughters with her. For years, he hasn't sent any money home or come back to visit. What's the use of having a son like that? He's not even as good as her nephew, Jiang Xiaoman.
Although the gifts from the students weren't anything valuable—some were simply wildflowers they'd seen on their way to school, dug them up, brought them to school, and planted them in clay pots as "bonsai"—Jiang Xiaoman still carefully placed them in his basket. His family was also planning to plant some flowers and plants in front of their new house, so this was perfect; he wouldn't have to go to the mountains to find any himself.
It had been a long time since he'd filmed a video, so on the way up the mountain, Jiang Xiaoman took out his secondhand gimbal and recorded video as he walked.
"Good morning, everyone! I'm home! The new house is finally finished. I went to the wholesale market in the county town early this morning and bought a lot of delicious food. We're having a three-day feast starting today, so I'll take you to see the preparations for the day before the feast."
"See this line of people going up the mountain? Isn't it spectacular? My dad is leading the way, along with relatives and friends from the village who came to help. The heavy items are all transported up the zipline over there. The baskets are full of alcoholic beverages and drinks. It's easy to break the bottles on the zipline, so we have to carry them up the mountain by hand."
After recording the part about going up the mountain, Jiang Xiaoman quickly put away her phone and gimbal and caught up with the rest of the group.
When he got home, the courtyard of his new house was already bustling with activity. Jiang Youliang had invited some of the village's best cooks to come and help, and everyone was currently in the yard making red bean and glutinous rice cakes.
"Come and have some sweet egg soup!" Jiang Youliang called out, urging everyone to put down their carrying poles and come over to eat. He himself would never eat an egg at home, but on this day of entertaining guests, he would make sure to prepare a bowl of sweet egg soup for everyone.
Thinking of this, Jiang Youliang couldn't help but hold up the bowl and show off: "Look how big the eggs my family bought this time are! As soon as the owner of the chicken farm heard that I was Xiaoman's dad, he insisted on picking out the biggest and best eggs for me. He even gave me an extra basket of fertilized eggs. He said that it was lucky that Xiaoman introduced him to the business. I didn't know that our Xiaoman had such a good relationship with the chicken farm owner."
Upon hearing this, everyone couldn't help but become curious. Jiang Xiaoman paused for a moment, then explained with a wry smile—
“Where did I introduce business to her family? It was because I once filmed a video of myself buying eggs, and many local netizens probably saw my location and thought that the chickens and eggs from that chicken farm were of good quality and inexpensive, so they went there to buy them themselves.”
"Actually, I didn't help much, but I didn't expect them to remember it." Jiang Xiaoman was quite surprised herself.
During the time he was helping out at the school, he updated his account almost every day to maintain its popularity. Sometimes he didn't even have time to check the comments on his previous videos. He never expected that someone would actually use his location to go to the chicken farm to buy eggs...
“You should buy from that store whenever you need to do anything at home. Their chickens are really plump! I really caught a lucky break this time. They were culling a batch of old hens that weren’t laying eggs. If you don’t believe me, go see for yourselves. The old hens I bought are big, and the chicken soup they make is so oily. It’s much tastier than the little free-range chickens we raise ourselves,” Jiang Youliang boasted.
Although city dwellers love free-range chicken, people in the mountains actually prefer the plump and meaty farmed chickens. When Jiang Youliang said that the chickens from the chicken farm were plump and cheap, some people even went to the kitchen to see the stewed chicken soup. Sure enough, there was a thick layer of bright yellow chicken oil floating on the surface. Afterwards, they asked Jiang Youliang for the chicken farm owner's phone number...
Wow! His dad's sales skills are top-notch!
Jiang Xiaoman filmed this scene, and sure enough, it almost made her fans die laughing when she posted it. One comment in particular received over 30,000 likes.
"Case solved, family members! I think Xiaoman might really be her father's biological son. This talent for live-streaming sales is inherited from him. Who would believe he's not?"
Below, a bunch of replies were shouting "I don't believe he's not Chinese," and some people even strongly suggested that Jiang Xiaoman should take her father for a paternity test. With her sales skills and talent, it's obvious that he's her biological son, okay?
Chapter 69
After finishing their sweet egg soup, the group of men sat down to play cards and other card games.
Jiang Youliang was slow-witted from a young age and could never learn how to count cards, so he asked a brother from the same clan to help play cards with the guests while he went to the kitchen to help.
The current kitchen design in the Jiang family is the result of repeated discussions between Jiang Xiaoman and the designer.
The kitchen faces east and is divided into two rooms, north and south. The north room has a double-burner stove and two new-style kettles with faucets and automatic water filling. It is very convenient to boil water while cooking.
Next to the stove, a row of cutting boards was built against the wall. On the cutting boards, a whole row of cabinets was made of wooden planks. The cabinets were also two-tiered, with doors on the upper tier, where various items that needed to be stored could be placed.
The lower level is open, a long row, used to store bowls, chopsticks, spoons, spatulas, and leftovers. The area for leftovers has a specially designed movable screen window to ensure ventilation and prevent flies and insects from getting in.
There's a long row of hooks of different sizes under the cabinet, which is very convenient for hanging spoons, gourds, ladles, etc. Plus, the back is tiled, so you can just wipe it clean when it gets wet, making it durable and non-stick to oil!
The design amazed the village's housewives. Now that almost everyone in the village has a mobile phone, seeing the novel and practical design of Jiang Xiaoman's kitchen wall-mounted wall, the housewives all took out their phones to take pictures, planning to make one themselves when they got home.
The side of the cutting board away from the stove was raised by two bricks, and the area above it is where the appliances are used. The wall is also covered with tiles and has six switch panels at different heights, which can accommodate rice cookers, induction cookers, soy milk makers and other appliances.
What's even more ingenious is that there are two brick partitions underneath this platform, which are just the right size to hold small appliances like rice cookers. This way, they can be stored in the cabinet when not in use and taken out when needed, without taking up any space.
Jiang Xiaoman, this domestic whiz, didn't even overlook the space under the cutting board. She made a curtain out of the cheap coarse linen she bought last time. When it's drawn, the area underneath looks very neat and clean. When the curtain is drawn, there are neatly arranged rice containers, flour containers, bottled soybean oil, and various pickling jars...