The siblings thanked Granny Liu. When they saw her struggling more and more to carry the basket, Lin Xiaoman took it back. “Granny Liu, I’m strong. Let me carry it.”
Granny Liu wanted to insist she could manage, but seeing Lin Xiaoman stride briskly with the two large baskets of mushrooms as if she were carrying nothing at all, she decided not to push herself.
As they walked, Granny Liu chatted with them. “Why are you dressed like this? Are you from some ethnic minority?”
Lin Xiaoman remembered what the sausage vendor had said yesterday. “We’re with a theater troupe over there. We came in a hurry and didn’t have time to change.”
“Theater troupe? Hehe, you’re an amusing child. You mean that film and television base over there, right?” Granny Liu was quite entertained.
Lin Xiaoman recalled that the vendor had said something about “film shoots,” so she nodded. “Yes, a film shoot. Hehe, I said it wrong.”
“What about the adults in your family? How did they let you two come into the city alone?”
When asked about family, Lin Xiaoman sighed. “Last year, when the earth dragon turned, our parents died. We didn’t want to starve, so we came out to find a way to survive.”
Granny Liu’s eyes reddened. “Were there no other relatives?”
Lin Erhu’s lips pressed together. “There was a drought this year. Grandfather and Grandmother were afraid we’d eat too much, so after the harvest, they made us split from the family.”
“Your grandparents are terrible! So they waited until you’d finished all the work around the house before kicking you out?”
Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu both nodded in agreement. Lin Erhu wiped his eyes. “Grandfather and Grandmother also took our mother’s dowry. They gave us sixty catties of grain and sent us to live in a half-collapsed old house.”
Granny Liu was furious. “Aren’t they afraid that lightning will strike them dead?”
She looked at the two children with even more compassion now and resolved to help them sell their mushrooms for the best possible price.
As they talked, the trio arrived at the neighborhood where Granny Liu lived. She pulled out a small card, waved it, and a side gate swung open.
Following Granny Liu inside, they hadn’t gone far when she waved ahead. “Old Zhang! Old Xu! Over here!”
Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu saw about a dozen women around Granny Liu’s age walking toward them, quickly encircling the three.
These women looked even more affluent than the wealthy ladies they had seen in the city. Even the thinner ones seemed more energetic than the thirty-something women back home. Many wore rouge and powder on their faces, but it looked far more natural than the deathly white with harsh red rouge favored by the city ladies back in their world.
Thinking about the people they had seen here over the past two days, it seemed most faces didn’t show signs of hardship. Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu felt envious. If life back home could be this prosperous, surely everyone’s faces would be smiling too.
One of the women, pleasantly plump, held an object in her hands. “Old Liu, my son took my scale. I borrowed an electronic scale from the fruit shop. No need to do the math—it’s convenient.”
“Oh, that’s our Old Xu! Always so reliable.”
Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu stared at the electronic scale in Xu Granny’s hands, unable to figure out how it resembled a scale at all.
From there, the siblings didn’t need to do anything. Granny Liu directed everyone to bag their own mushrooms and bring them to her to weigh.
Hazel mushrooms at sixteen yuan a catty, pine mushrooms at twenty-five yuan a catty—they were snapped up quickly, with a line forming for Granny Liu to weigh them.
Granny Liu asked Lin Xiaoman, “Girl, do you have a payment code?”
Lin Xiaoman shook her head blankly. Granny Liu sighed. It wasn’t surprising that these two children, who clearly came from a poor family, didn’t have a phone. She would just go all the way to help them.
She went to the security booth to borrow paper and a pen. For each portion of mushrooms sold, she recorded the type, weight, and price on paper, then had the buyer scan her payment code. After all the mushrooms were sold, she would take the siblings to the bank to withdraw cash.
Some people also asked about the lingzhi and lion’s mane mushrooms, but since the siblings didn’t know their price, they just said the grannies could pay whatever they thought was fair.
But these grannies weren’t the type to take advantage of the siblings. Granny Xu tapped on her square device and then held it up for them to see. “It says here that for wild lingzhi of this size, the price ranges from five hundred to two thousand each. You have three pieces here—this one is five hundred, this one is a thousand, and this one is two thousand. How about I give you three thousand five hundred for all three?”
“Old Xu, why are you buying so much lingzhi all at once?”
“It’s my husband, Old Zheng. He said recently he wanted to brew some medicinal liquor, so he went to the pharmacy and bought two wild lingzhi. Turned out they were both cultivated. He was so angry he said he’d give up on lingzhi liquor and make snake liquor instead. Oh, just thinking about snakes makes my skin crawl. I happened to come across these wild ones today, so I’m buying them for him. Better than him actually bringing a snake home.”
“He really is like a big kid, isn’t he? Your Old Zheng is hilarious!” The women around them burst into laughter.
Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu, meanwhile, stood with their mouths hanging open, still processing the price Granny Xu had offered.
Based on their comparison yesterday between copper coins and paper money—one wen equal to one yuan—three thousand five hundred would be three thousand five hundred wen. That was three and a half taels of silver!
They had spent less than a day in the mountains and earned three and a half taels. Foraging in the mountains was incredibly profitable.
Lin Erhu nodded eagerly. “Okay, okay! If we find more in the future, we’ll bring them to you, Granny!”
His remark made the grannies laugh again. “This kid sure knows how to do business! But your Granny Xu can’t brew that much liquor!”
After Granny Liu’s device announced the receipt of three thousand five hundred yuan, Lin Xiaoman tucked the ginseng wrapped in leaves into Granny Xu’s bag as well. “Granny Xu, this is some ginseng we dug up in the mountains. You can take it home and brew it with the lingzhi.”
Granny Xu didn’t know what “ginseng” meant and didn’t think much of it. She just smiled and thanked her.
The lion’s mane mushrooms were bought by another woman, Granny Zhao—two catties total, for which she paid two hundred yuan.
Once all the mushrooms were sold, they tallied up the amounts on the paper. The total came to exactly five thousand two hundred and five yuan. The siblings were so delighted they could only stand there grinning foolishly.
They followed Granny Liu to the bank’s ATM. Watching her insert a card into a strange machine embedded in the wall, tap a few buttons, and have a stack of bills emerge from the machine left the siblings wide-eyed with amazement.
The money exchange houses here were truly magical.
Granny Liu handed the money from the mushroom sales to Lin Xiaoman, who then gave back the one hundred yuan that Granny Liu had paid for her own share. “We need to thank you for helping us today, Granny Liu. Consider these mushrooms a small gift from us.”
Granny Liu tried to refuse, but Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu tossed the money down and ran off. Granny Liu called after them twice, then could only shake her head helplessly. “Such sensible children. How could their grandparents be so cruel?”
With over five thousand yuan in hand, Lin Xiaoman and Lin Erhu felt uneasy. Seeing that it was getting dark, they decided to take the money home first and come back tomorrow to shop.
The sky was growing dim, but the roads were lighting up on both sides. Looking up, they saw that the poles that had seemed ordinary during the day were now glowing with light.
The shops and homes were also brightly lit. The colorful lights made the streets even more dazzling than during the day. The siblings couldn’t take it all in fast enough.
On the stretch of road they had walked during the day, a night market had now appeared. Vendors were selling all kinds of food, small goods, and clothes.
There was so much to see that it left their heads spinning.