The school bell rang, and the previously noisy school gate instantly became deserted.
On the tarpaulin in front of Su Qiao and the others, all the two-cent bowknot hairpins had been sold, none were left.
Two of the two-and-a-half-cent hair ties had also been sold.
Besides that, three sets of five-cent hair claws had been sold.
Su Wei tightly covered his backpack with both hands, eyes fixed on the tarpaulin, lips pressed together, not saying a word.
From the outside, his expression looked extremely serious, as if he were angry at someone’s whole life.
But in his eyes, there was an excitement he couldn’t suppress.
Although he didn’t dare count how much money was actually in his backpack while outside, he knew perfectly well that, besides the small change he had intentionally brought, there was an extra four yuan and sixty-five cents inside.
This was their income in just twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes!
They had actually sold what would cover one person’s living expenses for half a month!
What if they sold for a few more twenty-minute periods?
Even just imagining it made Su Wei’s hands tremble slightly with excitement.
“What are you thinking? Pack up and let’s go!” While Su Wei was still lost in his thoughts, his sister patted him.
Su Wei froze.
“Sis, we’re done selling? Let’s wait a little longer!” he said anxiously, squatting on the ground and refusing to get up.
Su Qiao gestured for him to look around. “See anyone else? They won’t be out of school for another hour or so. Let’s not just sit here for nothing, let’s go buy something.”
Hearing that her meaning wasn’t that they were done selling, Su Wei relaxed.
He efficiently put the items from the tarpaulin back into his backpack and then asked, “Sis, where are we going?”
“Let’s go check out the supply and marketing cooperative,” Su Qiao said after a moment’s thought.
She needed to buy some thread. Ideally, to get the right kind, it would be best to go to the department store.
But that was too far from here, and besides, she didn’t have any coupons left.
So she could only try her luck at the nearby cooperative first.
The cooperative wasn’t far from the county’s primary school, about a seven or eight-minute walk.
Perhaps because it was during working hours, not many people were there to buy things, and in front of the counter selling needles and thread, there was no one at all.
“Comrade, could you please give me a pack of needles?” Su Qiao said, pointing to the paper packages of needles displayed in the glass counter.
“One dime per pack, one needle coupon,” came the reply.
Behind the counter sat a girl only slightly older than Su Qiao, who was completely absorbed in reading a copy of Popular Cinema.
Hearing Su Qiao, she didn’t even lift her eyelids as she said it.
Su Qiao quietly withdrew her hand from pointing at the needles.
After a moment’s thought, unwilling to give up, she pointed to the spools of thread on the side. “Then how much for this thread?”
The girl glanced at her. “Two and a half cents per spool, one thread coupon.”
Su Qiao: “…”
She had neither needle coupons nor thread coupons.
And because she had never handled household matters before, she didn’t even know when the village usually issued them, or how many one person could get.
Yet both needles and thread were urgently needed.
Especially the thread, if she didn’t buy it today, she wouldn’t be able to make her bowknot tomorrow.
Su Qiao gritted her teeth, took out the only industrial coupon she had from her pocket, and shamelessly stepped up to the counter.
In a low voice, she said to the girl, “Comrade, I really didn’t bring any needle or thread coupons. Could I use this industrial coupon instead? Please, I’m asking for your help. It’s not easy for us to come into the city, and we really need this at home.”
The girl put down the magazine in her hands and looked at Su Qiao with a face full of surprise.
Obviously, she had never encountered anyone haggling in a public, state-run place like this.
Fortunately, her attitude was gentle; she didn’t show any disdain or impatience.
She just said to Su Qiao, “No, I don’t have the authority to do that. Besides, I can’t take your coupon, when I hand over the accounts, it wouldn’t match up!”
Hearing her speak so honestly, Su Qiao didn’t press the matter further. She forced a smile and left with, “I understand, sorry about that.”
Then she signaled her younger siblings to get ready to leave.
The girl stood up from her stool; it seemed that only now did she notice Su Peng and Su Lan standing outside, not even as tall as the counter.
A trace of sympathy flashed across her face.
But in this era of a planned economy, without a coupon, you simply couldn’t buy anything, there was nothing anyone could do.
Sympathy alone didn’t help.
Su Qiao led her younger siblings away from the counter. But just as she bent down to pick up her little sister, a voice from behind suddenly called out in surprise: “Hey, wait a minute!”
Su Qiao instinctively looked up.
“Where did you get the hair tie on your head?”
The girl hurried a few steps inside the counter, coming as close as she could, and urgently asked through the glass.
Su Qiao touched her hair. “You mean this?”
“Yes, where did you get it?” The girl’s eyes fixed on the top of Su Qiao’s head, repeating her question.
“My aunt sent it to me from Haicheng. She said it’s the most popular hair accessory there right now. Oh, and the one my little sister is wearing? She sent that too.”
Su Qiao answered decisively without a second thought, even patting the bow on Xiao Lan’s head.
“Haicheng, huh…” Hearing this, the girl’s expression visibly darkened.
She looked at Su Qiao’s hair with envy, then placed the Popular Cinema magazine she was holding on the counter, gesturing for her to look.
“Look, this hair tie is so much like the one Li Mingming wears!”
Su Qiao leaned in and, sure enough, saw on an inner page of the magazine a movie star wearing a hair tie almost identical to hers.
However, Su Qiao wore hers on a bun, while the actress had wrapped hers several times around the end of a braided plait.
The actress left a deep impression on Su Qiao, she was a veteran artist.
At the time, she was in her prime, having just won the Golden Rooster Award, and if Su Qiao remembered correctly, she eventually won both the Golden Rooster and the Hundred Flowers Awards for Best Actress.
Seeing her wear a hair tie almost exactly like her own, Su Qiao couldn’t help but silently think, “Heaven favors me!”
Without hesitation, Su Qiao took the hair tie off her head and held it tightly in her hand.
Leaning closer, she lowered her voice and said to the girl, “Can you get the coupons? Can I trade this hair tie for your needle and thread coupons? I’m wearing this hair tie for the first time today, you can see it’s still new.”
The girl’s eyes lit up again, and her face flushed with excitement.
She glanced around, tugged gently on Su Qiao’s sleeve, and whispered, “Let’s go over there to talk.”
Then she led the way back to her counter.
At this time, aside from two people buying soy sauce and vinegar at the condiments counter, no one else was at the other counters.
The clerks either gathered in a group chatting or sat behind the counters knitting, paying no attention to what was happening over here.
Su Qiao followed the girl back to the needle-and-thread counter and gave her younger siblings a signal to pretend to look at the items behind the counter, positioning themselves around her to completely block the view from other counters.
“How many do you need?” the girl finally asked.
“As many as we can get,” Su Wei quickly replied.
Then she gave a shy smile and explained, “Sis, it’s not easy for us to come to the city. If we can buy more, we’d like to take as much as we can back. Besides, we don’t even know when our village will issue needle-and-thread coupons again.”
The girl bit her lip, clearly conflicted, and then said, “I can only find five needle coupons and eight thread coupons, that’s all our family has saved up. If you want, I can give them all to you, but about this hair tie…”
“I’ll give you the hair tie,” Su Qiao said without hesitation, slipping it directly into the girl’s hand.
The girl was shocked, waving her hands frantically. “No, I mean… I can pay you for this hair tie. Let me see how much I should give you.”
“No need. Sis, if you can give me those needle-and-thread coupons, that alone would be a huge help—I wouldn’t even know how to thank you. The hair tie is for you, no payment needed.”
Having said that, Su Qiao, afraid the girl might change her mind, quickly pulled over her older brother and took out two yuan and fifty cents from his bag, placing it on the counter.
The girl could tell that Su Qiao genuinely needed these supplies, so she didn’t argue further and quickly helped match the needles and thread according to her request.
While packing them, she quietly added, “If you ever need to buy needles or thread again, just come to me directly. If you need a lot, let someone notify me in advance, and I’ll try to help you get coupons.”
Hearing that, Su Qiao’s face lit up with a big smile.
She immediately exchanged names with the girl, learning that she was called Yao Yi, a year older than her, and a regular employee of the cooperative.
Holding the needles and thread carefully wrapped in coarse paper, Su Qiao said goodbye to Yao Yi and left the cooperative with her younger siblings.
The two little ones were fine, but Su Wei followed behind for a long while in a daze, completely unable to understand how his sister had done it.
There had been no hope, yet how did she manage, by a mix of persuasion and bluffing, to get so many needles and threads with just a single hair tie?!
“…And it was sent by our aunt from Haicheng?”
He wondered how he hadn’t known they even had an aunt in Haicheng.
After thinking it over, Su Wei still wasn’t satisfied and quietly moved closer to his sister, asking, “Sis, the cooperative is so close to the primary school. Do you think people there will know?”
“Let them know, it doesn’t matter. As long as it doesn’t interfere with our stall the day after tomorrow, that’s fine,” Su Qiao replied decisively.
Although there was definitely a clever trick involved in today’s success, Su Qiao felt she hadn’t really cheated Yao Yi, nor had she taken any unfair advantage.
After all, the hair tie was something she had painstakingly sewn herself, stitch by stitch. Just working with the scraps made her eyes nearly go blind.
And it had been made to sell in the first place.
Yao Yi worked at the needle-and-thread counter; it wasn’t hard for her to find some needle and thread coupons.
In Su Qiao’s view, the value of the hair tie she had made and the coupons Yao Yi found were essentially equal, at most, it was simply a resource exchange.
She hadn’t taken any unfair advantage either.
Even if it happened in the future, she wouldn’t feel guilty.
After leaving the cooperative, Su Qiao and the others returned to the school gate of Jiao County No. 1 Primary School.
By now, the food sellers had gathered again.
Perhaps they had noticed earlier that Su Qiao’s business was doing well; by now, the spots where they had previously set up had been taken by others.
But there weren’t many people selling now, and there was plenty of space, so Su Qiao didn’t mind.
She found a relatively noticeable spot nearby, spread out the tarpaulin again, and placed the items from her backpack on it.
Before long, the school bell rang, and the students poured out of the campus in a rush.
This wasn’t the future, there weren’t clusters of parents waiting at the school gate to pick up their kids.
Although the younger students still lined up, the teachers only accompanied them to the gate. Once they left the campus, the lines naturally dissolved.
Perhaps because a few girls who had bought items during recess had spread the word, soon a group of children came running straight to their stall.
There were boys and girls, all clamoring to buy the hair claws.
Yesterday, Su Qiao had been limited by her own capacity, and most of her time had been spent making patches and hair decorations. She had only made five sets of hair claws in total.
Three sets had already been sold, and the remaining two were almost immediately snatched up.
The children who didn’t get any were instantly unhappy, tugging at Su Qiao and demanding to know when she would come back.
How much would she bring next time? Would there be enough for everyone?
As the saying goes, “[1]“Three people make a play” means that when a few people get together, especially to argue or chatter, even a small disagreement or discussion can quickly turn into a big commotion. It’s a way … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1729926_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1729926_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });Three people make a play”, and with seventy or eighty kids together, it was impossible to count how many “plays” there were.
The noise made Su Qiao’s ears ring, and she answered so much that her mouth went dry. By the time all the children had left, she was still dazed.
Besides the hair claws, the four siblings hadn’t sold much at all at lunchtime, only a single hair tie.
It made sense, most of the elementary school kids had spent their pocket money on snacks, and a two-and-a-half-cent hair tie was still a little too expensive for them.
But Su Qiao didn’t feel discouraged. Today was meant to be a trial run anyway, to get a sense of what sold best and what worked most efficiently.
She was already very satisfied to have sold so many items in just one morning.
The students at the gate slowly dispersed, and the siblings packed up the tarpaulin, getting ready to leave.
“Are you all hungry?” Su Qiao asked her younger siblings.
Su Wei shook his head first. “Not hungry. We had so many meat-filled buns this morning, how could we be hungry so soon?”
Hearing their older brother say that, the two little ones immediately nodded vigorously in agreement.
Su Qiao didn’t expose them.
Of course, she knew that their claim of not being hungry was a lie.
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