Shen Zhouzhou ignored her and walked straight into the supply and marketing cooperative, only to discover that purchases required ration coupons. She did not have any on hand. It seemed she could only try her luck at the black market.
Leaving the cooperative, Shen Zhouzhou stood at the street corner clutching her flat cloth bag as she silently calculated her options. Without ration coupons, she could not buy seeds from the cooperative, yet she could hardly leave the black soil in her space lying empty. Fragments of the original owner’s memories surfaced in her mind. At the foot of the old city wall, a “ghost market” appeared every evening, a secret black market where people traded in private.
She followed the bluestone road toward the old part of town. The closer she came to the city wall, the fewer pedestrians she saw. The setting sun stretched every shadow into a long silhouette. Beneath the wall, several men stood with hunched shoulders, speaking in hushed voices. The moment they noticed her approaching, they immediately fell silent and looked at her warily. Shen Zhouzhou slowed her pace, pretending to be merely passing by, but from the corner of her eye she spotted an old man in a gray cotton jacket. Beside his feet sat a bamboo basket covered with a tattered burlap sack, with half an ear of golden corn peeking out from beneath it.
As dusk deepened, Shen Zhouzhou quietly slipped into the black market beneath the old city wall once more. The figures gathered there huddled together in the dim light like beasts lying in wait, while faint whispers drifted through the evening breeze. She remembered the original owner mentioning that grain seeds could be found through Old Gutou, fruit saplings through Aunt Nanhuo behind the brick kiln, and vegetable seeds hidden in bamboo baskets beneath the broken wall. If she wanted to make use of this black market, she needed to understand all of its unwritten rules.
Beneath a crooked locust tree, Old Gutou, dressed in a coarse cotton jacket fastened across the front, squatted on the ground. The brass bowl of his tobacco pipe glimmered faintly in the fading light. Spread out before him on a piece of burlap were three bulging cloth bundles. As Shen Zhouzhou approached, he did not even raise his eyelids.
“New grain or old wheat?”
“Both.”
Shen Zhouzhou crouched down, letting her fingertips brush across the burlap.
“Rice, wheat, and corn. One handful of each.”
“Handful” was black market slang, meaning one jin.
Old Gutou knocked the ashes from his pipe, and his cloudy eyes lit up.
“The rice is this year’s new indica variety, still with the awns on, high milling yield. The wheat is winter wheat with the husks intact, frost resistant. Want Golden Queen corn? The kernels are hard. Good for food or animal feed.”
Shen Zhouzhou reached into her cloth bag and pulled out a small pouch filled with millet that had been soaked in spiritual spring water. Every grain was plump as a pearl.
Old Gutou pinched a few grains, lifted them to his nose, and sniffed. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“That’s fine grain.”
He quickly pulled three cloth bundles from beneath the burlap and poured the seeds into his palm.
“Rice seed, one yuan and five jiao a jin. Wheat seed, one yuan two jiao. Corn, one yuan. No ration coupons needed, but you’ll have to add half a jin of refined grain.”
Without hesitation, Shen Zhouzhou took half a bag of flour from her space and handed it over.
Old Gutou wrapped the seeds, stuffed them into her arms, then struck his pipe against the ground.
“Get moving. Wang Mazi, the patrolman, just passed through. Stay any longer and he’ll overturn both of us.”
She had barely taken two steps when a low cough came from behind the brick kiln. A woman with a blue cloth headscarf poked her head out from behind the broken wall. Seeing that Shen Zhouzhou was alone, she finally asked in a hoarse voice,
“What do you want? Fruit saplings from the south. If they don’t survive, you don’t pay.”
Keeping her voice low, Shen Zhouzhou replied, “Peaches, plums, grapes, apples, strawberries, jujubes, lychees, and longans. I want them all.”
Aunt Nanhuo led her to the entrance of the kiln cave and lifted an oilcloth, revealing several young saplings with their roots tied in straw rope.
“The peach trees are grafted honey peaches. The plum trees are Vermilion Plums. The grapes are Kyoho. The apples and the rest all came from the south, with a high survival rate.”
Shen Zhouzhou crouched down, her fingertips brushing over the full buds of the peach saplings. The roots of the grapevines still carried the damp red soil of the south.
“How much?”
“Two chi of cloth for each peach tree, one chi eight cun for each plum tree, one chi five cun for each grapevine.”
Aunt Nanhuo stared at her cloth bag, leaving no room for bargaining.
Shen Zhouzhou untied the cloth bundle and handed it over, then took out two steamed white buns from her pocket. They had been made from dough risen with spiritual spring water, soft and snowy white, valuable enough on the black market to equal half a month’s grain ration.
Aunt Nanhuo squeezed the buns, then suddenly called into the kiln.
“Old man, bring out that June Red tree!”
A moment later, a limping man carried out a short, sturdy fruit sapling with a small wooden tag hanging from one branch.
“An early ripening peach. You’ll be eating peaches by June. It’ll cost another half jin worth of grain coupons.”
Shen Zhouzhou’s heart stirred. She took a small bag of millet from her space and handed it over.
The man weighed the grain bag in his hand before stuffing the sapling into her arms.
“Hurry up. I can hear the warning bells.”
On her way back, a young man in a patched cotton jacket suddenly darted out from beneath the broken wall, holding up a bamboo basket.
“Comrade! Want vegetable seeds? They’re old family varieties my mother saved. Eggplant, chili peppers, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, leafy greens, I’ve got them all!”
The paper packets in the basket were stuffed full, each labeled in crooked handwriting with names like “Top Blossom Thorny Cucumbers” and “Sandy Flesh Tomatoes.”
Thinking of the black soil inside her space, Shen Zhouzhou’s fingers practically itched with anticipation.
“I’ll take everything. What do you want in exchange?”
The young man answered anxiously, “One packet of vegetable seeds for three chi of cloth coupons!”
She pulled out a piece of indigo homespun cloth and handed it over.
The young man’s eyes reddened with gratitude. He dug another small paper packet from inside his jacket and handed it to her.
“A gift. Chive seeds. You’ll be harvesting them as soon as spring arrives.”
Shen Zhouzhou carefully wrapped all the seeds and saplings inside her outer coat and hurried back along the city wall. The bundle in her arms felt satisfyingly heavy. The awns of the rice seeds pricked her palms, while the damp earth clinging to the saplings carried the rich scent of soil. Yet it felt as though she were holding an entire springtime in her embrace. Her eyes shone with delight and anticipation. Once everything was planted inside her space and watered with spiritual spring water, next year she would surely harvest overflowing granaries and fruit trees laden with sweet produce.
As night settled in, the murmurs of the black market gradually faded into the distance, leaving only the light rhythm of her footsteps echoing over the bluestone road.
When she reached a deserted stretch of road, Shen Zhouzhou cautiously looked around to make sure no one was watching before swiftly storing everything inside her space.
By the time she returned home, Shen Yong and Shen Jianjun were both there.
The moment Shen Yong saw her, he hesitated, clearly wanting to say something.
Shen Zhouzhou already knew what he intended to bring up. He wanted her to let Li Hongxia off the hook.
Setting down her things, she said calmly, “I know what you’re going to say. Li Hongxia brought this upon herself. The law should judge her however it sees fit.”
Shen Yong sighed.
“Zhouzhou, she’s still your younger brother’s mother. This whole affair has already affected my work to some extent. Can’t you just…”
“She isn’t my mother,” Shen Zhouzhou interrupted. “The moment my mother died, I stopped having one. As for Shen Jianjun, he already has you doting on him. That’s enough.”
She let out a cold laugh, her gaze as sharp as frozen steel as it pierced straight through Shen Yong.
“Dad, do you really think Li Hongxia sincerely wanted to spend her life with you? She had only been in this family for a few days before she was already eager to change Deng Fangfang’s surname to Shen, as though she couldn’t wait for everyone to know she was the mistress of the Shen family. What’s even more ridiculous is that she’d only been married into this family for half a year when Shen Jianjun was born. That child was probably conceived while my mother was still lying in her sickbed.”
She stared at him with unconcealed contempt.
“Does a man like you deserve to be anyone’s husband? Do you deserve to be anyone’s father? You’re disgusting.”
She paused, watching Shen Yong’s face turn deathly pale, before continuing in a voice dripping with mockery.
“No wonder she acted so arrogantly. The moment she entered this family, she shoved me into the storage room and forced me to drop out of school. So she’d already figured out that you were obsessed with having a son. Once Shen Jianjun, your precious heir, was born, her position in the Shen family became unshakable. As for me, your own biological daughter, I was nothing more than an unwanted obstacle in both of your eyes.”