On her first trip to the county seat preserved vegetables brought in six dollars and thirty-seven cents.
Back home Shen Qinghe spread the money out and deducted costs first. Raw materials one dollar and ninety cents bus fare sixty-five cents stall fee twenty cents sanitation fee ten cents bottle breakage eighteen cents Tang Guizhi’s share from joint sales ten cents jar rental and firewood thirty-six cents.
Three dollars and eight cents remained.
She then calculated her own labour. Rising at four in the morning travelling there and back and standing at the stall for nine hours deserved at least one dollar and twenty cents the local minimum daily wage for casual work.
What remained to grow the business was one dollar and eighty-eight cents.
Even if all eight jars had sold she would have earned only a few cents more. The biggest problem was not lack of buyers. Every trip carrying goods from the village ate deep into fares and her own effort.
The next day she took fewer jars and made a sign reading Mildly Spicy Available Today Finish Within Three Days. The writing drew attention and some laughed that someone selling pickles should be so fussy.
A textile worker who had bought before returned with her own jar. “Your vegetables go perfectly with porridge but my parents find them too spicy. Do you have any without chilli?”
“They will be ready the day after tomorrow. How much would you like?”
“Half a jin to start”
“Leave your name and collect before eight o’clock. I will not hold it after that time”
The woman had never heard of pre-ordering from a street stall and gave her name willingly. Several others followed suit. Shen Qinghe listed requests in three columns No Chilli Mild Spicy and Extra Crisp taking a small deposit from each.
Tang Guizhi watched her collecting five and ten cent deposits and grew concerned. “What if they do not come back?”
“The deposit is non-refundable and the vegetables go to someone else”
“And if you cannot make what they ordered?”
“I will return double their deposit”
“You have not yet earned and already you are tying knots around yourself”
“When both sides are bound people come back”
On the third day eleven out of twelve reservations were collected. The one who did not appear forfeited the deposit and the vegetables were sold before noon. For the first time Shen Qinghe did not need to shout to attract buyers and knew exactly how much to prepare.
She recalculated the cost of a monthly fixed stall. Ten dollars covering space and cleaning was roughly three dollars cheaper than paying daily but only worthwhile if both she and Tang Guizhi attended for more than twenty-five days.
“Some days it will rain or we will fall ill or have family matters” Tang Guizhi said. “Twenty-five days is asking a lot”
“That is why we do not plan for perfect conditions”
They worked out figures for twenty days twenty-five days and thirty days. Tang Guizhi grew frustrated halfway and wanted to pay and secure the spot immediately. Shen Qinghe laid the worst case plainly before her. “If we only manage fifteen days we will each lose more than a dollar. Can you accept that?”
“I can”
“Write it down”
“We are not even proper partners why write anything?”
“Precisely because we are not partners yet. We need to state how the space is shared who covers missed days and who receives the deposit refund”
Tang Guizhi complained about the trouble but eventually pressed her thumb to the paper. She could read only a few words so Shen Qinghe read each clause aloud and she asked questions until satisfied taking the whole afternoon to finish.
With the fixed stall confirmed Shen Qinghe did not immediately increase production. She focused first on packaging.
Small jars carried too high a deposit so customers hesitated to take them away. Ordinary glass bottles came from many sources and lids rarely fitted properly. He Lanqiu heard about a batch of discarded wide-mouthed jars from the county medical supply station suitable for non-medical use once cleaned but available only as a complete lot.
“Two hundred jars for sixteen dollars” He Lanqiu said. “I did not negotiate the price they were already scheduled for disposal. A proper receipt can be issued”
“I would like to see them first”
“Do you think I would deceive you?”
“I need to check the bottle mouths are uniform”
The jars turned out to have three different rim sizes and more than twenty lids were missing. Buying the whole lot would mean spending more on replacement lids than had been saved.
He Lanqiu watched her measuring each one and admitted “You were right not to agree straight away”
“Cheap goods are only cheap until you replace the missing parts”
Shen Qinghe bought only the one hundred and twenty jars with matching rims and asked Carpenter Yao to make wooden stoppers as an alternative. Old medical labels had to be scrubbed away completely so buyers would not misunderstand where they came from.
By the fifth day every jar sold before midday.
Tang Guizhi was delighted and planned to stock more eggs. “Business is good today let us bring another batch this afternoon!”
Shen Qinghe began packing up instead. “We will not restock”
“Leaving money on the table?”
“Afternoon customers are not the same morning workers. Their tastes and willingness to pay may differ. Travelling back to the village would also double our fare cost”
“Why do you always hit the brakes when business picks up?”
“So we know where we are going before speeding forward”
They used the free afternoon to count footfall at all three market exits and observe what other food stalls sold later in the day. Tang Guizhi thought it foolish at first but soon noticed the west gate grew busiest at shift end and many asked for dishes to take home for dinner.
“Should we move our stall to the west gate?”
“Fixed stalls cannot be moved. But we can offer pre-orders for collection at closing time”
Shen Qinghe adjusted preparation times keeping some jars sealed until evening. On the second evening trial seventy percent sold at full price with only one fare and one stall fee paid for the whole day.
Profit finally began to climb.
The real test came on the ninth day. The textile worker returned a jar reporting the non-spicy batch had developed a sour smell by the third day. Tang Guizhi spoke up first. “Did you use a spoon with oil on it?”
The woman grew angry. “You blame me when your food spoils?”
Shen Qinghe did not decide based on smell alone. She asked when the jar had been opened how it had been stored and how food had been taken out then compared it against a reserved sample from the same batch. The sample was fine but the returned jar showed traces of oil around the rim. Strictly speaking she did not have to offer a replacement.
She exchanged it anyway charging only for the jar. “My label said keep for three days but not to use clean utensils. I should have written it clearly. Next time if instructions are followed and it still happens I will not replace it”
The woman’s expression softened. “It was partly my fault. I used a cooking spoon last night”
“We each own our mistakes. You will use clean chopsticks next time and I will write clearer instructions”
Tang Guizhi waited until she walked away. “It was clearly her fault why lose a jar?”
“Replacing one jar teaches me a mistake customers will make. Better that than having ten people go home unhappy and say nothing”
She revised the label to read Store in Cool Place Use Clean Utensils Consume Within Three Days and reminded everyone who bought that day personally. By afternoon her throat was dry and her tongue tasted of brine. No one rushed to buy more because she had taken responsibility and daily profit fell by twenty cents.
The following week the textile worker returned with three colleagues. She did not praise the flavour simply said “If something goes wrong you know where to find her”
Tang Guizhi no longer cheered when stock sold out. At closing time she asked “How much actual profit did we make today?”
Shen Qinghe smiled. “You are learning”
“Spend enough time with someone careful and you become careful too”
“It is simply what happens when you keep clear accounts”
As they spoke a man in a blue tunic picked up a discarded jar Shen Qinghe had set aside during washing near the rubbish bin. A scrap of her handwritten label reading Mildly Spicy still clung to it.
Tang Guizhi called out “That one is thrown away what do you want it for?”
“Storing oil” he said without turning around.
He peeled the label off carefully and tucked it into his pocket.
Shen Qinghe saw it and felt a quiet weight settle in her chest.
An empty jar was worth nothing.
But if someone wanted to sell not the jar itself but the name Qinghe printed on it things became very different.