Su Qinghua felt rather satisfied after her first ’shopping spree,’ even if what she bought were basic food items. As for the items that she could obtain without tickets, she opted to go through official channels as they were cheaper and the selection was far more complete.
This official channel was a place called Sales and Marketing Cooperative, a modest government-linked storefront that handled the collection and sale of local agricultural goods and other items. There was also the Department Store, but that would be for later.
Nowadays, the Supply and Marketing Cooperative was one of the only places where one could buy a variety of things. There would be several display counters separating the customer from most of the goods. The sales personnel on the other side had an uncaring expression on her face.
These days, shops like these are not service-oriented. After all, they were pretty much a person’s only choice. Not to mention, this was state-owned, so anyone who worked here was counted as a civil servant, which was a very prestigious job. It was understandable that many sales clerks had their noses above their heads.
For now, Su Qinghua was just glad that the clerk wasn’t looking for a fight.
The queues were also no joke in the city. She wasn’t sure how it was in the counties, but shopping could get time-consuming, especially for scarce-but-needed items like cloths and meat.
When rare goods arrived and people heard about the shipment, it could even be chaos wherein people were pushing against each other to the point of a mini-stampede.
Fortunately, she went after the lunch time shopping rush, so it wasn’t too much, just a bit of a queue.
She needed a lot of things for her trip up north. For example, she needed quilt/blankets, cotton padded trousers, sweaters, socks, scarves, gloves, a thermos, an enamel bowl and mugs, soap, a toothbrush, a needle and thread set, and some basic medicine.
Fortunately, Qiao Yaqin had a number of coupons for these things. Since they were valid only for the city and had expiration dates, she decided to use them all before she left.
"Good day, I’d like to buy two bars of soap, a toothbrush, needles, threads, toilet paper, matches, pencils, enamel bowl, enamel mug, a basin, a broom, rope or twine, a few candles, and a bamboo basket please."
Seeing the long list of items, the sales lady nodded, expression indifferent. They don’t get commissions here, so even if she bought a lot, they might even find it troublesome.
Other than this, she bought spices and condiments that she could buy. The bottles she had taken from the house were finite, and she could not stomach food without seasoning.
Some of these didn’t need tickets, but the quantity was controlled. For example, she could only buy 1 jin of vinegar, 1 jin of soy sauce, 3 liang of dried chili, and so on.
She would also make some of her own when she secured the raw materials, since what she could make was far, far superior than what was currently available. She had a sensitive palette and she would not want to wrong herself once she regained the capability to be choosy.
Speaking of food processing, she should process a few of her crops later too, as processed food was much more profitable than selling them raw. While her fruits and others were special, the effect was minute, especially at first, and it wasn’t like people would understand (or believe) in these special effects.
Even if they were delicious, refreshing, healthier, and stayed fresh longer, people might not necessarily pay more than the black market price, which was already very costly for normal families. For now, she was constrained to sell at the usual Black Market prices.
In contrast, the turnover for processed food was faster, and she didn’t have to explain its costs too closely. What she made would definitely be tastier than others, and she could just say the reason was a secret recipe or carefully chosen ingredients.
She’d need to do some market studies to determine which was actually profitable and worth the extra effort in the North. Otherwise, she’d just sell the raw items outright.
Anyway, the bill so far was already around 15 yuan altogether.
Next, she bought one jin to one kilogram bags of seeds that were available there. For example, she bought seeds for soybeans, peas, cowpeas, mung beans, peanuts, corn, sesame, pumpkin, cucumber, radish, cabbage, mustard greens, and turnip seeds.
Wheat, Sorghum, and millet seeds were also readily available in this store. Rice would be hard to find where she wanted to go, so she got a lot of these, though she’d have to wait until her space was bigger to bother planting. She got packs of each; they would not go to waste.
She also bought seeds for cotton, watermelon, chilli pepper, black pepper, onion, and garlic. All of these were needed to secure her quality of life.
Another reason for getting as a lot of varieties as she could was that the way to upgrade her space was not just to plant continuously. Planting new species and their respective varieties seemed to give a lot of ’extra points’ of sorts, and there was always a jump in improvement whenever a new plant matured.
So, the more species she had planted—and this included different variations of similar plants—the better.
Including the supplies purchased, her total bill now amounted to around 19 yuan and 8 mao.
She handed 20 over to the girl. She smiled. "Keep the change," she said in a whispering tone. It was then that the sales clerk’s expression finally softened a bit.
"Uhm, would you know of stalls that could sell quilts and jackets without tickets? Old ones will do," she asked. "I’m a sent-down youth heading North, you see..."
Hearing she was about to be sent to the North, the sales clerk felt a rare sense of pity. This kid was good-looking, but he’s so small and scrawny.
In the end, the girl revealed to her that the textile and cotton factories will be sending their rejects soon. These were still usable, just imperfect, and the best thing was that they wouldn’t need coupons.
She breathed a sigh of relief. At least now, she got most of the essentials she needed to buy, and this gave her a bit of confidence in her upcoming life.