Xia Qingyue arrived in town and noticed that the patrolling soldiers were appearing even more frequently on the streets and alleys than the day before.
They moved quickly, faces serious and tense.
Like the passersby, she immediately lowered her head and stepped aside whenever she saw them, keeping her distance.
She went to the grocery store where she had bought salt yesterday. The shopkeeper had been generous the day before, giving her some pumpkin seeds after seeing how much she had bought, so she returned.
As Xia Qingyue entered, she nearly collided with the shopkeeper holding the door latch.
“Ah, young master, it’s you! What brings you here? I was just about to close for the day.”
“I want to buy more rice and flour today,” she said.
The shopkeeper glanced outside, then stepped aside. “Come in first.”
“I’ll take five dou of brown rice, three dou of coarse white flour, two dou of millet, and two dou of glutinous rice if you have it.”
Glutinous rice could later be ground into flour for pumpkin cakes, rice dumplings, or rice cakes.
All the staples cost the same: eight wen per sheng, eighty wen per dou, totaling nine hundred sixty wen.
“Half a dou each of peanuts, soybeans, green beans, peas, and red beans.”
Beans cost sixty wen per dou, spending another one hundred fifty wen.
“I’ll also take some seeds—wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, loofah, bottle gourd, cabbage, grapes, plums, and pears…”
For the seeds, she chose staples and common fruits and vegetables, spending four hundred wen.
She also bought some brown sugar, ginger, garlic, and dried chili, adding two hundred eighty wen to the total.
The shopkeeper, still generous today, threw in some soapberry leaf tea powder for free.
Outside, Xia Qingyue bought two wooden buckets, since her own were worn and insufficient. She had considered a wooden basin but couldn’t carry it, so she went to the pork stall she had visited yesterday.
She bought the remaining ten-plus jin of pork fat, three pig’s trotters, and five jin of front leg meat, spending four hundred one wen.
She spent a total of 2 taels 191 wen today, leaving 2 taels 156 wen remaining. She had bought plenty—more than she could carry.
On the way up the mountain, Xia Qingyue leaned on her walking stick, resting frequently.
Unconsciously, she reached the spot where she had encountered the woman yesterday. She paused and glanced around, about to leave, when out of the corner of her eye she recognized a familiar plant.
She turned back for a closer look. Sure enough, it was cassava.
A small patch of land, including the slope above, was scattered with cassava plants.
Her heart pounded with anxiety. She wanted to dig up the cassava immediately, but with her hands full, she couldn’t manage it.
Reluctantly, she left, planning to return tomorrow.
At noon, Xia Qingyue and Heihei stopped to eat boiled eggs and raspberries for a quick meal, returning to the sinkhole in the afternoon.
After resting and drinking water for a few minutes, she poured the brown rice into the rice jar, which was quickly filled.
The brown rice totaled eight dou, about one hundred jin, enough for her and Heihei for a while. Later, she could add some yam when cooking.
With flour and millet, she could make porridge, allowing her staples to last until this year’s rice harvest.
Glutinous rice, millet, and beans were stored in the kitchen cupboard.
She cut the pork fat into pieces. Since she didn’t like fatty pork except for the five-layered variety, she trimmed the fat from the front leg meat to render into lard.
This batch filled the lard jar, with some left over in a large bowl.
The five pig trotters and lean meat, along with pork liver, were salted and set aside for curing.
She planned to make some cured meat. In case of war, she wouldn’t be able to descend the mountain to buy fresh meat, so having cured pork would improve meals occasionally. The only drawback was the salt.
The salted meat was covered and left in a cool, shady place to cure for a few days. Tomorrow she would buy more meat.
She washed rice and cooked it, adding extra because the yams had run out.
She scrubbed the intestines with wood ash. Salt and starch would have been faster, but conditions didn’t allow it.
After cleaning, she scraped off the excess fat and parboiled the intestines with ginger for half an hour. The original five jin of intestines shrank to about two jin.
The parboiled intestines were cut into sections, ginger into strips, and wild onions and dried chili into pieces.
She heated lard in a pot until smoking, then stir-fried the onions, dried chili, and ginger. The intestines were added and sautéed, with water added around the edges and simmered under a lid.
While cooking, she emptied the fish cage. Today, the basin wasn’t enough—two large white carp weighed almost three jin each.
“Wow, such big fish!” Xia Qingyue exclaimed. She placed the two carp and other long fish into a wooden basin to keep until tomorrow.
Small fish and shrimp were given to Heihei and the chickens and ducks.
Recently, the poultry had become braver, coming to her when fed. The chicks and ducklings especially circled her as she entered the pen.
After giving them fish and shrimp and refilling their water, she noticed a few round eggs on the straw where the chickens and ducks slept: two chicken eggs and three duck eggs.
She picked them up, eyes crinkling in delight. Excellent. If this continued, soon she would have a steady supply of eggs and meat.
After over ten minutes of cooking, the intestines were fragrant. Xia Qingyue lifted the lid, smoke curling around her, carrying the spicy scent and the rich aroma of the intestines. She licked her lips in anticipation.
She tossed in some wild onion leaves before removing the pot from heat.
The resulting intestines were tender, chewy, and perfectly spicy—great with rice. She ate one and a half bowls alongside them.
After dinner, as dusk fell, she walked through the vegetable patch to aid digestion. The soaked rice seedlings were the first to sprout, tiny green shoots poking from the soil.
Other seeds had not yet germinated. She watered them carefully.
Returning, she poured hot water for a bath, changed out of her dirty clothes, and felt refreshed. Lying in bed, her whole body relaxed, and exhaustion took over almost instantly.
The next morning, Xia Qingyue went to town at first light, buying twenty jin of pork fat for two hundred wen, six pig trotters for two hundred seventy wen, two pig heads for one hundred eighty wen, fifteen jin of lean meat for two hundred twenty-five wen, and thirty jin of pork belly for six hundred wen.
She spent over 1 taels 400 wen on meat.
The pork stall owner, seeing her as a regular customer, generously gave her eight or nine jin of pork liver and intestines, plus a pig stomach.
With over six hundred wen left, she went to a grocery store. The previous shop was closed, so she went to another and bought soy sauce, yellow wine, white wine, and camellia oil.
Peanut and rapeseed oil were available, but she chose camellia oil for its versatility—it could be used for cooking and skin care.
Seeing star anise and cinnamon, she inquired, but the high price discouraged her. She went to a hardware store instead and bought an iron shovel, spending five hundred wen in total.
She also bought fifty wen worth of soapberries for washing clothes and hair. She didn’t plan to spend the remaining thirty wen, keeping it as a safety buffer.
After leaving town, Xia Qingyue quickened her pace up the mountain. At the cassava spot, she hid the full basket and retrieved a sack to dig.
Heihei stood guard, giving her some peace of mind.
She dug and unearthed the first root. The cassava was as thick as her arm, and one plant bore three roots, a good yield—about seven or eight jin.
Although cassava was toxic, proper preparation removed the poison. It could serve as a staple like sweet potatoes or yam, or its starch could be extracted for desserts, jelly, or noodles.
The thought of this motivated Xia Qingyue to dig faster.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
Heihei suddenly barked toward a direction without warning.