Back at the shop, seven or eight women were waiting. Some had come to schedule hair-styling appointments for the next couple of days, while others had heard the news and rushed in to buy the cleansing ointment.
These were women of some means, accustomed to dressing up and eating meat regularly. They couldn’t pass up the chance to buy such a useful product.
The cleansing ointment, which had sold a few units at noon, was now completely sold out. Two women missed out on the last of the stock.
Nie Qinghe didn’t try to push the shampoo ointment on them. She didn’t want them to feel cheated by a forced choice. Instead, she suggested they return the next day when both the cleansing ointment and the shampoo ointment would be available. That way, they could choose for themselves.
Just then, Mother Nie arrived with Auntie Zhang from next door, delivering 120 large and 200 small hair nets.
The women who had come for the cleansing ointment were immediately drawn to the hair nets, stopping to try them on. Two of the women had loose buns; they simply draped a hair net over their hair, secured it with a hairpin, and instantly tidied their disheveled locks. Now, they wouldn’t be mocked for leaving the house with their hair down.
They bought a dozen or so nets. Nie Qinghe intended to keep the rest for the women who had placed orders, but Head Shopkeeper Liu hurried over.
He announced he was going to deliver new jewelry to several old customers and took the majority of the hair nets with him. He knew how popular Nie Qinghe’s hair nets were, so he counted any he distributed as part of her sales.
Nie Qinghe had Laishun spread the word in the street. The proprietresses of several nearby shops had already ordered hairnets, and their young assistants hurried over to collect them.
The final seven were bought by Lin Er and Qian Er, who said they were for their mothers and wives.
After the rush subsided, Nie Qinghe finally had a moment to visit the back courtyard.
Nie Dali had missed the horse’s rampage at noon, but he had heard about it and was deeply concerned. Seeing his sister safe and sound, he finally relaxed.
Chen Zijian, his curiosity piqued, asked, “Qinghe, was that warrior really that strong? To think he could hold back a mad horse!”
Nie Qinghe corrected him, “He wasn’t a warrior. And the horse wasn’t mad—it was just spooked.”
Nie Dali asked if anyone knew who their savior was, wanting to thank him on his sister’s behalf. When he learned that no one knew, he decided to leave it to Shopkeeper Liu, who had offered to investigate.
He studied his sister closely, and seeing she was truly unharmed, said, “Don’t get involved in things like that again. We have shop assistants for a reason.”
Nie Qinghe nodded. “I know, Big Brother. You have tomorrow off—can you come home for dinner tonight?”
As an apprentice, Nie Dali was allowed one day off every ten. Even though he lived nearby, he wasn’t permitted to go home whenever he pleased.
He hesitated. “I can eat here and then go home.”
His appetite had grown so much that he would eat two people’s portions at home. It was better to eat here and save the family’s rice.
“Let’s eat at home,” Nie Qinghe said. “I’ll buy some meat on the way back.”
Chen Zijian’s eyes sparkled. He looked like he was dying to tag along for a free meal.
Nie Dali shoved him. “Go check the pot! Stir it before it burns.”
Their family barely got a taste of meat once every two weeks. They weren’t about to let some outsider mooch off them.
Nie Qinghe asked Chen Zijian to go tell their father to skip his night shift and come home early. The whole family would have a reunion dinner.
Father Nie agreed.
Back in the shop, Lin Er was clacking his abacus, settling up the day’s earnings. The previous few days had only brought in a few dozen coppers, maybe two hundred at most—easy to calculate.
But today, Nie Qinghe’s business had suddenly become much more complex.
She was now offering hair styling and accessory placement, facial makeup, selling hair nets and small clips, and even selling cleansing and shampoo ointments.
She had three different streams of income:
First, there was the labor fee for her hands-on work, whether she was styling hair or weaving hair nets.
Second, there was the sales commission for any goods she sold. For every one hundred items sold, she would earn a two-copper cut.
Third, there was the design fee. For any new product she designed for the shop, she would receive two coppers for every hundred sold. For high-profit items like the shampoo and cleansing ointments, Shopkeeper Liu had decided to give her a three-copper cut. Even the medicinal hair washes, which cost eighty coppers each, would earn her a ten-copper commission.
Moreover, these three income streams could overlap. If she designed a product, made it herself, and then sold it, she could earn three times the profit.
Suddenly, the potential for wealth was staggering.
Shopkeeper Lin felt a wave of self-loathing. After all these years of hard work, he was being outshone by a young girl. He stared at his abacus, his mind churning.
What good am I? he wondered. I can only use an abacus. What else can I do? Style hair? No. Make shampoo? No. Apply makeup? No.
Compared to her, he felt utterly useless.
He was on the verge of a full-blown existential crisis.
Since many of the pre-orders hadn’t been settled yet, he only calculated the payments Nie Qinghe could collect today. Her services—cleansing, makeup, and hairstyling—had brought in 98 wen. The cleansing ointment was completely sold out, earning her a 194-wen commission.
The hairnets and styling tools added another 188 wen. The pre-orders would be settled in ten days, meaning that for today alone, she had earned 480 wen.
Determined to share his misery, Shopkeeper Lin went to Qian Er to report the figures.
Qian Er’s reaction was immediate: he sank into a state of profound despair.
“A young girl earned forty-eight silver coins in a single day?” he muttered. “Our monthly salaries as managers are barely over two silver taels.”
Has Heaven sent this girl specifically to humiliate us?
Qian Er refused to believe the numbers. He grabbed the abacus and re-calculated everything himself.
The result was exactly the same. Not a single wen was out of place.
If they included the pre-orders and the hair-washing services, the total would be nearly one tael of silver.
Calculating her commission, she had generated at least thirty taels in sales today, earning the shop a handsome profit.
They’d chalked her first day’s 56 wen up to luck. The second day’s 253 wen was just Master Chen’s influence. The third day’s 118 wen seemed like her ceiling. But now…
Today she’d made 480 wen. Once the shampoo ointment was fully brewed and sold, the numbers would be… They didn’t even dare to imagine.
Since her eldest brother was coming home for dinner, Nie Qinghe wanted to leave early. Assuming the two shopkeepers were struggling with the accounts, she offered a considerate solution.
“I’ll just take two hundred wen to buy meat,” she said. “The rest can be settled with the goods payment in half a month.”
She knew her various accounts were a mess right now. If the clerks didn’t use a simplified system, the bookkeeping would be a nightmare. Settling every ten days with the goods payment was a good compromise. Once she was more financially secure, she could even switch to monthly settlements.
The only immediate priority was the money for the women who had woven the nets. Some of them relied on this small income to supplement their family’s meager earnings.
The labor cost for a small net was one wen, and two wen for a large one. The total came to 4.4 wen.
“The count is finished,” Shopkeeper Lin announced. “I’ll be paying you 480 wen today.”
He watched Nie Qinghe closely, expecting to see a flicker of triumph or joy on her face. But there was nothing.
What a reserved young lady, he thought, impressed.
Because copper coins were heavy and insufficient for larger sums, Shopkeeper Lin provided a portion of the payment in silver. He handed her eight pieces of broken silver—a mix of silver corners and silver beads, all weighed on a scale to five-fen increments—along with 40 copper coins.
For her own 480 wen, he gave her a four-mace silver corner, a five-fen silver bead, and 30 copper coins.
Copper was scarce across the empire, as both the imperial court and the common people consumed vast quantities of it for bronze casting. This shortage of copper coins, combined with the surge of silver from twenty years of thriving international trade, meant that most transactions over twenty wen in the city were conducted with broken silver.
While the government had issued baochao—paper currency—its unstable exchange rate and rapid devaluation had driven the public to abandon it. In recent years, the court had tacitly accepted the decline of paper money, even allowing taxes to be paid in silver.
Nie Qinghe tucked the money into her purse and stowed it securely in her shoulder bag. She was always cautious; no street thief would get the chance to snatch her purse.
She wrapped the white silk garment in a cloth and tucked it into her shoulder bag, intending to study it with her mother at home.
Earlier that day, she had grabbed the garment, but the young man suddenly let go. Not wanting the fine clothing to fall to the ground, she had caught it.
She had been too busy that afternoon to examine it properly, so she’d stored it in a small cabinet in her private room. Manager Lin had asked her about it earlier—she wondered if he was curious about the garment or the man.
Men, she sighed inwardly. Always so curious.
She felt a pang of regret, certain she had been disrespectful to her benefactor. Her gaze must have been too direct, frightening him into refusing to give her his name.
Leaving the shop, she turned into a side alley.
The main East and West Streets were lined with large, established businesses. Shrewder merchants with less capital, recognizing the value of the heavy foot traffic, rented smaller spaces in the adjacent alleys.
Here, one could find a variety of shops selling sundries, food, shoes, socks, and kitchenware.
Among them was Butcher Zhang’s establishment. Unlike other butchers who slaughtered and sold their meat on-site—often drawing complaints from neighbors about the noise and the stench of flies and mosquitoes in the summer—Butcher Zhang operated his slaughterhouse in a quiet area outside the North Gate.
He cleaned and prepared the meat there before transporting it to various shops in the city. This strategy made his business far more successful than any of his competitors.
Old Man Zhang, known as Zhang Dadao, had sons named First, Second, and Third Blade. Each managed a separate storefront, and Third Blade ran the shop in this alley.
A popular saying at the time went, Big head, thick neck—either a butcher or a laborer. Their diet, rich in meat and fat, naturally made them burly and strong.
Zhang Sandao was no exception. Standing over six feet tall, he was a mountain of a man—broad-shouldered, thick-waisted, and powerfully built. He worked shirtless, wearing only an apron, his muscles rippling with every movement.
People said Zhang Sandao’s plump face looked auspicious, which was why his business flourished. His father had specifically assigned him to this location to serve the wealthy clientele.
Two women were currently poking and prodding the meat, even trying to grab a piece without specifying what they wanted. Zhang Sandao watched them, his brow furrowing in annoyance.
When he saw Nie Qinghe approaching, his round face broke into a smile, his cheeks bunching up.
“Miss Nie, buying meat?”
He had gone out of his way to visit Liu’s the other day just to see her. He’d bought a silver hairpin featuring a cicada for his future bride and another with a Buddha’s hand holding a peach for his mother—both recommendations from Nie Qinghe. He thought they were beautiful, and his mother loved hers.
The two women curled their lips in disdain. One of them grabbed a handful of the fat pork, then quickly pulled her hand away, eager to leave. She needed to get home and wash the lard off her hands; the resulting greasy water could be used to cook, letting her savor the taste of meat.
She wasn’t the only one. Many customers used the excuse of buying meat to sneakily grease their palms. Zhang Sandao didn’t know what to say—who knew if their hands were even clean?
He quickly grabbed his homemade flyswatter, using it to shoo away flies while simultaneously blocking another woman from trying to steal a handful of fat.
“I’ll take a pound of pork belly and two pounds of ribs,” Nie Qinghe announced.
The cuts varied in price. The fattier parts were more expensive, especially the pork belly, which was the most prized for its alternating layers of fat and lean meat.
Pork belly cost 25 wen per pound, ribs were 20 wen, and other cuts were around 22 wen.
It was a rare sight to see someone in a patched, coarse cloth skirt like Nie Qinghe buying three pounds of meat so lavishly.
The woman standing beside her stared openly, her eyes narrowing as she wondered which household’s maidservant Nie Qinghe could possibly be.
Zhang Sandao deliberately raised his voice. “Miss Nie, did you get off work early today? Is the shop not busy?”
Nie Qinghe smiled faintly, surprised that Zhang Sandao wasn’t annoyed by her request to buy the hairpins, but was instead so welcoming.
Zhang Sandao, eager to keep her in his sight, deliberately slowed his chopping. He paused to ask her for specific instructions—this way or that way—before giving her an extra slice of meat, at least half a tael more than she’d paid for.
The woman standing nearby, her eyes sharp, immediately noticed. She started pointing and muttering in protest.
“Auntie,” Nie Qinghe said to her, “do you want this piece too? I know you were here first, but you didn’t say anything, so I went ahead and bought it. Sorry about that.”
Zhang Sandao laughed heartily. The more he looked at Nie Qinghe, the more beautiful she seemed—prettier than any immortal maiden in a painting. Her voice was just as lovely, as sweet as a yellow oriole. Following her request, he chopped the ribs into large pieces, wrapped them in two large lotus leaves, and bound them with straw rope.
When it came time to pay, he didn’t dare take the money directly from her hand, fearing he might soil her fair skin. Instead, he used his apron to cradle the coins.
“Business is booming, Boss,” Nie Qinghe said with a smile. “Until next time.”
Zhang Sandao watched her slender figure walk away. Tsk, tsk, he thought. Even the way a celestial maiden speaks is music to the ears!
As soon as Nie Qinghe was gone, the woman beside him leaned in, eager to find out who she was.
“You don’t know?” Zhang Sandao asked. “Miss Nie is quite a force. She’s the proprietress of Liu’s Shop.”
The woman, a kitchen maid from some household, had never set foot in such an upscale establishment. She curled her lip in disdain.
“A woman running a shop? Where are her manners? If you ask me, she’s just trying to seduce a wealthy man.” She pointed to a piece of fatty pork with a streak of lean meat. “I’ll take a pound of that. And cut it a bit to the side—give me an extra ounce. I saw you cut her a huge piece!”
Zhang Sandao deftly sliced a strip of meat and hung it on the scale. It weighed exactly one pound, not a fraction more.
The woman grumbled, annoyed that he hadn’t given her extra. The cut was too lean, with too little fat. She felt cheated.
Zhang Sandao grinned. “You asked me to cut it to the side, so I did. My apologies, the knife is just too heavy.”
***
As Nie Qinghe walked, the meat and ribs she carried in a straw-rope bundle drew many envious glances. A few children even followed her, sucking their fingers in anticipation.
By the time she reached the Embroidered Apparel Pavilion, her cousin and Xiaoli were already waiting at the entrance.
Seeing the meat, Xiaoli clapped his hands in delight. “Second Sister, you’re bringing meat home! Third Sister will have to call you a Bodhisattva.”
Their cousin smiled, her lips pressed together in amusement.
Passing the market east of Daci Pavilion, Nie Qinghe led them into a shop to weigh out a catty of sugar. It was expensive this time of year, costing around forty wen per catty.
They also bought five dried shiitake mushrooms and a large sheet of dried kelp. The kelp, brought from the east, was cheap, but the mushrooms, shipped up the canal from the south, were quite costly.
Outside in the market, they found a vegetable farmer specializing in winter melon, pumpkin, and radish. Though the winter melons weren’t fully grown, farmers would harvest them early to get to market first and make a quick profit.
Naturally, early produce was more expensive—a melon four fingers wide cost four wen.
Her cousin watched Nie Qinghe buy so much—all things Mother Nie usually couldn’t afford. After several attempts to hold back, she finally spoke up. “Qinghe, you need to be more careful with your spending. All this meat and vegetables… it’s too much.”
Nie Qinghe smiled. “Elder Brother is coming home today. I want to make him something delicious.”
Her cousin was astonished. Nie Qinghe’s devotion to her family was far greater than her affection for Song Qingyuan. In fact, she hadn’t heard Qinghe mention Song Qingyuan’s name once in days.
The shopping took so long that by the time they turned into the alley, they ran straight into Nie Dali.
Wearing the cloth shoes Nie Qinghe had given him and a neat, well-pressed outfit, Nie Dali looked every bit the tall, handsome young man.
“Eelder Brother, I’m so jealous of you!” Nie Xiaoli exclaimed.
Nie Dali hoisted Nie Xiaoli onto his shoulders. “What’s there to be envious about?”
“Because you’re coming home,” Nie Xiaoli declared, “Second Sister bought all these good things!”
Nie Dali burst into laughter, his heart swelling with joy.
Their cousin smiled. “When you start school, Second Sister will be sure to cook you something delicious every time you come home.”
“She will,” Nie Qinghe agreed.
As they stepped through the door, Nie Honghua came running out to meet them. Seeing the meat in Nie Qinghe’s hand, she clapped her hands in delight. “Second Sister, you’re a saint! I knew you’d buy meat!”