Hou Yong made a rough calculation. Half a jin of stone flower seeds could yield about one basin of ice jelly, which weighed around ten jin. If the ice jelly was cut into small pieces and portioned out into bowls, it could make at least fifty bowls or so.
At fifty cents a bowl, selling the entire half jin in a single day would bring in a gross profit of twenty-five yuan—as much as his monthly factory salary.
Who the hell would want to go to work for that kind of money anymore?!
Yet Hou Yong was not blindly optimistic. In this era of material scarcity, no one could predict how well the market would respond to this product.
After making his purchases, Hou Yong took a tractor straight back to the village. Gu Panpan and Hou Dongdong spent the entire afternoon rubbing another jin of stone flower seeds.
Gu Panpan did almost all of the work. Although Dong'er was sensible, she was still too young, and her two frail arms were so sore she could barely lift them.
Hou Yong busied himself until nearly eleven o'clock at night before finally finishing all the preparations. Since he had to take the bus into the city the next morning, he went over to Auntie Wang's place next door to borrow a carrying pole.
The following day, just as the sky was turning pale and the first rooster crowed, it woke up the entire Bafang Village.
Aroused by the rooster's crow, Hou Yong opened his eyes, got up, and washed up simply. He found that Gu Panpan had also walked out from the neighboring room.
"Brother Yong, I want to go into the city with you too."
Gu Panpan's voice was gentle, but her tone was firm and allowed for no refusal.
For a brief moment, Hou Yong felt a sense of disorientation. Back when his company was just starting out in his past life, it was also Gu Panpan who had accompanied him, going from door to door to build the market through field promotion.
Though two lifetimes had passed in a flash, the person before him remained unchanged, never shifting at all.
"Alright, then we'll go together."
Hou Yong smiled and did not refuse.
To get to the city, they still had to take a tractor to the county town first, and then transfer to a suburban bus to the city proper.
Hou Yong prepared his sister's breakfast, left her lunch sitting in the pot, hoisted the carrying pole, and boarded the tractor.
"Monkey, you going into the city to haul nightsoil?"
"What's this? Does the nightsoil in the city smell better than the stuff in our village, or is it worth more than ours?"
A few idlers from the same village saw Hou Yong carrying the pole and could not resist tossing out a couple of teasing remarks.
Hou Yong smiled coldly. The aloofness in his gaze made the idlers feel quite uncomfortable. Two of them rolled up their sleeves and stepped forward, when suddenly a whip cracked through the air nearby, letting out a sharp explosion.
The idlers froze in place, too scared to move.
It was Old Gu's whip.
"Do you idle loafers have nothing better to do all day because you're too full? Not a single one of you does any proper work, the fields are so neglected they're sprouting weeds, yet here you are wagging your tongues like gossiping old women."
Old Gu walked over, grumbling and cursing, tapping the tip of his whip against the tractor. "Clear off back where you came from. Talk nonsense again and this whip of mine won't show any mercy."
The idlers scurried away in embarrassment. Old Gu turned his gaze to Hou Yong. "How many did you prepare?"
"Eighty bowls."
"If you can't sell them, you'd better honestly go back to work at the factory. And another thing—if you smash those bowls of mine, just wait and see if I don't beat the life out of you."
With his hands behind his back, Old Gu muttered as he walked off. Hou Yong had gone over late last night to borrow the tableware from Old Gu because all the bowls at home had chips in them, and bringing those out for business simply wouldn't do.
The borrowed bowls were the ones the villagers shared whenever they hosted banquets. Hou Yong hadn't planned on buying uniform-style bowls in the early stages anyway—when it came to costs, you cut them down wherever you could.
Two carrying poles and four buckets: two buckets held well water for washing the tableware, one bucket held the ice jelly, and one held the tableware and small condiment jars.
Uncle Zhao, who was driving the tractor, asked Hou Yong what he was doing going to the city with all these bags and bundles. Hou Yong didn't hide it, saying he was going to the city to do a small business and sell some food.
Doing business wasn't something to hide, nor could it be hidden anyway. He was going to run his small venture openly and resolve all his family's problems first.
Uncle Zhao didn't ask in detail. There were always people from the village bringing things to the county town to sell; eggs and firewood were the most common, while some handy ones made handkerchiefs and small cloths, and the more literate ones copied books for the county bookstore. In short, every family had its own way of making a living.
Everyone wanted to live a little more comfortably.
The tractor soon reached the county town. Coinciding with the morning market, the streets were bustling with coming and going crowds.
"Brother Yong, should we sell them here?"
Gu Panpan looked around. "There are a lot of people here. There'll definitely be quite a few wanting to try something new."
"That reasoning is sound, but it doesn't match our product."
Hou Yong patiently explained, "The pedestrian traffic here is huge, but right now a meat bun costs only forty cents, while a bowl of ice jelly costs fifty. Most people won't choose it. Besides, it's only morning, not the hottest part of the day yet, so selling ice jelly won't yield great results."
Gu Panpan thought for a moment, then smiled. "Brother Yong, you're really amazing."
"..."
Hou Yong raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
After waiting for the bus at the station and enduring another hour or more of tossing and turning on the road, the two finally arrived in the city.
The buildings on both sides of the street were predominantly gray, with rows of connected courtyard houses and alleyways branching out in all directions. Real estate had not yet taken off in this era, so the street architecture hadn't changed much compared to the county town, but looking at the clothing and styling of the people walking on the street, the distinct difference was immediately apparent.
At ten o'clock in the morning, the sun was already high. By this time, the temperature had risen quite a bit. Hou Yong spent fifty cents at a nearby fruit shop to borrow two tables, and after finally finding a spot at the end of the street, he immediately began setting up his stall.
As it neared eleven o'clock, Hou Yong's ice jelly stall finally opened for business.
One table at the front was for customers to eat at, while the other displayed samples of the ice jelly.
Each small bowl held a piece of ice jelly: some were drizzled with black brown sugar on top, some used leftover syrup from yesterday, and others used dried hawthorn berries soaked in water, chopped up, and simply sprinkled across the top.
"Ice jelly here! Delicious ice jelly, cool and refreshing to beat the heat, a heart-chilling bowl right here!"
Hou Yong cried out his wares with a beaming smile. Having traveled far and wide in his past life and worked his way up from the very bottom, this kind of thing was already second nature to him.
In truth, whether in the present or later generations, many people feel too shy to speak up when doing business. But in this era, a business was built up little by little, word by word.
"Heat-relief miracle, free tasting, first come, first served!"
When Hou Yong first raised his voice to call out, Gu Panpan froze for a split second. Then, as if giving herself a mental pep talk for a long moment, she followed suit, standing beside Hou Yong and chiming in with her own cries.
Unlike Hou Yong's distinctly northern-accented voice, Gu Panpan's speech carried a soft, melodic Jiangnan charm. Soon enough, quite a few people were stopping in front of the stall.
A middle-aged man in his thirties, already somewhat plump, stared at the ice jelly at the bottom of the bowl. He hesitated for a split second before asking tentatively, "Little sister, what is this stuff? How come I've never seen it before?"