“Another half-pound of pig’s head meat!”
The stall owner was a lean, dark-skinned man nearing fifty, with a faded yellow towel draped over one shoulder.
The moment he saw a customer take a seat, he hurried over with a long-spouted bronze kettle and promptly filled the tea bowl on the table with hot water.
“Coming right up, sir! Your noodle soup will be ready in a moment.” The stall owner’s face was wreathed in the ingratiating smile of a man eager for business. “Half a pound of pig’s head meat, sliced fresh! Plain noodles can be a bit dull on their own—you clearly know your food. I’ll save you the fattest pieces!”
Xu Youde picked up the tea bowl, blew aside the scum floating on top, and took a sip.
“Boss,” Xu Youde said casually, picking up the conversation, “add a couple more spoonfuls of that rich gravy.”
“Will do!”
The stall owner turned back to the great iron pot, which was boiling furiously.
He grabbed a handful of raw noodles, shook them loose, and dropped them all into the rolling white broth. Then he picked up a pair of bamboo chopsticks nearly two feet long and stirred the noodles through the water.
“Judging by your accent, you’re not from around here?” the stall owner asked, turning his head as he worked.
The polite smile on his face collapsed, replaced by the bitter expression common to ordinary folk in the marketplace.
“Are you an accountant from out of town, here to audit the books? Well, these days, life in Jiangning is forcing everyone to live with an abacus in hand. The prices of firewood, rice, oil, and salt have risen beyond all reason!
“I get up before dawn and work until nightfall to simmer this pot of bone broth. I sell dozens of bowls every day, yet somehow the copper coins I take home are less than they were last month!”
Xu Youde followed his lead and asked, “Jiangning lies right beside the Grand Canal. When have the grain barges traveling north and south ever stopped coming? Surely the city isn’t so short of grain that it can’t put rice and flour into its cooking pots each day?”
The stall owner lifted out the cooked noodles and began straining them.
“You don’t know what filthy business is going on behind the scenes.” Wiping the sweat from his brow with the coarse cloth over his shoulder, the stall owner complained, “Just after noon yesterday, more than a dozen heavily laden sand barges came through the canal lock. Every one of them flew a yellow flag bearing a Huguang merchant’s mark!”
“The dockhands unloading them said the holds were packed to the brim with newly harvested rice from Huguang.”
He placed a few blanched leaves of greens over the noodles, then ladled a large spoonful of bone broth on top.
“With such a huge shipment of grain entering the warehouses, rice prices in the city should have fallen, shouldn’t they?” The stall owner carried the steaming bowl to the table and set it gently in front of Xu Youde.
“But the prices displayed on the signs of those rice shops north and south of the city not only failed to drop—by this evening, a dou of rice had actually risen another five coins!”
“The shop assistants outside those stores were acting like tyrants. They pointed at the neighbors waiting in line and cursed at them, saying, ‘Buy it if you want. If not, get lost—and don’t come crying when we raise the price again tomorrow!’”
The stall owner let out a heavy sigh.
“We common folk work ourselves to the bone to earn a few coins. Before the money has even had time to warm in our palms, every last bit of it ends up lining the pockets of those rice merchants.”
Xu Youde picked up the bamboo chopsticks and held them suspended over the bowl.
Grain ships from Huguang had entered the harbor. There was absolutely no shortage in the city’s reserves.
So why were market prices rising against all reason?
Before Xu Youde could fully piece together his thoughts, the stall owner standing nearby suddenly straightened his back.
“But then again, let the price of rice rise if it wants to!” The bitterness vanished from his face, replaced by unconcealed confidence. “As long as a man has real gold and silver—sound currency—in his hands, he can get by even if Heaven itself collapses!”
Xu Youde stirred the layer of oil floating on the noodles and blew twice to cool them.
“Oh? Have you found yourself a profitable venture, Boss?”
The stall owner hurried back to the chopping board and swung down his meat cleaver.
The sound of the blade slicing pig’s head meat immediately formed an unbroken rhythm.
“I run this noodle stall, so every coin I earn comes from backbreaking labor.” The stall owner gathered the glossy red slices together with the back of the cleaver and placed them on a plate.
“But my eldest daughter just turned eighteen! Half a month ago, the new textile factory south of the city opened its doors and started hiring again. She made up her own mind to apply, and right there on the spot, she pressed her fingerprint to a long-term labor contract with the manager!”
The stall owner rubbed his hands twice against his apron, then brought over the plate of sliced meat, pride ringing in his voice.
“That big factory doesn’t play games with payment conversions, and it doesn’t use shoddy privately minted coins with clipped edges or missing corners. When payday comes, they pay in full-quality silver—every single coin accounted for!”
“A few days ago, my eldest girl brought home half a month’s wages and meal allowance. When that piece of silver landed on the dining table, the sound it made…” He smacked his lips. “Now that was crisp!”
“My wife and I shut the door and discussed it for the whole night. As long as my eldest girl keeps working steadily at the factory, and my stall continues bringing in money, in less than three years we’ll be able to rent a proper storefront on Jiangning’s main street and open a respectable restaurant!”
With that, the stall owner pointed at a child crouching by the stove some distance away.
The boy’s face was smeared with ash from the firewood. He was struggling to snap dry branches and feed them into the flames.
“Hahahaha! I’ve already planned out this little brat’s future too!” The stall owner stared at his son, his words carrying both fierce determination and hope.
“I’m not counting on him to study the Sages’ books or become some sour-faced licentiate!”
“Once I’ve saved enough money over the next few months, I’ll send him straight to the arithmetic class set up outside the new factory! He can learn the Hundred Family Surnames from the teachers there, along with the bookkeeping and calculation methods used specifically for doing business.”
“After he’s old enough in a few years, he can apply to the factory and become a clerk who keeps the accounts and handles the writing. Then he’ll have a solid foundation for the rest of his life!”
Xu Youde listened without revealing anything, chewing slowly on a mouthful of noodles coated in gravy.
“Sir.” The stall owner leaned toward the table and lowered his voice. “What I’m about to say, I’ve only mentioned to you today.”
“My wife went to burn incense at the City God Temple earlier, and she came back with a whole bellyful of infuriating gossip.”
Xu Youde set down his chopsticks at just the right moment.
“Oh? What sort of gossip?”
“That old scholar who usually makes a living writing letters for people at the temple gate seemed to have lost his mind today.”
The stall owner knitted his brows, his disgust plain to see.
“He stood on the steps all day, shouting at anyone who passed by. He said that the vast factory complex built south of the city had gathered young girls barely in their teens together with rough men from out of town, all laboring in the same compound.”
“He said it violated a thousand years of tradition and utterly destroyed feminine virtue. All he could talk about was how it was immoral, indecent, and the source of calamity upon calamity!”
The stall owner ground his teeth.
“That damned old fossil even shouted names in the street. He said the person who started these factories and brought women out of the home to work was a female official in the capital named Xu Qinghuan! The old scholar cursed that woman surnamed Xu with every filthy word he knew, saying she spouted demonic nonsense to mislead the emperor and had corrupted the moral order and decency of Great Qian!”
Xu Youde’s breathing grew heavier.
Those rotten Confucian scholars who spent their days rotting away in studies actually dared to smear people so viciously in the streets and before the imperial court!
Before Xu Youde could lose his temper—
“Bah!”
The stall owner suddenly spun around and spat viciously at the empty patch of ground beside the stove.
