In the capital, Shen Guanting thought constantly of the pastry shop in Huzhou. But the shop had not waited for him; it had gone and changed first.
Lin Wu rented the tofu shop next door.
Although the shop stood right beside the old pastry shop, its entrance faced the main street. Even though it was at the very end of the street, it was still far better than being tucked away around a corner. The rent was consequently a little higher—nine hundred wen a month. Lin Wu did the sums based on their current earnings and decided they could manage it.
The two shops shared a wall. After discussing it with the former owner and the Liang family, Lin Wu planned to hire someone to open a small door in the wall. That way, the shop would immediately feel much more spacious.
Lin Jing was more excited than anyone. He ran back and forth inside the shop, now saying that tables should go here, now pointing out where the shelves ought to be. With his little fingers directing everything, he truly had the air of a shopkeeper. Unfortunately, he had to attend the academy, so he could only take a look after classes ended. Whenever it was time to leave, he turned back every few steps, as if afraid the shop might run away.
The day before they returned to the academy after the Qingming Festival, several little heads huddled together and whispered as they plotted all the way there.
When they arrived at the academy, Lin Jing did not go to Yunshan Studio first. Instead, he made straight for the beginner’s classroom. He untied A-Fu the Puppy from his book bag and held it in his palm as though it were some priceless treasure.
Sure enough, one little head after another leaned over.
“Jing, what’s that? Let me see.”
“It’s a little dog!”
“It’s so soft. And it’s even wearing tiny clothes.”
The cloth doll was passed among more than a dozen small hands, squeezed and kneaded until it nearly lost its shape.
The little dog was round and chubby, dressed in a simple scholar’s robe. It was not as brightly colored as a Mohouluo doll, but its plain appearance only made people want to reach out and touch it. It was small and light, perfect for hanging from a book bag. At a glance, it looked exactly like a little schoolchild on his way to class.
The children were all green with envy.
Tigerhead snatched A-Fu back and announced proudly, “This is a cloth doll from A-Fu Workshop. Isn’t it especially nice?”
“What’s A-Fu Workshop? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s our new shop,” Tigerhead explained confidently. “The first shop in all of Huzhou to sell A-Fu cloth dolls. We have all twelve zodiac animals!”
Qi Lang silently took out a small booklet, neatly bound, with a brightly colored, adorably plump cloth doll drawn on every page.
“These are the little cloth dolls from A-Fu Workshop.” He flipped open a page and showed it to the classmates gathering around him. “One costs sixty wen. If you want a little outfit made for it, that’s another ten wen.”
They had spent several days discussing the price. The dolls were small, but they used fine cloth, lacquered wooden beads, and cotton batting. Once the embroiderer’s wages were included, each doll cost around thirty-five wen to make. For now, the fine cloth and cotton batting came from the Shen family’s cloth workshop, but they could not keep using those materials for free forever. The cost would have to be counted in eventually.
Earning twenty-five wen per doll might sound like a lot, but the profits had to be divided among five people. They might also need to rent a shop in the future, and money would be needed for everything. The children had whispered and calculated the figures over and over before finally settling on a price of sixty wen.
As soon as their classmates heard the price, they accepted it. After all, it was much cheaper than a Mohouluo doll.
They stretched their necks to look at the little booklet.
“Do you have mine? I was born in the hour of the Horse, so I want a little horse!”
“Then I’m a Goat! What does the little goat look like?”
“I want a tiger, just like Tigerhead!”
The children chattered all at once, pushing and shoving until they nearly tore the booklet apart.
Qi Lang hurriedly held it protectively against his chest. “Don’t pull on it. If you tear it, it’ll be ruined.”
Lin Jing, meanwhile, remained perfectly calm. He skillfully took out his own little booklet, flipped to a fresh page, and picked up his brush.
“One at a time. What kind of cloth doll do you want? What color? Do you want it to have a little outfit?”
He knew many more characters now, and his writing had become smooth and practiced. He could match all his classmates’ names to their faces and remember them with ease. He looked just like a proper little bookkeeper.
“I want a little monkey!”
“I want a little rabbit.”
“I don’t want an outfit. I’ll ask my mother to make one.”
By the time they finished, nearly every child in the classroom had ordered a doll. The designs were evenly distributed, with most children choosing the animal corresponding to their birth hour.
Tigerhead was still showing off, holding up his little tiger with the crooked ear. “My General Tiger is the best-looking! It’s so mighty and majestic!”
A classmate beside him was still clutching A-Fu the Puppy and refused to let go. “I still like A-Fu best. Since it’s called A-Fu Workshop, A-Fu must be the shop’s mascot. It’s definitely cuter than the tiger.”
Tigerhead thought about it, then nodded. “You’re right.”
When you were doing business, the mascot was the most important thing. He certainly was not going to undermine his own shop. No matter how good-looking General Tiger was, it still had to make way for A-Fu.
When Lin Jing returned to the shop, he followed behind Lin Wu, chattering without pause.
“So many people ordered cloth dolls today! My little booklet is almost full…”
Lin Wu glanced at the string of trinkets hanging from his book bag. There was the jade-pores bookmark he had owned from before, along with the little wooden sword and small copper bell Shen Guanting had given him, as well as several odds and ends he had acquired from who knew where. They hung in a noisy row, jingling and clanking together. Now a chubby A-Fu the Puppy had joined them, squeezed into the middle. It swung three times with every step, making the whole arrangement lively and bustling.
“You could hang a little sign above A-Fu,” Lin Wu said as she tidied the counter. “Write ‘A-Fu Workshop’ on it. Then everyone will know at a glance that the doll is from your shop.”
Lin Jing’s eyes lit up. “That’s right! I’ll tell Tigerhead and the others tomorrow!”
After saying this, he set down his book bag, rolled up his sleeves, and prepared to help. After school that day, he had not gone to A-Fu Workshop but had come straight to the pastry shop instead.
The tofu shop next door had already been emptied. Over the past few days, whenever business at the pastry shop was slow, Lin Wu and Mrs. Sun had come over to tidy it bit by bit. The layout was exactly the same as the pastry shop’s—long and narrow. Once everything had been moved out, the space seemed rather bare.
Lin Wu led Lin Jing around the shop, gesturing as she went.
“When the shop closes for the ten-day break, we’ll have a craftsman come and open a door here. From then on, we’ll be able to go in and out through this side.”
She pointed to the wall in the middle. “With a wall between us, the cooking smoke from next door won’t drift over, which is nice. Most of the things from the original pastry shop will stay there, and that’s where we’ll continue preparing the food. We’ll just move the payment counter over here. Then we can set out several tables and chairs so customers can sit here to eat.”
Lin Jing was so excited that he ran back and forth several times. When he reached the spot where the counter would go, he stopped, measured it with his hands, and tilted up his little head.
“Then my stool has to be moved over too, and the money box!”
“Of course. Little Shopkeeper A-Jing’s place will be the very first thing we move,” Lin Wu replied with a smile.
That day, she took Lin Jing to the carpenter’s shop to order tables and chairs. While she was there, she also ordered the seals and little bamboo tags that A-Fu Workshop would need.
The shop had room for four sets of tables and chairs: three sets along one side, and one against the wall on the other, with a passage left open down the middle. It would not be cramped, but neither would it be too spacious. Lin Wu did not want to pack the shop too full. The customers should be comfortable when they sat down, and she herself needed room to move around.
Two more tables could fit beneath the awning outside. She planned to wait and see how business went before adding them. Otherwise, the shop would look too empty all day, and that would make it seem rather desolate.
The walls of the shop were spotlessly clean, so Lin Wu took it upon herself to paint several illustrations of the pastries and snacks the bakery sold: pancakes, steamed buns, stuffed buns, green rice dumplings, and more, all rendered in bright, lively colors. She hung them up one by one, and they looked far warmer and more inviting than scrolls of poetry or calligraphy.
On the windowsill sat two bunches of flowers, bought from Second Madam Zhao. The pale pink and white blossoms, set off by their green leaves, added an extra touch of life to the shop.
The doorway in the middle wall had no wooden door, only a green cotton curtain embroidered with the two characters "Shuang Mu". The curtain hung low, swaying gently whenever the wind blew, and stood out vividly even from inside the shop.
The daylight outside was still bright, and the sunlight streamed in, casting the shadows of the flowers onto the tables. The tables were newly made, their wood still a pale shade, and the flower shadows resting on them made the space feel far from empty, as if someone had painted delicate floral patterns right onto the surface.
Lin Jing and Tigerhead, meanwhile, could not keep still. The two of them darted back and forth through the green curtain, one squeezing in from one side and the other popping out from the other, never tiring of the game and making the curtain swing back and forth nonstop.
After a few rounds, Tigerhead suddenly came to a stop in front of the counter. He cleared his throat and said in a perfectly serious tone, "Shopkeeper, I would like three steamed buns, two stuffed buns, and one pancake."
Lin Jing immediately scurried around behind the counter, pretended to glance over the countertop, and called out in a drawn-out, exaggerated voice, "Coming right up, honored guest! Just a moment please!"
He turned and ducked behind the curtain, deliberately dawdling for a while, before emerging again empty-handed and holding his hands out toward Tigerhead. "Here are your steamed buns, stuffed buns, and pancake, honored guest! Enjoy your meal!"
Tigerhead took the "food" with both hands, tucked it against his chest, and whispered loudly, "Shopkeeper, bring me a bowl of wontons!"
Lin Jing raised his voice again, "Honored guest, take a seat over here, it will be ready shortly."
Tigerhead plopped down onto a chair.
The two of them put on quite a convincing performance, bustling around in their little game. Leaning against the doorframe, Lin Wu could not help but laugh to herself. She thought that if these two really worked as errand boys in her shop, the customers would probably be scared off by all their commotion before they even stepped through the door.
Now that the shop space was larger, she had been thinking about adding two new items to the menu: wontons and rice noodle soup. Both dishes were made to order, only requiring one single pot. The ingredients could all be prepped ahead, so they would not create extra work. The rice noodles were steamed from rice milk, similar to mung bean noodles, and there were pre-made ones available for purchase at the local noodle shop. They could boil the broth and chop all the toppings in advance, cut the noodles into strips, and all they would need to do when a customer came in was drop the noodles into boiling water for a quick cook.
She had worked out that adding these two new dishes would give customers a reason to sit down and stay a while, making the shop feel lively and like a proper place to have a meal. And since all their existing items were dry snacks, adding two warm, soup-based dishes would give their customers more variety to choose from.
As for wontons and rice noodle soup, they were sold at every street food stall around, so they were nothing special, and she did not expect to make much extra profit from them. The shop was still short-staffed, and they already had plenty of existing items to manage. Every new addition had to be carefully planned out, no rushing to add too many things at once. The right amount was all that was needed.
Once everything was all arranged, the expanded Shuang Mu Bakery quietly opened for business.
Regular customers had noticed all the activity of the past few days, and as soon as they stepped through the door, they smiled and offered their congratulations. "Congratulations, Shopkeeper Lin! We've been watching you renovate the space next door for days, and it's finally open. We absolutely have to come and try your new food."
Lin Wu smiled back at them. "We've added a few new soup dishes, fresh pork wontons, shrimp and pork wontons, and fresh pork rice noodle soup. The broth was simmered fresh this morning, it's incredibly flavorful. It's only seventeen coins a bowl, very affordable. Would you like to give it a try?"
The price was almost the same as what the street stalls charged, so the regular customers nodded immediately. "Then give me a bowl of the rice noodle soup." They paid at the counter and walked deeper into the shop.
The interior of the shop was bright and tidy. The walls were hung with paintings, the windowsills decorated with flowers, and the middle doorway draped with that vivid green curtain. All the tables and chairs were spotless, their lacquered surfaces glossy, clearly newly made instead of picked up secondhand from the flea market. There was plenty of wide aisle space between the tables, so sitting there felt very comfortable.
The newly arrived customer sat down at a table, looked around, and said, "This shop is decorated so nicely, it's so clean and refreshing."
Lin Wu got busy behind the stove. The bone broth and the fresh pork had been prepped earlier, the bones simmering all morning long. She dropped the rice noodles into the boiling water, cooked them for a short while, fished them out, drained the excess water, and slid them into a bowl. She added the seasonings, spooned a scoop of braised pork topping over the noodles, and sprinkled a handful of chopped green scallions on top, and the dish was done.
Mrs. Sun carried the bowl over to the customer on a tray, then pointed to a small jar on the table. "Honored guest, there are sauces on the table, both sweet and savory ones. If you think the flavor isn't strong enough, feel free to add as much as you like."
"Wonderful, that's very thoughtful of you," the customer said, noticing that every other table had the same set of sauces too.
Over by the pancake griddle, Fourth Sister He was hard at work. Lin Wu had been teaching her how to flip pancakes and wrap stuffed buns for the past few days, and after all that practice, she had gotten the hang of it.
Lin Wu finished making one bowl of rice noodle soup, then turned around to start wrapping wontons. She would handle both the new wonton and rice noodle dishes herself, and whenever she had free time, she would work with Mrs. Sun to make steamed buns and stuffed buns. The four of them divided up the work, and they managed to keep up with the flow of customers easily.
The customer looked down at his bowl of rice noodle soup. There was a generous portion of braised pork topping, the scallions were bright green, and the broth was clear and light, looking quite mild at first glance. He picked up a pair of chopsticks, lifted a mouthful of noodles, and blew on them before taking a bite. He paused in surprise. The taste was not as light as it looked. The broth was deeply savory, not the harsh, overly salty kind of savory, but the rich, mellow flavor that only came from hours of simmering bones. The rice noodles were slippery, sliding right into his mouth with one slurp. They were soft but not mushy, soaking up all the delicious flavor of the broth. The noodles were cut wider and flatter than the ones sold at other shops, and each bite felt thick and satisfying.
After a few bites, he spooned some of the savory sauce into the bowl, stirred it around, and the broth turned a deeper, richer color, bringing a whole new layer of flavor to the dish. He ate a few more mouthfuls quickly, until beads of sweat pricked at his forehead, feeling thoroughly warm and happy.
Seeing a new customer just sit down at the next table, he could not help but call out loudly in praise, "This broth is incredible!"
