HLnovel Chapter 164: Encounter with the Bookseller
Chapter 164: Encounter with the Bookseller
In addition to the New Year's goods that Jia Guizhi and Lin Shuzhen sent back to their parents' home, the Gu family also had meat, eggs, fish, vegetables, condiments, sugar, cakes, cloth, red paper, incense, candles, paper money and other things for the New Year's celebration, ancestor worship and entertaining guests. Gu Wenxuan and her friends also purchased some other things for giving gifts to relatives.
These things will not be given away now, but will be kept until after the New Year, when people greet each other and then take them out for gift exchanges.
It is worth mentioning that long before Laba Festival, Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou had already sent people to deliver the New Year gifts to the Mu family and the Peng family.
The most valuable item among the holiday gifts they gave to the Mu and Peng families was a big gift package of green vegetables produced on their own farm.
Scallions, Chinese cabbage, coriander, spinach, leeks, celery... everything was picked to be the best.
In addition, they also prepared big gift packages of mountain products for both families, which included the best hazelnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, walnuts, persimmons, red dates, etc.
These were not worth much to Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou, so in addition to these, they also gave each of the two families a wild sheep, two big fish, and two wolf skins.
They bought the wolf skins from hunters. Although the price was a bit high, the skins were of top quality and could be used as gifts.
Not long after Jia Guizhi and Lin Shuzhen sent New Year's gifts to their respective parents' homes, Fang Yougui's wife Feng gave birth to their daughter Xiaojuan.
Although Fang Yougui is the child of the second brother of Gu Xing's husband Fang Dashan, and strictly speaking has no blood relationship with the Gu family, their family has helped the Gu family a lot in the past.
Not to mention that since the beginning of this year, Fang Yougui has been working with Gu Wenxuan.
The two families have a good relationship, so whether they are related by blood or not is not a big deal.
When Fang Yougui's wife Feng gave birth, not only did Li, Jia Guizhi and Lin Shuzhen go to see the ceremony on behalf of their entire family, but even Gu Wenxuan, in the name of "the host", asked three female elders in her family to send some things to Feng and Xiaojuan.
After Ning Cuizhi heard about this, she also took some things and went to visit Feng's mother and daughter.
The Fang family was very surprised, but they also understood that Ning Cuizhi was doing this for the sake of the Gu family's reputation.
After Xiaojuan had passed the third day of her bath, Bai Jingzhou came to Gu Wenxuan's house with generous gifts.
He sent two ducks, two fish, a fan of pork, a bag of glutinous rice, two boxes of snacks, two boxes of candies, two cans of tea, and two jars of good wine to Gu Wenxuan's family.
Although the villagers didn't know exactly what was in his car, they couldn't help but feel envious just by looking at the whole car.
Those who are more rational can convince themselves by saying that each family has different situations, but those who are greedy can't help but criticize their son-in-law or future son-in-law.
Of course, Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou wouldn't care about these.
The Gu family happily accepted the gifts from Bai Jingzhou, and then gave back two chickens, half a mutton, two jars of good wine, two boxes of preserved fruits, and two pieces of fine cloth.
Sheep are considered a rare commodity here, and the Gu family was able to buy them thanks to their hunter relatives in a village as big as Jiajia Village.
Hunters deal a lot with mountain people, so it is relatively easy to buy things from them.
Bai Jingzhou had a meal at Gu's house, and then drove the ox cart slowly back home.
The villagers saw him send away a whole cart and bring back half a cart. The most important thing was that there was half a mutton in the half cart which was very valuable. This made them very jealous.
Someone murmured quietly, "No wonder Bai Chong and his wife are so willing to give up. The Gu family didn't take advantage of them at all."
The implication is that the reason why Bai Jingzhou's family gave so many gifts to Gu Wenxuan's family was because they were sure that Gu Wenxuan's family would reciprocate and not let them suffer too much.
This person said casually that he didn't think there was anything wrong, but those families who only wanted their son-in-law or future son-in-law to bring things to their home but didn't even want to provide them with a meal felt that they were being secretly targeted.
Not to mention how many disputes they had with the other party and his relatives and friends because of this man's words, let's just talk about Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou.
On the 22nd day of the twelfth lunar month, the two men visited various farms and distributed the rewards that they deserved to the farmers.
They were running around in order from near to far, and they definitely couldn't return to Baijia Village that night. But they didn't have their own place to stay on the farm, so they planned to stay in a house in the county town for one night and get up early tomorrow to go to the next place.
The two of them took a hired carriage into the city. Gu Wenxuan smelled the fragrance of food along the way and suddenly felt even hungrier, so she suggested eating before returning to the house.
Their big house was very close to the bustling commercial district of the county town. The two got off the carriage near their house, made an appointment with the coachman about what time he would pick them up the next morning, and then walked forward while swallowing their saliva, looking for food.
Gu Wenxuan was so obsessed with using her nose to find delicious food that she walked too fast and almost bumped into a middle-aged man holding a book box.
Bai Jingzhou quickly pulled her aside, and then asked the middle-aged man, whose eyes were red and lips were tightly pursed, but who tried to straighten his back, in a gentle voice, "Are you okay?"
The middle-aged man shook his head. "Sorry, I was a little distracted. Did I bump into you two?"
Gu Wenxuan looked at him curiously.
This person had just been "invited" out by the bookstore owner. She had sharp ears and eyes, and although it was just a quick glance, she was able to quickly summarize what had happened from the whispers of the people around her.
This middle-aged man looked like a scholar. From what I heard from people around him, he took a set of four books to sell to a bookstore, and asked for eighty taels of silver.
The bookstore owner bargained down to thirty taels, but the middle-aged man shook his head and insisted on eighty taels.
Among the onlookers, someone whispered that he must have lost his mind as he was asking eighty taels of silver for a set of the Four Books.
At present, ordinary sets of the Four Books sold in bookstores usually cost one tael and two qian of silver, while those with annotations cost three to five taels.
Although the middle-aged man repeatedly emphasized that the set in his hand was left by his great-grandfather and was very valuable, the bookstore owner still refused to give him more silver.
It is true that the middle-aged man’s great-grandfather, the person who annotated the Four Books, was a nobleman who had passed the imperial examination and served as a prefect. The books he annotated must have been very good, but the problem was that most scholars preferred a teacher who could answer their questions at any time rather than reading the annotations themselves.
Only those who cannot afford to go to private school but really want to study will grit their teeth and buy a book with annotated notes to read on their own.
But the question is, how much money can those who do this have to buy books?
The original version was purchased for eighty taels, and then one had to spend money to hire someone to copy or print it. How many copies would the bookstore have to sell to barely make back the cost?