Other than that, Qin Xiangnuan didn’t feel much, but that sentence about staying a grade behind to attend school with her brother seemed pretty good. However, she couldn’t just not open the pancake shop; they had only saved thousands of dollars, which was not enough, not nearly enough.
After waiting for decades, a place would cost hundreds of thousands or millions. If they were going to study in Beijing, future expenses would be even greater. They had no one to rely on, only themselves. But if both siblings went to school, they couldn’t run the business. It wouldn’t be possible to get up in the middle of the night to set up the stall and make pancakes, nor could they stay in the shop all day.
If the shop closed, she would really miss it.
So, they needed to think of a solution.
The shop absolutely couldn’t close; their family shop’s location was unlike any other and could actually be operated 24 hours a day.
"Ah, child, what are you making Aunt Hua do here?"
Aunt Hua was sitting on the tricycle, initially thinking the children wanted her help with shopping, but then confused as to why they had brought her to the bus station.
"Auntie, please sit," Qin Xiangnuan told Aunt Hua to sit on a small stool next to her, and then she and Wendi made pancakes and sold porridge.
Although there were now many other food stalls around, their business was still the best. They had returning customers, and their food tasted better than what others made.
Pancakes sold one by one, porridge served bowl by bowl, every ten cents carefully placed inside a shoe box. No one knew exactly how much was in there; in a short while, it was already filled to the brim.
Aunt Hua could sit still at first, but soon she was breaking out in a cold sweat, occasionally clutching her clothes, feeling as if she was sitting on nails, extremely uncomfortable.
In the evening, Qin Xiangnuan and her brother sat together with Aunt Hua’s family.
And Aunt Hua hadn’t yet recovered from her afternoon at the pancake shop.
"Nuannuan, Yangyang, are you saying that shop is yours?"
Aunt Hua’s voice stuttered, hardly believing what she heard, but her eyes had seen how much money could be made. Just in the short time she was there, over a hundred pancakes had been sold, each for ten cents. So many pancakes could be made from just one pound of flour.
"Yes, Auntie," Qin Xiangyang nodded, "We initially just worked there for the previous owner. Later, when the owner wanted to return to his hometown and wouldn’t be coming back, he felt sorry for us siblings. Before he left, he taught us all the recipes and gave the shop to us, though we did pay a small fee of about 200 yuan for it. It’s only recently that we managed to save enough money, and now we’re considering school."
"Auntie, this shop is now, essentially, a pancake shop run by me and my sister. We make over 30 yuan a day," - actually, at their best, they made nearly 200 yuan a day, but it was indeed very tiring, several people bustling from dawn to dusk without a break, though he didn’t mention all that since his sister preferred to downplay their earnings.
They weren’t worried about Aunt Hua, but other people might envy them.
"That much?" Aunt Hua’s sons were shocked to hear this number. Thirty yuan a day meant nearly a thousand in a month; could businesses really earn that much? Exhausting themselves all year, they hoped to just reach that thousand, while they made it back in a month.
Aunt Hua had seen it with her own eyes. Not just thirty, she would believe even fifty. The money was like snowflakes falling from the sky, cascading down. It was utterly unimaginable. She had never witnessed such a terrifying rate of earning money.