The summer harvest was a bit tough in the early stages, but by mid-June, when all the grain had been carted back home to continue drying, Zheng Kai was on summer vacation.
During this busy time, the children were either put into the space or, if that wasn’t possible, left with a neighbor—who was paid some money to help take care of them.
Thankfully, the busy period wasn’t very long, but for the remaining half a month, the grain still needed to be dried continuously before going to turn in the public grain.
While the drying work went on, the fields still needed attention: plowing, turning, and leveling the land, and planting the next season’s crops—a half-month’s endeavor.
Everything was taken care of by the end of June, and it absolutely had to be finished before the beginning of July, or else it would affect the harvest.
Once the fields were planted, his work went back to the routine of three fixed locations; however, starting in July, each day he would give a free egg to the first ten customers who spent at least one yuan.
One should not underestimate the value of that one egg—it was worth twenty cents.
This daily gift of ten eggs continued for a month, and when he started selling eggs again in August, even at twenty cents each, people bought them. After tasting his eggs, many could not bring themselves to eat eggs from anywhere else; his large eggs had an extremely fragrant yolk, indescribably delicious.
To ensure the robust growth of the fish and loaches in the autumn paddy fields, every evening he poured a substantial amount of space water into the rice fields. He had previously overlooked this detail, but now he hoped that his rice and aquaculture efforts would gain a surprising advantage.
By mid-September ’83, the Mid-Autumn Festival was upon them, and his shop introduced a range of handmade mooncakes, available for 50 cents each. With fillings like egg yolk, lotus seed paste, red bean paste, Five Nuts, and more—the variety was exhaustive. The ice cream mooncakes and ice skin mooncakes were especially famous in the area, incredibly beautiful and attracting countless onlookers and eager customers vying to place advance orders.
Even he had not imagined that Zheng’s Vegetable and Fruit would be featured in the newspaper, briefly becoming the most popular shop locally.
Thanks to the mooncakes, business improved significantly. Consequently, he had to hire a forty-something Sister Zhao to help out. Ma Rong also got a break, and now he didn’t need to stay to help, freeing up more time to do what he wanted.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, due to an overwhelming number of advance orders, he had no choice but to use the mooncake packaging from the space to sell. As one person simply couldn’t handle it all, it was fortunate there was something to fall back on. Moreover, he couldn’t sell them too expensive; at 50 cents each, regardless of the filling, the price was already quite fair.
In June, his monthly income reached 180 yuan, and by July, it had directly exceeded two hundred and fifty. August was even more impressive, nearly hitting three hundred, and by September, astonishingly, sales reached five hundred yuan. In October, riding on the residual popularity of the mooncakes, he sold egg cakes and bread. Although the income didn’t reach five hundred, it was nevertheless four hundred yuan. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novel_fіre.net
Zheng Long was delighted by this progressive increase since it signified that opening such a shop in this location was worthwhile.
By the end-of-year calculation, his total income for ’83 had reached three thousand yuan; when added to his previous savings, it amounted to four thousand yuan.
Before the New Year, he made and sold various local specialty snacks like New Year cakes, sticky bean buns, jujube cakes, and peanut brittle, receiving unanimous praise.
Now, his eggs sold at least one hundred a day, and although quail eggs were slightly more expensive, he still managed to sell four to five jin. Grape wine and Rice Flower Marinated Fish maintained steady sales throughout the year, especially before the New Year, with grape wine outselling rice wine.