Early the next morning, Fan Changyu left Changningg with Madam Zhao and set out with over 300 wens and a silver hairpin in her pocket.
The hairpin was a gift from her parents for her coming-of-age ceremony, costing over two taels of silver.
By pawning this hairpin, she should be able to gather enough money to buy a pig.
She entered the pawnshop, but to her surprise, the shopkeeper examined her hairpin with squinted eyes for a long time before holding up three fingers: “300 wen.”
Fan Changyu almost choked on her breath. She widened her eyes, “This hairpin is pure silver. It’s only worth 300 wen?”
The shopkeeper said, “Though the hairpin is silver, it’s not heavy, and the style is outdated. I know your family is struggling, so how about this: Uncle will give you 500 wen. I can’t offer more.”
“One tael. I won’t pawn it for even one wen less.”
The shopkeeper placed the hairpin on the counter. “Then you’d better take it back.”
Fan Changyu had been counting on pawning this hairpin to buy a pig. She hadn’t expected this heartless shopkeeper to lowball her so much. Without further argument, she picked up the hairpin and headed for the door.
The shopkeeper hadn’t anticipated this girl to be so stubborn, refusing to haggle. He called out, “Hey… come back, come back. One tael it is. Consider it Uncle taking pity on you, losing money to take your hairpin. It’s early morning, and doing business with you will be my first transaction of the day…”
Leaving the pawnshop, Fan Changyu now had an additional tael of silver.
To inquire about the market price of braised meat, she first went to the street selling cooked food.
Today happened to be market day. Although it was still early, the market was already bustling. Many farmers from the countryside had brought their produce to sell and were using the money to buy New Year’s goods to take back home.
Fan Changyu took a round and found that the shops selling cooked meat mainly offered roast chicken and goose. The most popular braised pork items were pig head meat and pig ears, with pig offal being the least sold.
A plump aunt, seeing Fan Changyu examining the food displayed outside her shop, called out, “Young lady, would you like to buy some roast chicken?”
Fan Changyu asked, “How much is this pig head meat?”
The plump aunt said, “Young lady, you have a good eye! This pig head meat was just braised last night and simmered all night long. It’s very fragrant! Five wen for two liang. How much would you like?”
That meant fifty wen per jin, but often vendors would intentionally quote a higher price, leaving room for bargaining.
To test the vendor, Fan Changyu deliberately said, “That’s so expensive…”
The plump aunt immediately responded, “It’s the New Year season. What meat hasn’t gone up in price at the market? Mine is already the most affordable. Young lady, if you want to buy, I’ll give you two liang for nine wens.”
Fan Changyu guessed that this was probably the usual selling price, which worked out to about 45 wens per jin for braised pig head meat.
Using this method, she went on to inquire about the prices of braised pig ears and offal at different cooked meat shops. Braised pig ears were the most expensive at 60 when per jin, but a pig only has two ears, so it was a case of rarity increasing value.
In comparison, braised offal was much cheaper at 20 wens per jin.
Not many people ate pig offal to begin with. The wealthy didn’t like it, and the poor didn’t know how to prepare it properly, often resulting in an unpleasant smell.
Butcher shops didn’t even sell these parts. If one wanted to buy them, less than 10 wen could get you a large bucket.
With this information in mind, Fan Changyu left the cooked food street and entered the meat market. Further on was the tile market where livestock was traded.
The meat market was even busier than the cooked food street. Fan Changyu’s family had a well-located pork shop here. Now, all the other pork shops were open, their chopping boards and iron hooks full of pork, while only her family’s shop remained tightly closed, its doorway occupied by other small vendors.
Fan Changyu felt a pang in her heart as she looked at it. She stood there staring at her closed pork shop for a while, telling herself that she would reopen it soon.
She turned and headed to the tile market where livestock was traded, money in her pocket.
The tile market was much more chaotic, with pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses all being sold. One had to watch their step to avoid stepping in animal droppings, and the smell was quite unpleasant.
Most of the stall owners were middle-aged men wearing short jackets, with several pigs or sheep tethered nearby. They shouted in trade jargon when haggling, which outsiders could hardly understand.
Her appearance as a pretty young woman in this area drew attention.
Some livestock traders called out asking what she wanted to buy, but Fan Changyu ignored them all. She had come here with her father to buy pigs before and knew that buying from livestock traders rarely resulted in a good deal.
On market days, there were often farmers who had raised pigs and didn’t want to sell them cheaply to pig traders, so they brought them to the market themselves. Their prices were always cheaper than the livestock traders.
However, after looking around, Fan Changyu hadn’t found one she liked. Her father’s experience from slaughtering pigs for over a decade taught her to choose pigs with round rumps and short, thick tails. Such pigs had thick skin and fat, producing top-quality meat when slaughtered.
As Fan Changyu was about to look elsewhere, she spotted a thin, dark-skinned old man in the corner.
A fat, well-fed pig stood by the old man’s feet, with ropes around its front legs and neck, seemingly waiting to be sold. The pig was dirty, and as it was still early, there weren’t many buyers in the tile market yet, so almost no one had come to inquire about the price.
The old man looked eagerly at the passersby but didn’t dare to call out, appearing to be someone not good with words.
Fan Changyu approached and asked, “Uncle, how much are you selling this pig for?”
Finally, someone came to ask about the price. The old man seemed quite nervous and said, “We’re waiting to sell this pig for the New Year at home. The pig traders who came to the countryside offered 10 wen per jin. That’s why this old bag of bones brought the pig to town myself. Young lady, if you want to buy, 12 wen per jin will do.”
Fan Changyu hadn’t expected the pig traders to have pushed the price so low when buying pigs in the countryside. The pig traders she had passed earlier were asking 18 or 19 wen per jin for live pigs, and it took a lot of haggling to get them down to 15 wen.
The price the old man was offering was truly a windfall.
Fortunately, there weren’t many people in the tile market at this time, otherwise, the pig would have been bought long ago. Fan Changyu quickly said, “I’ll buy it!”
The tile market had a large scale specifically for weighing. When the pig was weighed, it turned out to be a full 90 jin. Fan Changyu gave the old man one tael of silver and 80 wen, then started driving the pig towards her home in the west of the city.
The meat market had already opened, and if she were to slaughter the pig now to sell, she would only catch the tail end of the market. Not only would there be few customers, but she would also have to sell at a discount.
It was better to go home and prepare thoroughly, then slaughter the pig tomorrow morning to bring for sale.
After leaving the tile market, Fan Changyu driving a pig down the street became quite a spectacle, attracting many glances.
Fortunately, Fan Changyu had thick skin. When acquaintances asked, she could confidently promote her business, saying this pig was to be slaughtered tomorrow and sold in her meat shop, inviting them to come and support her business.
By chance, she met a chef from a restaurant who used to buy meat from her father’s shop. When he heard that their pork shop would reopen tomorrow and saw how fat the pig was, he immediately ordered 20 jin on the spot, giving a deposit of 200 wen.
Fan Changyu returned home with a radiant face. The alley was narrow, and as she drove the pig with a bamboo stick, her calls and the pig’s grunts could be heard throughout the alley.
A snow-white gyrfalcon flew out from the direction of her house towards the sky. Fan Changyu looked up, somewhat puzzled.
In winter, when snow covered the countryside, it was common to see hawks and falcons stealing chickens and rabbits from farmers. But in town, where no one raised such animals, what was that falcon doing near her house?
The houses on both sides of this alley were cramped, built uniformly by the government years ago, with each household having two floors.
At this moment, in an attic room at the end of the alley, a man was half-sitting on a bed near the window, wearing a shabby gray jacket that couldn’t conceal his inherent nobility. At the foot of the bed, a thin, long piece of charcoal lay extinguished next to a brazier.
The man’s inner garment, placed beside the bed, had a corner torn off.
The window was half-open, letting in the cold wind that ruffled the man’s clothes and long hair.
That face, as clear as the moon and as pure as new snow, belonged to none other than the man Fan Changyu had rescued.
The noisy sounds from the alley made him turn to look outside. The pretty girl, with a smile in her eyes, was walking down the narrow alley where the ice and snow had melted. She wore the same apricot-colored short jacket he had seen last night like a warm light suddenly appearing in an old, quiet painting.
But what she was driving with a bamboo stick was… a pig?
The pig’s squeals once again confirmed its identity.
The man’s expression became somewhat peculiar.
He had seen well-educated ladies from noble families and spirited daughters of military households, but a girl driving a pig was indeed a first in his life.
The girl had now reached this area and was no longer visible from the window, but he could hear her younger sister’s excited exclamation as she came out to greet her, “Sister, where did such a big pig come from?”
The girl’s voice was filled with laughter and energy: “I bought it, of course!”
The noise outside increased as it seemed the aunt of this household had also come to help drive the pig.
The man stopped listening to the chaotic voices and closed his eyes to rest. He needed to recover from his injuries as quickly as possible.
Fan Changyu was oblivious to all this. After driving the pig into the side shed behind her house and closing it, she took the bucket of pig offal given to her yesterday when she slaughtered a pig for the Chen family, went to the well outside the alley to draw water, and washed it again.
Pork is freshest when slaughtered on the day, so the pig she brought back had to be kept for slaughter tomorrow morning. It was too late to make braised meat, so tonight she would first braise this bucket of pig offal, not to sell separately, but as a bonus for buying pork.
For every jin of fresh pork bought, she would give two liang of braised pig offal.
Fan Changyu toured the market today and saw many shops selling cooked food. The number of shops indicated high demand, but it also meant customers had many choices.
If she suddenly started selling cooked meat, people might not be willing to spend money to try her braised dishes, given the price.
Fan Changyu thought for a moment. The pig offal was cheap and perfect as a bonus to attract customers. People might not buy it if it costs money, but many would probably be happy to take it for free.
This way, when the shop reopened, it could attract people to buy pork and also promote her future braised meat business.
After tasting the free braised offal, people would know if her braising was good. Then when she started selling braised meat, those who liked it would naturally come back to buy.
After washing the pig offal, Fan Changyu returned home, rolled up her sleeves, and started a fire. She added water to the pot, found various spices, put them in a clean cloth bag along with ginger and garlic, and threw it all in to make the braising liquid.
Her family’s kitchen was well-equipped. Her mother had been particular about food, always meticulous, and when the family was well-off, it wasn’t difficult to stock these items.
Fan Changyu had learned many dishes from her mother, though she was only average at most. However, she was exceptionally good at braising, perhaps because she had loved gnawing on braised pig’s trotters since childhood.
When she took up the knife to cut the braised offal, her movements were bold and decisive due to her habit of slaughtering pigs and chopping bones. The cleaver came down heavily on the chopping board – the sight would have scared even thieves into fleeing.
An hour later, a rich aroma of braised meat wafted from the Fan family’s kitchen. The neighbors all sniffed the air in their homes, wondering whose house was stewing such fragrant meat.
The aroma drifted upwards, and since the Zhao and Fan houses were adjacent, the man in the attic room smelled it particularly strongly.
He swallowed hard and closed his eyes tightly.
His body was too weak. Since being injured, he hadn’t had a proper meal.