“Nobody’s buying them…”
Before dawn, Nie Yunzhu sat on the steps in front of the small building, chin propped in her hand, looking rather troubled.
“A few days ago, just like Master Ning suggested, I went and spoke with the managers at several nearby restaurants. But they said no one’s ever eaten this before, and it’s priced too high—they wouldn’t put it on their counters to sell.”
Given the limited production capacity of the era, staple foods like rice and grain, meant simply for filling one’s stomach, tended to be cheaper, while meat and eggs sold at considerably higher prices. Proportionally speaking, if a two-coin flatbread could be thought of as roughly one yuan in modern terms, then a ten-coin salted egg would run about five yuan apiece—and the preserved eggs, priced at twenty coins on Ning Yi’s suggestion, were edging close to luxury-item territory. In an age where even a comfortably-off family might only occasionally afford meat or eggs, something like this was naturally a hard sell.
Of course, there was no shortage of wealthy people around Jiangning. Take the pleasure houses, for instance—for a particularly popular courtesan, simply walking through the door cost three strings of cash, roughly three taels of silver, three thousand coins. Singing and dancing cost another three strings; spending the night, another three strings still—nine strings in total for a single encounter, roughly four and a half thousand yuan in modern terms. And that was for a courtesan who did sell herself; for those who didn’t, women like Yuan Jin’er, Lu Caicai, Qilan, or Nie Yunzhu in her former days, the prices ran even higher, with no fixed ceiling at all—but there was never any shortage of men lining up to throw money at them regardless. If you were stingy, you wouldn’t even get through the door, and if you managed to get in while still being stingy, you certainly wouldn’t be welcomed back. Even someone like Su Tan’er’s circle of so-called brothers, extracting tens of taels from her at a time—a fortune by ordinary standards—could burn through it in an evening or two of showing off with their circle of hangers-on, without a second thought.
Those willing to spend nine thousand coins on a courtesan for the night might not be willing to spend twenty coins on a preserved egg from a street cart—but at the very least, it proved that this kind of purchasing power did exist somewhere in Jiangning.
To actually sell the eggs at twenty coins apiece, she’d need to find some higher-end establishments nearby—well-known teahouses and restaurants—willing to take them on consignment. But this was, after all, an entirely new product; asking them to sell an egg at twenty coins wasn’t a charity request they’d simply agree to out of goodwill. Nie Yunzhu, for all her past accomplishments in the arts and her reputation as a talented, beautiful woman, naturally had no experience translating those skills into the blunt business of negotiating deals, and her attempt to place the twenty-coin eggs on consignment had gone nowhere. Two restaurant managers hadn’t even bothered engaging with her properly, and one, seeing an attractive woman out selling flatbreads, had tried to get handsy with her—she’d simply walked away.
For Nie Yunzhu, who was determined to leave her old life behind and make an honest living like any ordinary person, this was naturally something of a blow. But she was stubborn by nature—most people, faced with a setback like this, might have given up on selling preserved eggs altogether, but there was no sign of any such intention on her part. Ning Yi arrived just then, drenched in sweat from his run, spinning a copper coin idly in his hand, and smiled. “Speaking of which, I recently made a wager with someone—that these preserved eggs would be selling briskly within a month.”
“Selling briskly?”
“Mm, at least twenty or thirty a day, I’d think.”
“…Uh.” Nie Yunzhu thought about it for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll do my best to sell thirty. Actually… maybe I could try placing a batch with Jinfeng Tower…”
She’d clearly hesitated a good while before saying this. What was on her mind at that moment was rather different from what Ning Yi was thinking. In her view, Ning Yi was a good-natured, unconventional, witty man of great talent—but business dealings were clearly not his forte. Now that he’d invented these preserved eggs and asked her to help sell them, he’d probably boasted about it to someone, which was only natural. If she failed to sell as many as promised, he’d lose face over it. Had there been any other option, she likely wouldn’t have considered Jinfeng Tower again. The madam there, whatever else could be said of her, did honor her agreements and hadn’t pressed Nie Yunzhu for anything further—but calling her a truly kind woman would be a stretch either. Still, owing her a favor wasn’t easy to repay, but under the circumstances, this seemed like the only option Nie Yunzhu could think of right now.
Hearing her mention Jinfeng Tower, Ning Yi paused, then understood. “No need for that.” He shook his head, then pointed toward the shed where the small cart was parked. “Let’s close up early today. We’ll dress up the cart a bit—it’s far too plain right now to justify twenty coins.”
“Dress it up?”
“Er… just decorate it a little.”
Nie Yunzhu nodded, her puzzled expression suggesting she understood well enough…
At noon, once classes let out, Ning Yi went to the market to eat, then bought various paints, brushes of different sizes, and other supplies, and headed over to Nie Yunzhu’s spot. Only then did she realize what he had in mind. That afternoon, they scrubbed the little cart clean, and Ning Yi sketched out a simple composition in chalk. After studying it for a while, he pulled up a low stool and sat down to begin painting.
Nie Yunzhu couldn’t help at this stage, only crouching nearby occasionally to watch. Back in her room, when Hutao saw her, she asked, “Is Master Ning planning to paint the cart to help sell the preserved eggs?”
“Seems that way.”
“But can lacquer paint even make a good picture…”
“Plenty of lacquerware is painted with lacquer too. Master Ning… it seems he’s got some skill in this area as well…”
Nie Yunzhu, in truth, felt a little uneasy about it. The refined arts—qin, chess, calligraphy, painting—were considered elegant pursuits, and whether or not Ning Yi’s brushwork was any good was one thing, but given his current reputation, painting on a lowly food cart just to sell preserved eggs, should word get out, might well bring him more unwanted criticism—and the better the painting, the greater the risk, if anything.
Meanwhile, Hutao’s own mood wasn’t good either; she’d been worrying about her mistress constantly of late. Ever since confirming, on Lantern Festival night, that this Ning Yi keeping company with her mistress was indeed the celebrated talent everyone spoke of, and genuinely gifted at that, her worry had only grown by the day. While she did hope to marry Ernu soon herself, she couldn’t rest easy leaving her mistress without any settled prospects. Now, it seemed, her mistress had grown fond of this man—but what kind of situation was that, really, when, as her mistress herself had said: there was no marrying him.
The man was already a live-in son-in-law elsewhere; even if her mistress liked him, nothing could ever come of it. The more talented he proved to be, the deeper her mistress might fall for him, all the less likely to ever care for anyone else. And with the Su family’s power and influence, if his wife ever found out about this and came looking for trouble, what on earth could they do? The more she thought about it, the more anxious she became.
At one point Ning Yi called Nie Yunzhu aside to ask whether the little stall should be called “Nie’s” or “Bamboo’s.” Nie Yunzhu thought it over and chose “Bamboo’s.”
By evening, as the sunset glow spread across one bend of the Qinhuai River, the decoration of the cart was finally complete. When Nie Yunzhu went to look, she found herself utterly dumbstruck: she had never seen a painting style quite like this one!
It wasn’t that the painting was poor—it was that it was too good, too strange. The composition of the image on the cart had depth, dimensionality.
Lacquerware in this era, of course, already came in all sorts of decorative styles, some fine and delicate, others bold and rough—but the cart before her now was, without question, one of a kind for the entire era. The image itself was simple enough: a few bamboo stalks suggesting a corner of a bamboo grove after rain, half-hidden in mist, with a preserved egg painted to one side, sliced into quarters—not exactly lifelike, but serviceable. The characters “Bamboo’s Preserved Eggs” floated across the scene—except the whole image had genuine depth to it.
For Ning Yi, it was really just a simple technique—using deliberately unbalanced proportions across different parts of the image to create the illusion of the bamboo grove pushing forward into the viewer’s space. The five characters of “Bamboo’s Preserved Eggs,” paired with their floating shadow, gave the impression of something drifting or falling through mist. The preserved egg itself had turned out only passably well—he hadn’t managed to mix quite the right, appealing color for it, so he’d simply done his best to make it look as attractive as possible under the circumstances. Since blended lacquer paint tended to look blurry, Ning Yi had carefully outlined the edges of each element with crisp black lines, which, if anything, made the contrast and sense of depth even more striking. Wheeled out onto the street, this cart would absolutely catch the eye of every passerby instantly. And unlike mainstream painting styles, anyone seeing it would simply assume some merchant had come up with a clever gimmick, never suspecting it was the carefully rendered work of some renowned talent.
Given the limited materials available, the result still left something to be desired—but seeing the astonished look on Nie Yunzhu’s face, Ning Yi was, on the whole, satisfied with the outcome. Perhaps recalling Ning Yi’s own peculiar taste in music, Nie Yunzhu said, “So even your painting is like this, Liheng… er, this strange. I’ve never seen a style quite like it before—it’s almost as if it’s growing right out of the wall of the cart.”
Paintings, when done in a more realistic style, tended to make their strongest first impression through simplicity—a different kind of appeal than music. Nie Yunzhu found herself almost reaching out to touch the painted bamboo, but Ning Yi quickly stopped her, pointing up at the awning above instead.
“The paint’s not dry yet, don’t touch it. That awning up top needs replacing too—I’ll go buy a new one tomorrow. With the paint still wet these next few days, you won’t be able to do business anyway, so… we should get some other things ready too. Nice little bowls and plates, various sauces and condiments, vinegar, tofu—lots of different ways to serve it, all looking clean and attractive. That’s the first step…” Ning Yi thought it through as he spoke. “Once that’s done, we’ll deal with those stubborn restaurant managers…”
Over the following afternoons, things proceeded step by step—attractive bowls and plates, an assortment of sauces and condiments, various serving methods worked out. Ning Yi came by every afternoon, and Nie Yunzhu seemed cheerful throughout, though Hutao grew increasingly unhappy, complaining to her mistress one evening: “Miss, buying all these things really isn’t worth the cost at all…”
Ning Yi had chosen only the finest bowls and plates—items that, to ordinary eyes, offered little practical value and cost a good deal besides. Though he’d covered half the expense himself, calling it an investment in the business, to Hutao it all seemed pointless. The household’s funds were already limited; carefully managed, they could last her mistress quite a while yet, but at this rate, it looked to Hutao like Ning Yi was simply throwing money around on a whim, and her mistress, unwilling to refuse him, could only go along with it—until, eventually, he’d have burned through whatever savings her mistress had left, not caring in the slightest.
“If you ask me, that Master Ning’s talent is beyond question, no argument there. But he probably doesn’t understand business at all. We’re just running a little street stall—there’s no need for all this fuss, Miss. You can’t keep going along with his nonsense! We can’t afford to be reckless like this…”
“Master Ning has genuine talent. Since he’s so confident, naturally I trust him. Nothing’s settled yet—how can you be so sure he has no way to make this work, Hutao?”
In truth, Nie Yunzhu herself had no real confidence in the matter, but there was nothing else she could say to Hutao.
“Haven’t you seen enough talented men in your life, Miss?” Hutao countered. “Talent is one thing, running a business is another entirely. Plenty of talented men gamble their fortunes away all the same, end up with nothing to their name in the end. Hutao may not understand much, but I’ve seen enough—all those little street vendors out there, they’re all like this. It’s nothing like the big restaurants or the pleasure houses. Miss, that Master Ning married into a merchant family—I hear his wife manages things quite formidably in the Su household. Maybe he just can’t swallow that resentment, and he’s using you as some kind of experiment, Miss…”
“Enough!” Nie Yunzhu’s gaze sharpened, cutting her off.
Hutao stood there, lips pressed tight, for a long while, tears finally rolling down her face. Then, gritting her teeth, she said through choked sobs, “You know it yourself, Miss—you can never marry Master Ning. If you could marry him, Hutao wouldn’t say another word about it…”
Once she’d said this, the room fell utterly silent for a long while. Nie Yunzhu sat by the bed, leaning against the frame, her gaze drifting occasionally. After a long moment, as the lamplight flickered, she finally closed her eyes tightly. “I know…” When she opened them again, she managed a faint smile.
“Go to sleep now, Hutao. It’s late…”