Chapter 530: Chapter 273: Joy upon Joy (Part 2)
Wang Youheng addressed Lady Zhang as Fourth Aunt, with Lian Zhizhi being his younger sister. The shoes the two of them made indeed fit him well.
"Good," Wang Youheng no longer declined and compared the shoes to his feet, "Yes, they fit very well."
Lady Zhang and her daughter had already made him two pairs of shoes, both of which were impeccable in size and style. There was no need to actually put them on to test them; just comparing them to his feet was enough to know whether they fit.
"Brother Youheng, you’re not busy these days in the afternoon, right?" After Wang Youheng tried on the shoes, Lian Manman asked, "My father and mother would like to invite Brother Youheng to our house for dinner. Mr. Loo will also be there."
Previously, Lian Manman and her family had not known when Wang Youheng’s birthday was, but now that they did, they wanted to invite Wang Youheng over for a meal to celebrate his birthday. Once, when Wang Youheng visited Thirty Mile Camp, he encountered Mr. Loo at their breakfast shop. Wang Youheng was also studying, intending to sit for the imperial examinations, and had been well-versed in pharmacology since childhood. Mr. Loo was very interested in these miscellaneous studies, and the two got along very well in their conversation.
"Brother Youheng, we won’t prepare any special dishes for you, just the usual home cooking. But you must come," Lian Manman, afraid that Wang Youheng would decline, quickly added another sentence.
Faced with Lian Manman’s invitation, Wang Youheng found it impossible to refuse even if he wanted to.
"Alright, I’ll definitely come," Wang Youheng smiled and said, "Manman, if you hadn’t come today, I was actually going to look for you."
"Brother Youheng, what do you need from me?" Lian Manman quickly asked.
"About that, I’ll tell you when I go to your place this afternoon," Wang Youheng said with a smile at the corners of his mouth, glancing at Lian Manman.
Lian Manman felt that Wang Youheng was doing this on purpose, because if he was going to tell her when visiting her home, why bring it up now? She was known to be impatient, and he had piqued her curiosity only to withhold the information.
"Brother Youheng, what is it? Why wait until you come to my house? Tell me now," Lian Manman urged Wang Youheng.
"Oh..." Wang Youheng was slow to respond, seemingly enjoying watching Lian Manman grow anxious.
"Brother Youheng, you’ve learned to be naughty," Lian Manman saw that Wang Youheng was intentionally making her anxious and pretended to be angry.
"Alright, I was just joking," Wang Youheng couldn’t help but laugh twice before continuing, "Manman, didn’t you ask me to keep an eye out for any seeds of crops we don’t have here?"
"Yes," Lian Manman quickly nodded, her eyes widening with anticipation. Wang Youheng was known for not beating around the bush, so his teasing might mean he had indeed found some new seeds for her. "Brother Youheng, what have you found for me?"
Wang Youheng then gestured to a young attendant nearby.
"Go and bring the bamboo basket I brought back from the county town, and be careful not to damage what’s inside," Wang Youheng instructed the young attendant, who immediately turned and left.
"...Last year, my father treated a patient who just took an official post in the Prefecture of Fuzhou. He wrote back saying that he has fully recovered after taking my father’s prescribed medicine. Along with the letter, he also sent over some local products..."
As Wang Youheng spoke, the young attendant returned with a bamboo basket. Wang Youheng lifted the lid of the basket.
"I picked this for you,... They say it came from Luzon, and some places in the Prefecture of Fuzhou have started growing it as well. They say it’s very productive and quite delicious. Oh, and this thing is called sweet potato..."
Wang Youheng stopped speaking because Lian Manman had already lifted a round, plump sweet potato out of the basket with both hands, turning it over and examining it closely, her eyes sparkling with joy.
Lian Manman liked this thing, and that made all his efforts to convince his family to give him this basket of sweet potatoes worthwhile. Wang Youheng watched Lian Manman, the smile reaching the corners of his eyes.
Lian Manman, cradling the sweet potato, was so happy that she couldn’t find the words for quite some time.
She was very familiar with sweet potatoes, also known as yams or earth beans, a coarse food crop with high nutritional value.
Many delicious dishes can be made from sweet potatoes, such as yam porridge, yam syrup, dried yams, and all were Lian Manman’s favorites. Furthermore, sweet potato starch could be processed into noodles, and sweet potato vines could be eaten as vegetables. Of course, they could also be used as feed for livestock and poultry.
The most important aspect was that sweet potatoes had one huge advantage: their yield per acre was extremely high. It was said that on good sandy land, the yield could exceed one thousand kilograms per acre.
One thousand kilograms, in this era, Lian Manman was very clear what that meant.
Gently, Lian Manman placed the sweet potato back in the basket and raised her head to look at Wang Youheng. It seemed that he had never disappointed her. Not to mention small matters, just the big ones alone. From asking Imperial Doctor Shi to treat Lady Zhang to finding these precious sweet potatoes for her now.
From the Prefecture of Fuzhou to Jinyang County Town, it was much more than a thousand miles. With the current backward transportation, this basket of sweet potatoes probably represented all he had brought for her.
"Brother Youheng..."
"There’s no need for thanks, Manman," Wang Youheng said with a smile, "if you do, that would mean you’re treating me as an outsider."
"Alright," Lian Manman also smiled. No matter whether this matter was big or small for Wang Youheng, these sweet potatoes were of great significance to her. Her gratitude towards Youheng was beyond words. She could only keep it in her heart.
"Brother Youheng, these are all for me, right?" Lian Manman asked with a smile.
"Of course," Wang Youheng nodded.
"Brother Youheng, you must have asked how to plant these sweet potatoes, right?" Lian Manman asked again.
***......****
Today there’s only this one update, 555.
My computer keyboard is malfunctioning, and typing on a borrowed old computer is incredibly frustrating.
PS blood and tears experience, Lenovo’s small laptops are trash, so frustrating. The battery life is advertised as 8 hours, but it’s actually just shy of 2 hours. In less than half a year, it went down to 1 hour, and after another half year, it’s less than 50 minutes.
In less than a year, all sorts of problems have arisen. I bought it because of the keyboard supposedly from IBM, but now, several keys are not working.
It is said, my previous laptop, which cost less than half of what this Lenovo did, has four times the trouble-free usage time—and we’re only using it to type! Why is there such a huge gap! (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for it on Qidian (qidian.com) with recommendation tickets and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
