Transmigrated as an Unwanted Ugly Girl

Chapter 472: Chapter 247: Laixi’s Fish-Selling Scripture (Part 2)

When Manager Jin saw Zheng Changhe arrive, he thought he was there to deliver eggs. He was pleasantly surprised when Zheng Changhe instead unloaded a large bucket of fresh fish. "Such big fish?" he said happily. "Why are you harvesting the pond already? It’s not even the end of the year."

Zheng Changhe smiled. "I was afraid they’d be hard to sell at the end of the year, so I decided to harvest and sell them early. Would you like some, Manager Jin?"

Before Manager Jin could answer, Laixi chimed in with a smile. "Such big, fresh fish, and they’re still flopping around! Why wouldn’t you buy some, Shopkeeper? If you can’t sell them all in one day, you can just keep them in water. It’s better than buying from the market every day. It’s cheap to buy from the fishermen at the market, but the sizes are never consistent. Sometimes you get big ones, and other times you can only get small ones."

Manager Jin nodded in agreement. "That’s true. The fishermen don’t have good fish every day. Brother Zheng, I’ll take twenty pounds of these."

Laixi asked in surprise, "Only twenty pounds? That’s just a few fish! Each one weighs over four pounds."

Manager Jin thought about it and had to agree. He chuckled, "You little rascal, say no more. I’ll take ten fish, then, regardless of the weight—whatever it comes to is what I’ll pay for. Bajin, go to the vegetable market and tell Uncle Zhang not to buy any fish today."

A delicate-featured Xiao Er from the main hall called out in acknowledgment, gave Laixi a smile, and headed off down the street.

Laixi finished weighing the fish, Manager Jin had someone settle the bill, and Zheng Changhe steered the ox-cart toward the back streets of the market town to peddle his fresh fish to the wealthy households.

When they harvested the pond, they had thrown all the smaller fish back in. So whether it was a carp or a crucian carp, any fish they caught was considered large. For example, a typical large crucian carp might weigh only a few taels, but the Zheng Family’s fish of that size were still in the pond. The ones they’d hauled in were all six or seven taels, which of course made them easy to sell.

Toward the end of the day, the remaining fish, while still in good condition, were dead, so the price had to be lower.

Most of the customers were easy to deal with, but there were difficult ones too. For instance, a certain woman in a flower-patterned silk jacket—perhaps a head housekeeper for some family, or maybe a kitchen provisioner—pointed at the fish in the basket with a frown and said, "They’re all dead, and you’re still asking sixteen cents a pound? Isn’t that a rip-off?"

Even as she said this, her hands were rummaging ceaselessly through the basket. She’d pick one fish up, inspect it, and toss it back; then grab another, and toss it back too.

Zheng Changhe was getting angry, but before he could speak, Laixi shot up and yelled at the woman, "Hey! I say, Auntie, one look at you and I can tell you work for a wealthy family—you’ve seen it all, right? These fish are so fresh and so big! And even though they’re dead, you have to consider *how* they died."

Aunt Hua was dumbfounded. "How did they die?"

Even Zheng Changhe was dumbfounded.

Laixi said, "If the weather were warm and we kept them in water after catching them, would they have died? Of course not, they’d still be flopping around. But in this bitter cold, one moment of carelessness and they freeze, don’t they? The meat is still perfectly fresh. If you don’t believe me, look at the gills. Besides, not all dead fish are the same. Can you compare a fish that died in the summer heat to one that died in the winter cold? Can you compare a fish that’s been dead for days to one that just died? Of course you can’t—there’s a world of difference between dying sooner and dying later!"

He spouted his entire theory of life and death, then shot Aunt Hua a sideways glance, his expression clearly saying, ’How could you not even know something so simple?’

Aunt Hua was completely baffled by his spiel. Besides, it was early in the morning, and hearing him go on and on about "dying sooner, dying later" and "dying in winter, dying in summer" was considered bad luck. Seeing a crowd gathering around, she swallowed her anger and said, "All right, all right, weigh two for me. And stop rambling! All this talk of death and life so early in the morning, you’ve said a whole basketful!"

Laixi started weighing the fish, still talking. "Fish this good, you think you can just find them anywhere? If they weren’t dead, do you think they’d be this price? Just now, Qinghui Restaurant bought over forty pounds of live fish—twenty cents a pound for carp, eighteen cents a pound for grass carp and crucian carp—and they didn’t even try to haggle. The restaurant can’t even use all that fish in one day, but they figured it would be hard to find fish this big again, so they bought extra to keep alive and use slowly. If it were summer, when there are more fishermen, or the end of the year, when more villages harvest their ponds, then fish would be easier to buy. But right now? Go look in the vegetable market. Where are you going to find fish as good and as cheap as mine? Those little fish that only weigh a few taels—what’s even there to eat on them!"

The people in the crowd nodded along as they listened. Many of them came forward—one person bought a fish, another bought two. This made Aunt Hua hesitate, wondering if she should buy more. ’Her master’s family isn’t wealthy,’ she thought. ’They look prosperous on the outside, but they still have to live frugally. These fish just died, they’re very fresh. If I buy more now, I won’t have to buy any tomorrow.’ And so, she had him weigh two more silver carp—which were only fourteen cents a pound.

Looking at the empty wooden bucket and basket, then at Laixi deftly packing up the scale, Zheng Changhe was stunned for a long moment. It was a while before a smile spread across his face. "Laixi, you’re really something else!" he said. "Come on, Uncle’s treating you to some steamed buns."

Laixi chuckled and nodded. "Alright! Don’t mind if I do, Uncle." The two of them then drove the ox-cart to get some breakfast.

The two arrived at a small food stall, ordered two bowls of wontons and a few steamers of steamed buns, and sat down to eat.

As Zheng Changhe ate a steamed bun, he thought, ’This tastes so good. I should buy some to take back for Juhua and her mother.’ As he was thinking this, Laixi spoke up. "Uncle, you can’t sell fish like this from now on."

Zheng Changhe hastily swallowed the bun in his mouth and asked, puzzled, "Why not? Didn’t we sell every last one?"

Laixi took a sip of wonton broth and let out a comfortable sigh before saying to Zheng Changhe, "We just got lucky today. The weather has been bad for the past couple of days, so there were fewer people selling fish. Since your fish are so big and good, you should be netting them every few days on a regular basis. Keep them alive in water—they’ll be flopping around and easy to sell at a high price. Then, when it’s time to clear the pond in the winter, there won’t be many big ones left. You’ll have less to sell, and you won’t be competing with everyone else who’s harvesting their ponds at the same time."

Zheng Changhe nodded. "Ah, that’s a good idea. Selling live fish is better. The pond is still small this year, so we only caught this many. If we’d caught more, I’m afraid they would have been hard to sell. We can just net some big fish on regular days and deliver them to Qinghui Restaurant. Then we wouldn’t have to haul them all over town like this."

Laixi smiled. "That’s exactly it."

After they finished eating, Zheng Changhe had the bun seller pack up two more steamers of buns to go. Only then did he and Laixi leave.