When the pears are green

Song Li and Jiang Qingzhou went to the grain store in town. The waiter, who was already familiar with them, came up to them and asked with a smile, "Young man and young lady, do you still want to buy mung beans today? Our boss just bought a batch of freshly harvested mung beans yesterday."

Jiang Qingzhou shook his head at the waiter and told him that he came here to buy some food.

"Which one would you like to buy?" the waiter asked quickly.

Song Li looked past the neatly arranged open cloth bags in the shop, pointed to the cloth bag of wheat in the corner and replied, "We want to buy wheat."

"There are two kinds of wheat in the store, new wheat and old wheat. I'll get some for you to see." The waiter took some wheat from two cloth bags in the corner and showed them to Song Li and Jiang Qingzhou.

Song Li took a closer look and saw several wheat bulls crawling back and forth on the old wheat, some of which had been hollowed out. The new wheat was still shiny and there would be no big problem even if it was left for a while.

Seeing that Song Li was more inclined to buy new wheat, Jiang Qingzhou asked the waiter about the prices of the two types of wheat.

The waiter quickly replied, "I don't know how much you want to buy. New wheat is 50 wen a bushel, and old wheat is 30 wen a bushel."

"Dou? Isn't it measured by jin?" Song Li couldn't help but ask. She thought that wheat and mung beans were both weighed by jin.

The waiter smiled and took out a bucket from behind the counter for Song Li to see. He explained to the puzzled Song Li, "Madam Jiang, wheat is a large-scale business, and it is sold by dou, hu, or shi. Five dou is one hu, and two hu is one shi. We are a small place, so we usually only use dou."

Song Li reached out to take the bowl, only to see that the top and bottom of the bowl were both quadrilaterals, the bottom was closed and the top was open. The bottom was much smaller than the top, and looked like an isosceles trapezoid from the side.

Seeing that Song Li was looking at it seriously, the waiter pointed to the word "Wang" written on the side of the bowl and explained: "Our boss's surname is Wang. You can turn the bowl over and take a look. The word Yongfeng is written on the bottom. This is made according to the new rules issued in the second year of Yongfeng."

Song Li turned it over and took a look. Sure enough, there were the words "Yongfeng" on the bottom. She then used her fingers to measure whether the four side wooden boards were the same thickness.

The waiter smiled and said, "Don't worry, Madam Jiang. We are following the government's rules. We dare not increase the price without permission. The government often comes to investigate. If they find any, they will demand at least 100 taels of silver to settle the matter. Few people in town buy wheat. It's not worth it to spend hundreds of taels of silver for such a small profit."

Song Li smiled. She first returned the bucket to the waiter, and then quietly discussed with Jiang Qingzhou what kind of wheat to buy and how many buckets of wheat to buy. The current price was not much different from what she had asked before. She bought this wheat just in case. After all, it hadn't rained yet, and she was afraid that the autumn drought would get worse.

The two of them quickly reached a consensus. Song Li smiled and bargained with the waiter: "Brother, we are buying ten buckets of new wheat. We are also regular customers. Can you give us a discount?"

The waiter shook his head helplessly, saying that the price was set by the boss and he was just a waiter and didn't have such great power. After several rounds of bargaining, the waiter finally decided to give Song Li and Jiang Qingzhou a pound of mung beans.

As Song Li followed the waiter to the counter, she inadvertently saw a basin of rice placed on the wooden shelf in the middle of the store. She stopped and asked, "Brother, what is this? It's long and white, so beautiful."

The waiter looked back and replied with a sigh, "Madam Jiang, this is rice produced in the south. It's rare here. Our boss imported some from Shenzhou and has had it here for almost half a month. More people ask than buy." After saying that, he returned to the wooden basin, pinched two grains out and put them in Jiang Qingzhou's hands.

Song Li stared at the rice for a while. Although she was used to eating noodles for three meals a day, she sometimes missed the white rice.

Jiang Qingzhou saw a look of nostalgia in Song Li's eyes, so he asked about the price of rice.

"It was sold for eighty wen a dou before, but now the boss is in a hurry to get rid of it, so he can sell it for seventy wen a dou. And it was shipped from Shenzhou, hundreds of miles away, so this price is not enough to pay the caravan's travel expenses." The waiter took another look at the rice in the wooden basin. He really couldn't understand why the boss had the urge to buy these things.

Jiang Qingzhou put the two grains of rice in his hand back into the wooden basin. He asked Song Li softly if she wanted to buy a bushel of rice. The price was not much higher than that of new wheat.

"Is it really possible?" Song Li asked expectantly.

Jiang Qingzhou smiled and rubbed Song Li's hair. He replied softly, "Of course."

"Brother, add another bucket of rice." Song Li happily pointed at the rice and told the waiter.

The waiter quickly said "OK". He walked into the counter, calculated on an abacus, and said with a smile, "You two, the total is five hundred and seventy coins. I see you don't have your carts. I'll have the shop assistants take them back to you after you finish loading the wheat."

Song Li then noticed that there were two holes similar to buckets on the counter of the grain store, and there was a pipe similar to a drainpipe in front of the counter. She and Jiang Qingzhou thanked the waiter, who went to the backyard and called two guys to move two bags of grain from the grain warehouse.

The thin waiter took the bucket and placed it under the pipe. The fat waiter poured the grain in the cloth bag into the hole on the counter. The wheat quickly flowed into the bucket from the pipe. When it was almost full, the waiter shouted "Stop". The bucket was just full when the wheat stopped flowing out.

After all ten buckets of wheat were put into the cloth bag, the waiter used the same method to fill a bucket of rice, and then added two more pounds of mung beans.

The waiter handed the mung beans to Jiang Qingzhou. He smiled and told them, "You two bought a lot today, so I'll give you an extra pound of mung beans. There are two pounds in the bag. Take it, little brother."

Jiang Qingzhou picked up the cloth bag, nodded to Song Li, and then smiled as he paid the bill to the waiter.

The waiter gave the remaining copper coins to Song Li, and then asked the fat waiter to help deliver the food to Jiangjia Village.

After the fat waiter delivered the food, he helped carry the food into the main room. Jiang Qingzhou quickly brought the fat waiter a bowl of water.

After sending the fat guy away, Song Li opened the cloth bag of rice and showed it to Jiang Qingye and Li Yi. The two of them couldn't help but exclaim in amazement when they saw the white rice inside.

"I'll steam rice for you at noon. There's still some meat at home, and the bean sprouts are ready to eat. We'll make fried bean sprouts with meat. It will be especially delicious with rice." Song Li happily promised the two people in the room.

When Jiang Qingzhou walked into the main room, he saw the three people in the room still gathered in front of the rice bag to discuss how to finish the rice. He smiled and reminded Song Li that it was almost noon, and Song Li hurried to the kitchen to get a pottery basin to hold the rice.

"How do you plan to steam Xiaoli?" Jiang Qingzhou asked Song Li as she was washing rice and pouring water into the pot.

Song Li smiled and replied: "Of course, boil it first and then steam it. You can also drink the boiled rice soup."

When the rice was ready, the four people at the table couldn't wait to taste it. Jiang Qingzhou, Jiang Qingye, and Li Yi followed Song Li's example and gave a thumbs up, saying it was delicious.