Reborn in a small village in the 1990s

The wine cup wasn't big. Zhao Da'e picked it up and looked at it, then asked, "Grandpa, I remember these kinds of purple clay teapots are really expensive in the south. They cost tens or even hundreds of yuan for a small wine cup. Why are they so cheap here?"

Zhao Tingming laughed: "You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask? Goods die when they're sold locally. This stuff only has value if someone recognizes its worth and that person has money."

This isn't food or drink. Forget about purple clay wine cups; even if you brought a whole bunch of Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white porcelain, and you tried to sell them in our village for more than three yuan a bowl, you'd be lucky to find a sucker. So, the value of many things isn't inherent in themselves, but rather it's people who assign value to them.

Zhao Da'e seemed to understand something, as if he had grasped some of what he was saying.

"Grandpa, do you think that piece of broken land in my backyard is worth anything?"

"That shabby patch of land in your backyard..." Zhao Tingming poured himself a glass, then poured a small cup of wine for Zhao Dage as well. "That shabby spot in your backyard has plenty of broken wood and firewood, enough for grazing sheep. But it's no good for farming; the soil there is too thin, and things don't grow well. Only the small vegetable garden your mother runs has any soil left, and that's it."

"But isn't there a Kangxi Spring, that ancient well, over there?" Zhao Da'e reminded him.

"It's just a well that Emperor Kangxi drank from. Is it valuable? No. Take, for example, your family has a bunch of copper plates and bowls that Emperor Kangxi used. Are they valuable? No. When we sent them to the cultural relics bureau that year, they all said they didn't want them and would only sell them for scrap copper prices. It has to have significance to be valuable. Only gold and silver are valuable. As for this well, it's worthless. The water in that well hasn't been cleaned for years; it doesn't taste like it did when I was a child. Nobody would want it even if it were given to them," Zhao Tingming sighed.

“Um…” Zhao Da’e said with a bitter expression, “Then Grandpa, give me that piece of land. I’ll take over the contract.”

"What do you need that land for?" Zhao Tingming asked, puzzled.

“I’m thinking, my mom grows vegetables over there. What if one day they’re no longer ours? Then my family won’t have any vegetables to eat.”

“Nobody wants that land now, and it’s not far from your backyard. Leasing it will cost money, otherwise the villagers won’t agree.” Zhao Tingming thought for a moment. “It’s only about two mu of mountain land. These days, the lease price for one mu a year is eight yuan if you can’t farm it, and sixteen yuan if you can. That’s two mu, so I can only get eight yuan per mu at most, sixteen yuan a year, plus that two-tenths of a mu vegetable garden, twenty yuan. Calculate it, it’ll cost six hundred yuan. What are you after?”

"To be honest, I'm thinking of selling water in the future..." Zhao Da'e said frankly.

puff...

Zhao Tingming spat out the wine in his mouth, then touched Zhao Dage's forehead and froze: "He doesn't have a fever? What nonsense are you talking about? Selling water, and people still buy it?"

"Selling city dwellers."

"There's no water in the city?"

"Oh dear, Grandpa, you don't understand." Zhao Da'e pouted, "I want to sign a contract, for fifty years, how about eight hundred?"

“No. Your grandfather won’t agree. He’s in debt right now. I paid over seven thousand yuan to the hospital, and he hasn’t paid me back yet. Now I owe the village. Where would your family get the money?” Zhao Tingming asked doubtfully.

Zhao Da'e rummaged in his pocket for a while, then took out eight hundred yuan: "Sign the contract. I'll pay."

"No, no, this is unreliable. Even if you have money, you can't flaunt it like this," Zhao Tingming said earnestly. "Your grandparents will find out and insist on coming to my house. Absolutely not."