Chapter 18: Are Poor People People?
Nie Qiu slung her schoolbag over one shoulder, took a deep breath, and turned to leave. Her scalp was throbbing. Anyone who has had their hair pulled knows that pulling out a single strand might not hurt much, but during a fight, that girl had ripped out a clump of her hair. It tore her scalp, made it bleed, and hurt even more.
Nie Qiu didn’t want Nie Aifang to worry, nor did she want Nie Aifang to know she had gotten into a fight. She could only wait until Nie Aifang had set up her stall before going back.
She went to the pharmacy and bought a box of ointment. Walking on the street, Nie Qiu felt extremely agitated. She only had a little over sixty yuan on her. After paying forty-five yuan for exam paper fees for three subjects at the teacher’s, and losing four yuan that morning, she had only eighty-six yuan left. Now, buying the ointment cost another twenty-five yuan.
To be honest, Nie Qiu knew that in this era, survival was impossible without money. Money isn’t everything, but without it, nothing is! She didn’t want to ask Nie Aifang for money for everything she needed. Besides being embarrassed to ask, Nie Qiu also felt guilty. She was occupying this girl’s body but couldn’t help Nie Aifang by minding the stall like the girl would have.
She was Nie Aifang’s daughter now, but when it came to asking for money, she couldn’t do it with a clear conscience.
Money, she desperately needed money right now! Nie Qiu closed her eyes in helplessness and sat on a bench in a residential area. She took out the ointment, parted her hair, and began to apply it to her head. She knew she had the ability to earn money, but she lacked the means.
As mentioned before, no one would hire a child studying in Class 10 as a tutor. Moreover, she was only a teenager, too young to be convincing.
An old man picking through the garbage bin next to the bench looked at Nie Qiu and hesitantly asked, “Miss, could you give me your ointment box?”
Nie Qiu, holding the ointment, looked at the paper box she had placed on the bench. Without any objection, she handed it to the old man.
The old man took it and smiled, “I can earn a little more money now!”
Nie Qiu was a bit surprised. Money? Nie Qiu smiled, looking at the cloth bag in the old woman’s hand, and asked with a smile, “Grandma, how much can this paper box sell for?”
The old woman held up the paper box and smiled, “These paper boxes can sell for fifty cents a jin!”
Fifty cents… a jin… Nie Qiu gave a bitter smile. How much could a paper box for ointment weigh? It probably wouldn’t even be twenty grams. Looking at the bottles in the old woman’s cloth bag, Nie Qiu smiled and asked, “Then what about these plastic bottles? How much can plastic bottles sell for a jin?”
The old woman, though puzzled, still smiled and said, “Before, a bottle this size, like a jin of mineral water, could sell for ten cents each, but now three can only sell for two cents. Large bottles that held oil used to sell for fifty cents each, but now they only sell for thirty cents each.”
Nie Qiu put the ointment into her schoolbag, stood up, and forced a smile, “Thank you, Grandma.”
Should she pick up bottles to sell? Thinking about the various beverage bottles in the trash can behind the classroom, if she could pick up dozens or hundreds of bottles a day to sell, wouldn’t she be able to earn ten yuan or so every day? That is to say, she could at least earn enough for their family’s living expenses for a day, as long as they didn’t eat meat that day.
Nie Qiu left the residential area, sighed, and looked at the bustling crowd on the street, and the plastic bottles being kicked around on the ground. She gave a bitter smile. Could she bring herself to pick up these bottles? In this materialistic world, picking up bottles on the street was looked down upon by others. She could often see scorn in people’s eyes.
Nie Qiu frowned, glanced at a few bottles on the ground in the distance that the old man had just picked up, and gave a slight bitter smile. She looked up at the sky, which had already darkened. It was probably past seven o’clock now, and Nie Aifang might have already set up her stall.
Nie Qiu tightened the schoolbag on her shoulder and walked towards home. Upon arriving home, Nie Qiu took a key from the hollow brick used for storing miscellaneous items by the door, unlocked it, and hung her schoolbag behind the door. Nie Qiu then went to the balcony kitchen. She opened the pot on the honeycomb briquette stove; on top of the steaming lid was cold rice, and below was a large pot of hot water.
After eating, Nie Qiu poured the hot water into a red bathtub. She took a bath with the cheap three-and-a-half-yuan Shufujia soap. Nie Qiu took out her dirty clothes and Nie Aifang’s dirty clothes from the small bathroom and threw them all into the bathtub she had just used. She filled it with water, added laundry detergent, and started washing. After finishing the laundry, she hung the clothes on the clothesline on the balcony.
The entire balcony looked even more cramped. This balcony was used for cooking, as a bathroom, and for drying clothes. To be honest, the previous Nie Qiu couldn’t have imagined it, but the past few days of living had taught her a lot. Sometimes, you can’t do whatever you want. There are many hardships in this world.
“Husband, I want pan-fried dumplings tonight. Go to the supermarket and buy some frozen dumplings!” Suddenly, a voice from downstairs made Nie Qiu pause. She suddenly remembered that a young couple lived downstairs.
Although they had encountered each other often these past few days, this young couple didn’t greet them. The way they looked at them was the same as how students at school looked at them.
Actually, Nie Qiu knew that if the previous Nie Qiu and Nie Aifang had been a bit cleaner, their relationship with the neighbors would have been much better. But unfortunately, neither mother nor daughter was particularly clean.
Wait, pan-fried dumplings? Although Nie Qiu disliked greasy places, what if she made dumplings at home and had Nie Aifang sell them?
No sooner said than done, Nie Qiu took out the remaining sixty-odd yuan from her schoolbag, preparing to buy meat and dumpling wrappers. Frozen dumplings and handmade ones tasted different. Nie Qiu believed that handmade ones would definitely be much tastier than frozen ones!
She went to the vegetable market to buy meat. Meat was ten yuan a jin, but since it was late, the remaining meat wasn’t as good in quality and color as it was during the morning market. So, the butcher sold it to Nie Qiu for eight yuan a jin. Five jin of meat cost forty yuan. Nie Qiu also bought two jin of carrots and scallions, and used the remaining money to buy dumpling wrappers.
As soon as she got home, Nie Qiu started making the filling. She separated the pork skin and put it in a bowl. Then, she washed the evenly fatty and lean meat and the carrots and began to chop the filling. The effect of chopping carrots and meat together was that the carrot juice would better penetrate the meat.
There was no refrigerator at home, so these ingredients had to be made tonight and sold tonight! It took nearly an hour for Nie Qiu to finish chopping the meat and carrots. She put the chopped filling into a clean washbasin that had been scalded with boiling water. Nie Qiu added eight eggs, then started adding oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar, and finally added the chopped scallions.
