Time flies, and two years have passed in a blink of an eye. The summer of Chengqing's eighth year seems to be drier than ever.

Zhao Xiu is about to turn nine years old. Since that year, my grandmother and brother went to the capital for a few months, and she temporarily took over the power of the family and managed it for a while, and then my grandmother came back to see that she was doing well, and she also intended to let her learn more. But she has been busy for half a year, that is, she has learned all the affairs of the family, she knows everything, she is not proficient in anything, and her greatest achievement is to get three industries for the family.

The housing rental industry in Nanhui Port has always been managed by Wang Siping's eldest son, Wang Fulai, and has done well. Now there are more than 20 small courtyards and warehouses in the second room, and there is almost no idle time throughout the year. Although the rent was cheap, it accumulated a lot, and it was also very considerable, and he earned seven or eight hundred taels of silver in two years. Nowadays, there are more and more merchants in Nanhui, and the business is prosperous, and the rent has also risen. According to Wang Fulai, in about two years, it will be a net profit, and although it has not yet returned to its original capital, if you put out all the houses in your hands, you will have a lot of profits, and you will not lose at all. There are now more and more people optimistic about this leasing industry, not only people from other places are staring at those houses, want to buy and rent them, even local residents, in the peak season when merchants gather, they will clean their houses, vacate them to rent to foreign merchants, and take their families to live with relatives elsewhere. This investment in the second house has proved to be quite successful.

The weaving factory on the other side of Songjiang is gradually beginning to see the benefits. In the first year of production, the quality of the cloth woven in the workshop was excellent. The colors are not very new, and most of them are based on classic styles, and the variety is not rich. Sales are not worrying, but they are not very popular with customers. Over the course of a year, the profit was only about three or four hundred taels of silver. Zhang felt quite satisfied, but Zhao Xiu felt that he could do better. Taking advantage of her grandmother's ability to learn how to operate a loom, she experimented with some tricks, such as bamboo cotton, plaid cloth, multi-colored floral cloth, weaving gold flowers on cotton cloth, and experimenting with various dyes in the empty yard of the house. I want to make a few rare colors of cotton thread. Overall, these new attempts have had their successes and failures, and the plaid and slub muslin is now the signature product of the Zhao family's weaving factory. The output is very large. Occasionally, a small amount of new cotton cloth will be produced in the weaving field, which is not only soft in texture, but also very beautiful in color and beautiful in color. But it can't be exported in large quantities. Most of it was digested internally by the Zhao family. No way, Zhao Xiu hasn't found a very good fixed color recipe, these new colors of cotton cloth have begun to fade after washing ten times and eight times, and she is embarrassed to sell them outside. Overall, however, the investment was a success.

The most successful is the tea plantation. Cai Zhuocheng took a group of bodyguards to wander around Siming Mountain in Zhejiang for more than half a year, and finally found the Qiangang Village of Covering Mountain recorded in the travelogue of his predecessors, where a small mountain village has been formed. There are only a dozen or so families, all of whom are surnamed Yu. He was not very wealthy, and lived mainly by hunting. The wild tea trees on the mountain are good, and the locals know about it, but they just pick it and drink it themselves, and they don't think that they can sell it outside. There are too many famous teas in the surrounding area, and there used to be wild beasts on the mountain, and now although I haven't seen a wild beast for twenty or thirty years, it is notorious, so no one has developed a tea garden there. Cai Zhuocheng tasted the taste of wild tea, and when he learned the news, it was like pie in the sky, and he immediately reported back to the second room of the Zhao family. Zhang's made a decision, ordered someone to go to the local government to go through the formalities, bought the most suitable wasteland for growing tea on several nearby hills, and opened up a tea garden, and the people of Qiangang Village directly became his family's tea farmers.

There were only a few dozen wild tea trees on the mountain, and Cai Zhuocheng lived directly in Qiangang Village, carefully waiting for these tea trees, and trying to cultivate more tea saplings. Now the Zhao family tea garden is only a few dozen acres, and the tea trees are planted a little sparsely, but after more than a year of research by Cai Zhuocheng, a very good tea has been produced, which was sent to the second room of the Zhao family in Fengxian, Zhao Xiu tasted it, and felt that there were some differences in the taste of Quangang Hui white tea, which was the favorite drink of my father in modern times, but it was already a rare top grade, and I don't know how Cai Taicheng thought of it, the tea he made turned out to be really white tea, the practice is not the same as the general green tea, the tea leaves are green and frosty, the soup is yellow, the tea is mellow, and it is durable. This year, the tea garden launched the first batch of tea leaves before the Ming Dynasty and before the rain, named Qiangang White Tea, which was just launched in Hangzhou and was immediately sought after by tea customers.

Now the outer six rooms in charge of sales are very optimistic about the prospects of this new tea, so it is good to say that Zhang agreed to give tea to his own business, no longer sell to others, and also searched for a lot of tea growers to enter Qiangang Village, to help Cai Zhuocheng expand the production of tea gardens, and added many patrols and guards, so as not to have peers to destroy the tea garden, or steal tea seedlings and steal seeds, which shows the preciousness of this tea.

And Cai Zhuocheng no longer thinks about rebuilding his own small tea garden, and is begging Zhang's to wait for the five-year period to expire, he will evenly distribute dozens of tea seedlings and let him transplant them. Now that the tea garden has made a lot of profits, Zhang's is still hesitant and doesn't dare to agree to him, but what he is entangled with is just the share of shares. That's impossible!

The success of the tea garden made Zhao Xiu raise his eyebrows, and he no longer worried about the income of his family. When the number of tea trees increases and the tea plantations expand, there are a group of good hands such as Cai Zhuocheng to control the quality of tea, and the annual income of several thousand taels is less. In addition, in the past two years, Fengxian has been in a good place, and the family's land has made a lot of profits, Zhao Xiu can finally settle down, have leisure to read and write, and practice her piano, chess, calligraphy and painting.

However, as soon as she studied affairs, she had such achievements, and Zhang's opinion of her granddaughter was a little higher, and she began to teach her something deeper. In the past two years, Zhao Xiu no longer just sat in his grandmother's room, listening to the housekeeper report a day of firewood, rice, oil and salt, but began to take charge of some specific housework, tea room, kitchen, sewing room and the like in turns, each of which lasted for a year, and then changed the same. It seems to be very easy, but there is a lot to learn. Zhang's words are in advance, which mess you are in charge of this year, you must learn all the things in that mess. Will not be taught again in the future. Zhao Xiu has been working hard for two years, and he feels that he is also very knowledgeable.

For example, in the tea room, it is not just about what tea to serve when the guests come. Zhao Xiu has to know how many kinds of tea there are in the world. What does each taste like, what kind of water should it go with, and which tea is best to drink in what season. There are also a variety of tea sets, tea roasting, tea cages, soup bottles, teapots, tea cups, paper bags, tea washes, tea bottles, tea stoves...... Zhang will also tell his granddaughter what the tea drunk by the ancients was like, and some famous poetry and allusions. After learning all this, Zhang taught his granddaughter the tea ceremony. On what kind of occasion, what kind of guests to receive, and what kind of tea should be used. There are even the preferences of the royal nobles or high-ranking officials and dignitaries of this dynasty for tea, the ugliness that has been made, and the price changes of various famous teas since the founding of the People's Republic of China...... And so on and so forth. Many of these secrets may be outdated. But Zhao Xiu listened. I still feel like I'm relishing. But it's really hard to learn so many things in a year. Zhang Shiming said that he does not require his granddaughter to know everything, just have one or two things that she is particularly proficient in, but she must know everything, and when she communicates and talks to others, she cannot make people feel that she is unlearned and uninformed.

Compared with. Whether you can make a cup of tea with an elegant and good-looking posture is secondary.

Zhao Xiu studied for a year. I learned that I can distinguish twenty or thirty kinds of tea leaves by only opening the lid of the tea bowl and smelling the fragrance of tea, and I can quickly recognize the taste of forty or fifty kinds of tea with just one sip of tea, and I can chat with people about tea for half an hour without being cold, and I can drink the tribute tea given by the emperor in the inner courtyard of the palace, and go down to taste the tea face in the tenant's house, no matter where I go to be a guest, I will not make a fool of myself when drinking tea.

Zhao Xiu took a breath, and within two days, he was sent to take care of the kitchen again.

At first, Zhao Xiu thought that compared with the tea room, she had a better chance to show herself in the kitchen, and she could make a few dishes to amaze her grandmother and brother with a little cooking skills she learned from her mother in modern times. But when she entered the kitchen, she realized that she was thinking too simply.

She can't burn a fire, and the ancient condiments are very different from modern ones, and even the taste of oil is different. Although she is a big lady like her, she also has to learn a few small dishes, and she can show her hand when she gets married in the future, so that her in-laws can praise her, but her cooking is very different from what she originally thought. I don't know if it's because she's still young and her grandmother is not at ease, or because she thinks that the precious daughter shouldn't wash vegetables, cut vegetables and burn fires, etc., these are all done by others, she just needs to wait for the dishes to go to the pot, fry them a few times with a spatula, put down the condiments, and wait for the dishes to be served, even if she made it "by herself".

Zhao Xiu felt embarrassed. She tinkered in the kitchen for a long time, and finally fried a plate of cucumber slices that tasted acceptable. When she brought it to the table, her grandmother and brother praised her for her good job and talent, and her reaction was to be ashamed. This dish can be made delicious, and the fire-burning woman and the vegetable cutting woman must take up more than half of the credit, and the remaining half is hers.

She no longer thinks that she can become a chef with that so-called modern knowledge, and her grandmother asked her to take care of the kitchen, not to ask her to be a cook. She has to learn how to buy dishes every day, what kind of dishes are suitable for eating in what season, which kind of rice is suitable for cooking, which kind of rice is suitable for making porridge, and what kind of condiments are produced and what they taste like...... And so on and so forth. She slowly learned to direct the cook to make the dishes she wanted, and finally made a few new dishes that could be praised by her grandmother and brother

Later, she simply concentrated on the study of dim sum and medicinal soup. My grandmother had a lot of medical books and recipes that she could study slowly. Compared with the daily three meals of frying, stewing, boiling, and frying, maybe these are more suitable for her.

She had just tasted something new, and a year had passed. Grandmother had already said hello, and this fall, she had to start learning the needlework room.

Zhao Xiu is very depressed, if she follows the rules when managing the tea room and kitchen, she is afraid that she will have to practice hard for a year to become a female celebrity.

It's strange to say that when she was a child, she learned quickly and embroidered well, but after learning a certain amount of Cheng Dù, she couldn't improve further, and she didn't have that interest herself. Therefore, in Zhang's view, her female popularity level can only be said to be okay. Zhang's own female celebrity master, he is very dissatisfied with this, especially now that Zhao Xiu is getting older and older year by year, he can talk about others in three years, if the level of female celebrity is still like this, he will be embarrassed by then.

Zhang made up his mind to take the opportunity of teaching his granddaughter the affairs of the needlework room to let her practice as a female celebrity for a year. Zhao Xiu had a headache, watching that day getting closer and closer, he only felt that he had lost his energy to practice calligraphy and painting.

Just when Zhao Xiu was in a daze on the bookcase, Bilian walked in with a big burden and said to her with a smile: "Girl, get up quickly, my mother asked me to bring you some things, so you won't worry if you read it." ”

Bilian is Zhao Xiu's personal girl, waiting every day, so she naturally knows her thoughts. Zhao Xiu listened, although she didn't believe that she really had any idea, but she also walked over obediently: "What is this bag?" ”

Bilian opened the baggage, revealing the things inside, but there were stacks of various colors of fabric, there were cotton cloth, silk forging, leno, silk, different colors, different materials, some of which came out of the Zhao family weaving field, but there were also many products outside, each piece was not big, only about a foot square, and in the lower right corner of each piece, a small piece of white linen was sewn with thread, and the name, color and price of this piece of cloth were written on it.

Zhao Xiu was a little confused: "What does this mean?" (To be continued......)