Chapter 120: Chapter 117: A Sackful of Money

“You won’t lose out!” Lin Lan said, pointing to the other packages. “Take these to Xiuyun. See what flavors her family likes, let me know, and I’ll make them.”

Li Xiangyang smiled and nodded. “Okay! I’ll go home and sort out the holiday gifts I need to send. I’ll have them all custom-made by you.”

Lin Lan laughed. “I’ll give you the wholesale price!”

When she got back, Lin Lan gave some of each type of mooncake to the Yang family’s uncles. After trying them, everyone agreed they were delicious.

The matriarch and Yao Xiuyun liked the kidney bean and egg yolk filling. Little Douzi and Dandan both liked the five-nut filling. Yang Dingbang and Li Xiangyang both preferred the ham filling. The red bean paste filling was the least popular.

The next day, Yang Dingbang, Li Xiangyang, and Yao Xiuyun each ordered several dozen mooncakes to give as gifts.

A couple of days later, they brought colleagues from their work units to order mooncakes. The twenty-cent red bean paste ones were ordered the least, while the forty- and fifty-cent ham, egg yolk, and five-nut ones were ordered the most.

’Back in my day,’ Lin Lan thought, ’you could put eight mooncakes in a fancy box and sell it for tens, or even hundreds, of yuan.’

Realizing that with so many mooncake orders, she definitely wouldn’t have time to go back home to deliver holiday gifts for the Mid-Autumn Festival, she made some mooncakes, took them to the station for Li Hongmei and Old Chen, and asked them to help carry a message and some mooncakes back to her parents’ home.

A few days later, Li Hongmei returned with colleagues from the bus station to place custom orders, which also boosted sales of the kidney bean rolls, pea cakes, and mung bean cakes.

Many regular customers also came to order custom mooncakes as gifts after trying Lin Lan’s. Zhou Xiaohong and the Wang brothers also brought back many orders.

They had to make pastries and mooncakes for daily retail at several stalls, on top of all the custom orders. The two of them simply couldn’t keep up. Lin Lan decided to temporarily stop making Orchid Beans and focus solely on pastries. Even so, she and Lin Yuezhen were busy from morning till night and still couldn’t finish everything, but no matter how tired they were, they were happy.

Yang Liying and her husband offered to help run the stalls. When the matriarch and Yang Liqun found out, they started coming over early every morning to help.

When Little Douzi came home from school, he would help wrap the mooncakes in kraft paper and then in red paper. Dandan helped tie them up with hemp rope.

After closing their stall, the Wang brothers would rush over to help knead dough and bake mooncakes. The mother and her two sons came to Lin Lan’s house every day, staying busy until eleven or twelve at night before going home.

They only got five or six hours of rest a day. The oven was running nonstop from morning to night. They kept busy until midnight on the fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month before finally extinguishing the fire.

Lin Lan cooked some noodles for everyone. As they ate, she took Yang Liying’s and Yang Liqun’s hands and said gratefully, “Big Sis, Third Sis, thank you so much for your help. Otherwise, it would have just been Yuezhen and me. Even the best business opportunity would have been useless if we couldn’t handle the work.”

Yang Liqun laughed. “I thought you two had it easy, but it turns out this work is even more tiring than the harvest season.”

Lin Lan nodded. “Big Sis, running a business is tiring, but we earn much more than we would from regular labor. I think you should consider setting up a stall at Dongzikou.”

Yang Liying added, “I’ve noticed Big Brother-in-law hasn’t been objecting to Zhixue and his brother running a stall lately. You should just make and sell tofu and dried tofu.”

Her two sons also looked at her. “Mom, I think you should listen to Auntie. Make tofu and sell it at Dongzikou.”

Yang Liqun had also gotten a taste of the sweet rewards of business these past few days. She thought for a moment, then looked at everyone. “I’ll go back and talk to that stubborn old ox. Even if I decide to do it, I’ll need to find a stonemason to make a grinder first.”

Yang Liying smiled. “Once you’ve made up your mind, let me know. Order one for me, too.”

Wang Zhilin, yawning repeatedly, pulled Yang Liqun toward the door. “Mom, let’s go home and sleep. We still have to run the stall tomorrow!”

“Okay!” The group shone their flashlights and walked home quickly.

Early the next morning, Lin Lan delivered the last batch of custom mooncakes to her customers. She then went home and slept with Lin Yuezhen until the afternoon.

Lin Lan got out of bed with her hair looking like a bird’s nest and immediately started calculating her profits from the past couple of weeks. She took out her ledger and did the math. In fourteen days, she had sold over twenty thousand mooncakes, earning nearly three thousand yuan from the mooncakes alone.

She could hardly believe her eyes. She pulled aside the footstool in front of her bed, dragged out the gunnysack full of money from underneath, opened it, and grinned so wide her eyes nearly disappeared as she looked at the cash inside. ’Heh heh! A sack full of money!’

After counting all the money, there were even a few dozen extra yuan. She really had earned that much.

She finally understood how the founder of “Fool’s Melon Seeds” became a millionaire back in 1976.

’If I were like him, I could hire people to mass-produce Orchid Beans and all sorts of pastries, then have them sold on every street and alley…’

Lin Lan shook her head. ’Better not. I don’t want to be made an example of like him.’ She had no desire to be in and out of that place several times.

Smiling, she straightened the money, put it back in the gunnysack, and hid it away. She decided to ask Zhou Xiaohong if she knew of any storefront properties for sale when she came to pick up her order that afternoon.

She went out to wash up and saw Little Douzi on the covered porch, wearing a small undershirt and doing his homework. Wangcai was lying at his feet, eyes half-closed.

She had originally thought Little Douzi would want to rename Wangcai, but the little guy said that even if Wangcai’s name was changed, he still wouldn’t be Dahuang.

Little Douzi turned his head, saw her, and grinned. “Mom, Auntie went to the foot of the mountain to cut paper mulberry leaves.”

Lin Lan nodded and gently patted his back. “Sit up straight, or you’ll need glasses later. And if you wear glasses, you can’t get into a military academy or wear a uniform.”

Little Douzi sat up straight and looked at her. “I know about glasses. Little Yun said some boys in her class secretly call Mr. Wang ’four-eyed dog’.”

“That’s rude. You shouldn’t copy them,” Lin Lan said, picking up his homework to take a look. His strokes were quite neat. “Go play for a while after you finish your homework.”

Little Douzi shook his head. “Everyone went to Grandma’s house.” He looked up at her. “Mom, Cousin Dandan said he doesn’t want Youngest Uncle to go on blind dates and get a new wife. If Uncle gets a new wife, will Cousin Dandan’s mom still be his mom?”

Lin Lan was amused. “You little thing, you think about so much. Even if Youngest Uncle gets a new wife, Dandan’s mom will still be his mom!”

“Mom, I have a secret to tell you!” Little Douzi pulled Lin Lan’s hand, making her sit down, and whispered in her ear, “Cousin Dandan said he doesn’t like the idea of a new mom, and he doesn’t like his old mom either. He said he wants you to be his mom, so he and I can go to school together and sleep in the same room.”

Lin Lan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She gave him a light flick on the forehead and looked at him sternly. “Yang Xiaoguo, I can only be Dandan’s aunt, not his mom. You absolutely cannot say this in front of anyone else, understand?”

“Mhm!” Little Douzi looked at Lin Lan, understood that he wasn’t supposed to say such things, and nodded. He then looked at her again. “Mom, we only whispered it. We didn’t tell anyone else.”

Looking at her son, who was so much more sensible than other kids his age, Lin Lan felt a pang in her heart and gave him a hug. “I know. My Little Douzi is the best boy. Let’s go get Auntie and go into town to buy you some books.”

Little Douzi shook his head. “I don’t want any. I haven’t finished my picture books yet.”

“Then Mommy will make you some pumpkin pancakes.”

“Okay!”

Just as Lin Lan turned around, she heard the ringing of a bell at the gate. Little Douzi and Wangcai had already run out to greet the visitor.

“Uncle Xiangyang, you didn’t go to your grandma’s house today either?”

“Nope!” Li Xiangyang got off his bike, lifted him onto the seat, and looked at him with a smile. “My grandma’s house is too far away. I’ll go some other time.”

Little Douzi sighed like a little adult. “Mom is too tired, so we’re going next time, too.”

“You little smarty-pants!” Li Xiangyang laughed and ruffled his hair.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep