Back to 1984: Earning Money, Raising Kids, and Keeping the Household Busy

She walked around the hillside, picked a basketful, then collected a lot of chicken and duck eggs. When she had a spare moment, she caught two black-boned chickens, killed them, and made soup.

I kept one for my family to eat, and took the other to school to share with my friends.

As evening approached, Lin Yi sent the children back to Nanyu and entrusted them to Huang Yuezhen's care. He then took Lin Qin to school.

Lin Qin couldn't carry all these things upstairs at once, so she could only put the quilts up first and call Ge Qiuyue and the others down to help.

Ge Qiuyue had just returned from her hometown with a bunch of things. She had just finished unpacking when she went downstairs and saw the basket of fruit and the big bag of vegetables. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"My God, girl, what are you doing?"

Lin Qin grinned, "I brought all the ingredients for the celebration we agreed on, including seafood, vegetables, and fruit. I also made black chicken soup. All I'm missing is meat."

"Let's go to a restaurant outside the school later and ask them to cook it for us."

"This food is so delicious!" Zhang Hong exclaimed loudly.

Du Juanhua nodded vigorously; she had never eaten any proper seafood in her entire life.

Lin Qin smiled nonchalantly, "My dad grows all the fruits and vegetables, raises the chickens and ducks, and buys the seafood wholesale. It doesn't really cost much. I'll provide the ingredients, and you can split the processing costs, okay?"

Everyone nodded without hesitation.

Quickly lend a hand and move the things down.

Bai Junjun said to Lin Yi, "Uncle, why don't you stay and eat with us too!"

Lin Yi waved his hand repeatedly, "You guys eat. I've made another pot of chicken soup at home. I have to go back and check on my grandchildren so they don't cause a ruckus! Come visit sometime!"

Lin Qin gave Lin Yi a few words of advice, watched him drive away in his tricycle, and then called her friends to carry the ingredients to a restaurant outside the school.

I ran into Zhao Qingyue on the way, who was coming out of the cafeteria.

Without a second thought, Lin Qin stuffed a pomelo and some oranges and green dates into her hands.

"President, please try some. My family grows these ourselves."

Zhao Qingyue was taken aback for a moment, but she didn't stand on ceremony and asked curiously, "What are you trying to do?"

"We're going out for a meal! I prepared the ingredients," Lin Qin explained.

Upon seeing the seafood, Zhao Qingyue exclaimed, "If I'm not mistaken, this is deep-sea seafood. It must be quite expensive!"

Lin Qin smiled modestly, "It's alright. It's definitely not cheap to buy in the market, but my family does seafood wholesale, so it won't be much more expensive."

Zhao Qingyue raised an eyebrow, pulled Lin Qin aside to ask more questions, and learned that Lin Qin's family had a sizable seafood wholesale business, as well as growing a lot of vegetables and fruits and raising many chickens, ducks and geese. She immediately became interested, "How about we consider providing ingredients for school activities?"

"Ok?"

Lin Qin looked completely bewildered.

Zhao Qingyue explained the situation to her in detail, "As you know, club activities all require funding, and some activities also require food. But we are all students, and it's not easy to buy cheap and good things. What's more troublesome is that these activities are occasionally attended by leaders, and we have to put on a show. Every year, the funding is never enough."

If you can provide good quality ingredients at a better price than those available in the market, how about we cooperate?

"No problem!" Lin Qin's eyes instantly warmed when she looked at Zhao Qingyue. She took the initiative to put her arm around her, smiling brightly. "President, I can't guarantee anything else, but my seafood selection is incredibly diverse. There's nothing you haven't heard of or seen before that we can't get! Of course, things that aren't available here are another story. In short! As long as it's local seafood or river fish, whatever you want, I can get it for you. The price will be at wholesale price, absolutely no overpricing."

As for vegetables, just tell me when and how much you want, and I'll pick them right away. Even the fruit is guaranteed fresh and cheaper than what you'd find elsewhere.

"Deal!" Zhao Qingyue gripped Lin Qin's hand tightly.

The two women smiled at each other, and Zhao Qingyue, carrying the large pomelo and a bag of oranges and green dates, struggled to walk towards the dormitory building.

Lin Qin quickly reunited with her roommates.

Ge Qiuyue pressed further, "What's wrong? Does our boss want to buy your seafood?"

Lin Qin nodded and briefly explained the situation.

Everyone congratulated him.

Bai Junjun grinned and said, "To celebrate Sister Qin closing a deal, we must eat our fill and bankrupt her!"

Zhou Xue rolled her eyes speechlessly, "Come on! There are two baskets of stuff here, we can't finish them even if we eat until we're stuffed."

Everyone laughed.

Once they arrived at the restaurant and everyone sat down, Lin Qin looked at Du Juanhua and Zhang Hong and asked, "How have your part-time jobs been these past few days?"

The two nodded vigorously, somewhat excited.

“We went to tutor high school students, mostly kids from wealthy families. They paid us two and a half yuan per lesson. I took on three lessons, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. Zhang Hong was better than me; she took on four lessons, one in the morning, two in the afternoon, and one in the evening. Luckily, the evening lesson was near the school, so it was relatively safe.”

In just this week, I earned a little over fifty-two yuan. Zhang Hong earned a bit more than me, but I'm already very satisfied. This amount of money is enough for me until the holidays!

When Du Juanhua talked about her part-time job, her eyebrows danced with excitement, and she seemed much more confident.

Zhang Hong chimed in, "Me too! This money will last until the holidays. Then I can do some part-time work and go home on New Year's Eve. That way, I won't have to ask my family for living expenses next semester!"

Ge Qiuyue was astonished that she could earn so much from seven days of part-time work. "In that case, should I also go and work part-time with you guys to earn money?"

Lin Qin frowned. "Sister Ge, don't you have children at home? Aren't you busy at the end of the year?"

Ge Qiuyue was also extremely annoyed. "It's true! I was even thinking of getting a job in the city and moving all the kids and men in the family to the city."

She wanted to change her and her family's fate. She thought that getting into university would mean getting a good job, but once she entered university and broadened her horizons, she realized that this was just the beginning. Everything else would cost money, but her family was really not well-off.

Seeing that she looked worried, Lin Qin offered them a suggestion: "Why don't you set up a stall to sell clothes? I know a little girl who set up a stall for a month during the summer vacation and earned over a thousand yuan. She doesn't need to ask her family for money for school anymore. And once she tasted success, she stopped playing on holidays and went to set up a stall instead."

"Is it the one who sold whitening cream with you last time?" Zhou Xue asked, blinking.

They were deeply impressed by Lin Qin's whitening cream, and they even secretly whispered about it for a while.

Lin Qin nodded. "It's her. We did this business together. We sold things for a while and made a pretty good profit. People still buy from us occasionally. You see, as long as there's demand, you can make money. You can even sell things at school, like our E-Society."

Now, as long as we publish one issue of the newspaper, the demand will exceed the supply. We can recover our investment in about one or two years, and the profits after that are all net profits. Moreover, when we first established E-Society, we did not ask the school for operating funds, so E-Society is actually just a name on the school's website. The ownership is in my hands. After graduation, I can move E-Society out of the school and run it myself.

That opens up many more ways to make money! (End of Chapter)