Courtyard House: Is Xu Damao a childless man? Let me help.

It's called a ghost market, but it's not ghostly at all. Although it's not exactly bustling, there are quite a few people wandering around aimlessly.

After wandering around the ghost market for a short while, Ye Jianchuan stopped in front of a stall.

The stall was filled with books, some of which were quite common, such as The Scholars and Dream of the Red Chamber. But other books really piqued Ye Jianchuan's interest.

"Sir, how much are these books for you?"

Ye Jianchuan squatted down and asked about the price, but the stall owner ignored him and instead extended a hand.

Ye Jianchuan was stunned for a moment, and then suddenly remembered what Lao Guo had said when he was telling a crosstalk performance: in the ghost market, prices are not agreed upon verbally, but rather two people exchange hands in their sleeves and use their hands to indicate the price.

So after hesitating for a moment, Ye Jianchuan also stretched out a hand, and then felt the touch from the palm of the stall owner. The stall owner made a two, and then a five.

Is it two yuan for five books, or five yuan for two books? Ye Jianchuan was a little puzzled, but he couldn't pretend he didn't know anything, so he could only gesture wildly.

The old man immediately withdrew his hand and said, "Kid! What are you gesturing for? If you don't know the rules, don't try this with an old man!"

These books are three yuan each, or two for five yuan. Choose whichever one you like; don't try to amuse an old man like this!

Ye Jianchuan was dumbfounded. What happened? Didn't you reach out first? How did it turn into me coming to tease you?

And... why did you just blurt out the price? What happened to the unwritten rules of the trade? What happened to the rule of passing the money quietly behind closed doors? What happened to ignoring outsiders? Guo Degang's stand-up comedy has misled me!

Ye Jianchuan didn't even consider that what Lao Guo was talking about was from a time period, a story passed down from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Although some people still understand these things, they are no longer a necessary procedure.

The old man saw Ye Jianchuan standing there dumbfounded and started complaining again, "Kid! You think you can just come to the ghost market and show off based on what you've heard?"

Haven't you heard the saying, "A half-baked expert makes a fool of himself"? You're just a dabbler, so don't mess around. Just ask the price, understand?

Chapter Forty-Six: Bought Several Ancient Books

Ye Jianchuan scratched his head awkwardly, then began to study the books on the old man's stall.

Surprisingly, there were some books on this stall that Ye Jianchuan was quite interested in, such as the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, which he really wanted to buy.

Not to mention that the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic itself has a certain mythological character, the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic on the stall is also an ancient book, the kind that looks very old.

Even if the content of this kind of book is useless, if you buy it and preserve it properly, it will become a priceless antique in the future!

Besides the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, there were other books that Ye Jianchuan found quite different.

Ye Jianchuan reached out and picked up one of the books, gesturing to the old man. The old man nodded, and Ye Jianchuan began to read it.

Upon flipping through the book, Ye Jianchuan became excited. The contents of the book felt strangely familiar to him, resembling a set of physical exercises.

Looking at the last page, Ye Jianchuan saw the words "Five Animal Frolics" written on it. He then understood. Everyone was doing "radio calisthenics" to strengthen their bodies, and the principles were similar, so they naturally looked very similar.

After browsing through the old man's stall again, Ye Jianchuan picked out two more books that looked quite good and were also ancient-style books.

"Sir, could you please help me with these four books?"

Ye Jianchuan took out ten yuan and handed it over, thinking there would be some kind of 'ritual' involved, such as the old man giving him some pointers since he didn't know the rules.

To everyone's surprise, the old man took the large sum of money offered to him, stuffed it into his pocket, and then sat back down on his small stool, continuing to feign sleep.

Seeing that he couldn't get anything out of it, Ye Jianchuan could only leave dejectedly with the four books he had chosen.

I bought four books for ten yuan. It doesn't sound very expensive, but at that time each book only cost a few cents.

Two yuan and fifty cents a book is already considered an exorbitant price, but the books Ye Jianchuan selected looked like ancient books.

Moreover, when Ye Jianchuan was flipping through the book, he could even see some annotations made with a brush. Generally speaking, people who can make annotations in such books are quite famous.

As far as Ye Jianchuan knew, Li Shimin had a particular fondness for annotating ancient books written by his predecessors, and it was unclear whether later emperors followed his example.

Therefore, later emperors such as Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di), Emperor Kangxi during the "Potato Prosperity" era, and Emperor Qianlong were particularly enthusiastic about annotating those well-known ancient books.

These things aren't actually worth a lot of money, so Ye Jianchuan thought it was unlikely that anyone would be so bored as to create such fakes.

Ye Jianchuan made a gesture as if he were tucking the four books into his pocket, but in reality, he had already stored all four books in his storage space.

After wandering around the ghost market a few more times, Ye Jianchuan discovered that the things inside were indeed quite abundant, not just the various antiques and the like he had imagined.

There are also some rare items that are sold here, such as the dried sea cucumber that Sha Zhu just mentioned today, which you need to ask someone else about. Ye Jianchuan saw someone selling it in the ghost market.

However, Ye Jianchuan didn't plan to buy it. Anyway, Sha Zhu was going to ask someone to get fish lips, so it wouldn't make much difference whether there was one more or one less sea cucumber.

After browsing around a few more times, Ye Jianchuan didn't make any more purchases. It wasn't that he didn't want to buy anything, but rather that he simply couldn't tell which items were good.

Because most of the so-called antiques in the ghost market are porcelain, and porcelain is not as easy to identify as ancient books.

To those who don't know much about porcelain, it makes no difference whether these pieces are from the Shang and Zhou dynasties or from last week.

Of course, porcelain probably didn't exist during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, but without some professional knowledge, it would be embarrassing to buy a microwave-safe bowl.

After strolling around for more than an hour, Ye Jianchuan finally started walking towards the courtyard house. By the time he returned to the courtyard house, it was already five o'clock.

Although it was still early morning, several families in the courtyard had already turned on their lights, and Ye Jianchuan secretly memorized the time.

It seems I should find a way to go out more often and come back earlier, otherwise it wouldn't be good if someone with ulterior motives found out that I'm wandering around outside in the middle of the night.

Back home, Ye Jianchuan briefly examined the books he had just bought, then washed up and went to his front door to rummage through the chicken coop.

Fortunately, my "hen that lays a lot of eggs" hasn't reached an "abnormal" level yet; after a whole night, it only laid three eggs.

If you calculate it that way, it should lay about seven or eight eggs a day. If you collect the eggs diligently and discreetly, you can give the neighbors the illusion that the hen only lays three or four eggs a day. That should be fine.

After washing up briefly and getting some food, Ye Jianchuan left the courtyard house again.

At such an early hour, most of the households in the courtyard had just woken up. Seeing Ye Jianchuan leaving so early, a few people greeted him.

Ye Jianchuan responded to each question and then left the courtyard. It was so early, so Ye Jianchuan was obviously not going straight to work.

I just got back from the ghost market not long ago, but it's already six o'clock. The ghost market has closed, but the morning market is open again. As a regular market, there are quite a few things to buy here.

Ye Jianchuan came today hoping to find someone to buy cotton, since he still didn't have enough cotton to make his big cotton coat.

Besides the thick cotton coat, if there was enough cotton, Ye Jianchuan also wanted to make himself a few more quilts and mattresses.

Although I didn't sleep on a Simmons mattress before, it wasn't as hard as this one. So, putting on a few mattresses to make it a little softer is quite nice.

However, after wandering around the morning market for a long time, Ye Jianchuan did not see any cotton or cotton wadding for sale. It seems that he can only try to find this kind of thing at the pigeon market.

But since he was already at the morning market, Ye Jianchuan wasn't going to go back empty-handed!

It's said that people these days love to eat fatty foods, so I'll learn a little bit myself, buy some pork fat, and render some lard for cooking.

The leftover fried dough can be mixed with some sugar later and made into a decent snack to go with drinks.

Chapter 47 Terrifying Female Colleagues

This time, Ye Jianchuan also witnessed the fighting power of the "aunties" of this era. As soon as the meat stall was set up, several old ladies surrounded it and began to snap up the big fatty meat on the stall.

Fortunately, at this time, you needed ration coupons to buy things, so although there were quite a few of these old ladies, they couldn't buy too much meat.

However, when it was Ye Jianchuan's turn to buy meat, the situation changed slightly. Ye Jianchuan pretended to rummage through his satchel and then pulled out six meat coupons for one jin (500 grams).

He bought six pounds of pork in one go, five pounds of which were pure fat, like pork back fat. Well, buying meat like that was actually a bit of a waste of money, but for Ye Jianchuan, there was no such thing as waste.

After all, these tickets and money all came from the system, which wasn't difficult for Ye Jianchuan to obtain, so he didn't cherish them that much.

The main reason I bought so much fatty meat was that I wanted to render lard myself, so I bought more fatty meat so I could render more oil and eat it for a longer period of time.

After buying the pork, Ye Jianchuan strolled around the market for a bit, but found there wasn't much else to buy, so he turned and headed towards the food factory.

As for the pork in his hand, he naturally tossed it into his storage space when he reached a place where no one could see him.

After informing Director Zhou that Sha Zhu could help with the cooking, and confirming the time for the reception with Director Zhou, Ye Jianchuan returned to the workshop and began his work for the day.

Soon it was noon. Ye Jianchuan didn't have anything else to do at noon, so he went to the food factory's canteen with the other workers.

However... during working hours, the workers didn't dare to chat idly, but now it was their break time, and Ye Jianchuan was a 'young and promising' candidate, so the older women from the food factory all came up to him.

And they all started with the same tone: "Team Leader Ye, I see you've grown up a lot, and you don't have anyone at home to take care of you. How about I introduce you to someone?"

Looking at these "older sisters" who were almost as old as his mother, Ye Jianchuan suddenly felt a bit of pressure. However, since they were doing this for his own good, Ye Jianchuan could only deal with it as it came.

"Thank you, Sister Liu, but I haven't considered that yet."

"Thank you, Sister Li. I've only just turned eighteen. Even if we start dating now, we'll still have to wait two years to get our marriage certificate. I have poor self-control, so what if I can't resist and make a mistake?"

So I think I'll wait another two years before considering these things!

After this lunch, Ye Jianchuan felt that dealing with these enthusiastic older women was much more tiring than working a full day.

However, this is a characteristic of food factories. In factories that require heavy physical labor, most of the workers are men, such as steel rolling mills, machine repair shops, and even meat processing plants.

However, the food processing plant and the textile factory were the complete opposite; at least 70% to 80% of the workers in these two factories were older women.

So the men working in these factories naturally became the objects of these older women's amusement and ridicule.

Moreover, speaking of which, according to seniority, I should call these older women in the food factory "aunt" or "auntie," since my father used to be on the same generation as them when he worked at the food factory.

However, when Ye Jianchuan came to intern for the first time, he still carried with him the 'lessons learned' from his previous life, which was that no matter how old the colleague was, he should call them "sister" and never "auntie" or "grandma".

As a result... this shout amused the women, and they were unwilling to accept it when the woman tried to change her address later.

. . . . . .

Just as Ye Jianchuan was busy dealing with the older women at the food factory, the neighborhood committee of the courtyard welcomed a very unpopular old lady.

Under the 'watchful eye' of Banggeng, Xiaodang, and Xiaohuaihua, Jia Zhangshi reluctantly arrived at the street office.

To be honest, Jia Zhangshi is one of the people the street office least wants to see or receive, since her tantrum-throwing personality is already well-known.

If anything slightly displeases her, he'll start crying and shouting on the ground. The previous director of the neighborhood committee suffered a lot of injustices at Jia Zhangshi's hands before.

So when Jia Zhangshi explained her purpose, Director Wang of the subdistrict office immediately came up with a way to deal with her.

"Sister-in-law Jia, you've come at a really bad time. The work at our match factory and glove factory has already been distributed out."

Upon hearing this, Jia Zhangshi thought it was great news! Didn't this mean she wouldn't have to work herself to the bone to earn money?

So Jia Zhangshi immediately smiled and turned around, ready to go back to her life of leisure.

But Banggeng wouldn't have it, and immediately grabbed Jia Zhangshi, saying, "Grandma! You can't leave! You have to earn money to buy me food!"

Jia Zhangshi pretended to be helpless as she looked at her grandson, "Good boy! It's not that Grandma doesn't earn money, but Director Wang said that if there's no work, Grandma can do it!"

After Jia Zhangshi said this, Director Wang suddenly spoke up again.