Weighing the catch

Ye Yaodong rolled his eyes. The proof was right in front of her, yet his mother still kept questioning him. She actually didn't believe him!

"Mom, you've seen it yourself. What else is there to ask? It's right there."

"When did you go out to sea? Why didn't you say anything beforehand? Whose boat did you use?"

"Didn't I say at noon that I was going out and ask Xiuqing to cook my noodles early? I left after eating. We rented the boat."

"You were only gone a few hours, and you caught..."

"Oh, we'll talk later. I'm busy right now. There are still fish on the boat. I'll tell you once we've unloaded and weighed everything." He frowned as he cut off his mother's questions. This wasn't the time for explanations. Getting the fish ashore came first.

The nosy villagers widened their eyes. "There's more? You haven't finished unloading?"

"Would you look at that! The Ye family's struck it rich again. How come you've been so lucky with money lately? Have you been praying to Mazu?"

Mother Ye smiled at the onlookers. "Of course we have. Their first trip out was a couple of days ago, so naturally we had to make proper offerings to Mazu and ask her to keep everything smooth sailing for our family."

"When your luck turns, there's no stopping it. Even Yaodong managed to catch this many Spanish mackerel. He's really made something of himself."

"Oh, Yaodong and his friends usually loaf around and don't look like much, but who knew they could do so well when they got serious? They even caught a whole school of Spanish mackerel. Basket after basket-that's no small haul."

"Exactly. There must be a few thousand jin, right? Every single fish is so big..."

Under everyone's envious, jealous gazes, Ye Yaodong and the others finally brought all the Spanish mackerel ashore. Sweat covered their heads, and the backs of their shirts were soaked.

Ye Yaodong handed his mother the bucket he was holding. "I kept these for us-two Spanish mackerel and some other seafood. Make fish balls with the mackerel tonight."

"Why keep any? These two could sell for several yuan. We can just eat the miscellaneous fish..."

Having lived through so many hard years, she couldn't bear to eat anything worth money.

"Oh, we worked hard catching all those fish. We ought to treat ourselves. Besides, we've got so many that these two won't make any difference. Take them home and make fish balls. I want some!"

"Eat, eat, eat-that's all you think about. You haven't even got the money yet, and you're already planning to squander it. Wouldn't each of these fetch a yuan...?"

Lin Xiuqing took hold of Mother Ye as she grumbled. "Mom, two fish won't make much difference. Yaodong's friends probably kept some too. Let's take them home and make fish balls. The children haven't had any in ages."

At that, Mother Ye fell silent. If everyone had kept some, she couldn't very well put theirs back, could she?

A-Cai smiled at them. "Is everything unloaded? Can we weigh it now?"

"Let's agree on a price first. If it's too low, we won't sell to you. We'll hire a tractor and take it to Yujing Wharf!" Ye Yaodong wasn't stupid. With this many fish, A-Cai could make a tidy profit just reselling them without having to do any of the work!

"Twenty fen isn't low. At most, I'll make ten fen reselling them. It's only because your father's large yellow croaker introduced me to a few more fish dealers the other day that I can even handle this much Spanish mackerel. There really isn't much profit in it. Other people have to earn a living too. You've got to leave them some room to make money."

That actually made quite a bit of sense.

The fish passed through several hands between buying and selling. Everyone needed some room to make money. Who would do it if there was no profit?

A-Zheng draped an arm over A-Cai's shoulders with a cheeky grin. "You've got plenty of contacts, Cai. Making money is much easier for you than it is for us. We're all earning our money the hard way, so how about adding a few fen?"

"You call that hard work? I heard you came back after only a few hours. Nobody's had it easier than you!"

Xiao Xiao grew impatient with their haggling. "Oh, who cares how many hours we were out? Just tell us whether you'll raise the price!"

Mother Ye chimed in too. "Exactly, just add a little. With this much Spanish mackerel, you'd probably make close to a hundred yuan or more even at one fen profit per jin."

A-Cai thought it over, hesitated, then gritted his teeth. "One more fen, maximum. And that's coming out of my own profit."

A-Guang frowned too. "Isn't that a bit stingy? Just one fen?"

"That's plenty, honestly!"

"How about twenty-two fen?"

"Normally, there's no haggling at all. I'm only adding a fen because you've got so much. Even if you took it to Yujing Wharf, they wouldn't give you twenty-one fen, and you'd have to pay for transport too. If you don't sell to me, I'm not lending you my baskets. Let's see what you'd pack all those fish in."

"Forget it. Twenty-one fen it is. Saves us the hassle."

The wharf generally didn't allow bargaining. Their attitude had always been, take it or leave it, whether you were buying or selling. Ye Yaodong didn't want to make things so complicated either. Spanish mackerel weren't particularly valuable fish, and there really wasn't much margin for profit between buying and selling. Twenty-one fen was a decent price for the time.

"All right. If Yaodong says it's fine, then it's fine. Let's hurry up and weigh them."

"Sure, sure. Get some paper and a pen to write it down."

As the excited onlookers pointed and commented, they weighed all the Spanish mackerel.

"How many jin?"

"Where's the abacus? There are too many numbers to add up. Cai, use your abacus."

Not one of them knew how to use an abacus...

Ye Yaodong did know how to use a calculator, but there weren't any calculators around then. Everyone used an abacus.

They all watched patiently as A-Cai worked the beads with a rapid clatter.

"Done. A total of 7,628 jin. At twenty-one fen per jin, that comes to 1,601 yuan and eighty-eight fen."

The watching villagers grew excited. "Wow, sixteen hundred! That's even more than the netful of large yellow croaker sold for the other day."

"You can't compare them. How many jin of yellow croaker were there, and how many jin of Spanish mackerel are here? Yellow croaker are still worth more. If all these were yellow croaker, that would really be something."

"Who doesn't know yellow croaker are valuable? But you need the luck to catch them. Catching this much Spanish mackerel is impressive enough."

"That's enough for each of them to get four hundred. As much as someone else would earn trawling for two months."

"It's worth four months of a worker's wages!"

"How come the Ye family's been so lucky lately?"

"I'm going to pray to Mazu tomorrow too..."

Unlike the onlookers, Ye Yaodong was bewildered by the total. Why was it only sixteen hundred? He'd thought they could sell the catch for several thousand!

Perhaps he still hadn't adjusted from the prices in his previous life, but sixteen hundred felt like so little...

"Are you sure you calculated that right?"

A-Cai rolled his eyes. "If you think I got it wrong, do it yourself."

"I don't know how..."

"I'll do it!"

Lin Xiuqing stepped forward. She had finished primary school, so she could read and had learned to use an abacus. She just hadn't used one much and wasn't very practiced.

She moved the beads slowly, afraid of making a mistake. Ye Yaodong didn't dare disturb her. He ran through the figures in his head and decided they did seem right.

A worker earned only a little over a yuan a day. Sixteen hundred was almost three years of wages. Looked at that way, it did seem like quite a lot.