Mother Ye looked at the baskets of toadfish piled across the clearing, feeling torn. They would have to hire more help again.
"Dongzi, are you sure these fish will sell once they're dried? If it were only a few dozen or a hundred jin, we could set up a stall, but isn't this far too much?"
"Are you sure you want to keep drying them? There's over a thousand jin here. Even if ten jin dries down to two or three, that's still three or four hundred jin. And with all these to dry tomorrow, there'll be even more. How are we going to sell seven or eight hundred jin? Isn't that too much?"
"What if they don't sell? We'll be stuck with them, and we won't even have anywhere to put them."
Uncle Lin was lifting a basket onto the scales nearby. He sounded surprised when he heard her. "You're keeping all these toadfish to dry yourselves too? No wonder you said to pile them in the clearing outside your house. I thought you were worried the buying station would be too crowded to hold them."
Ye Yaodong shrugged and spread his hands helplessly. "They're only three and a half fen a jin, Uncle Lin. How can I sell them for that? It hurts just thinking about it. They're dirt cheap. These dozen or so baskets would only fetch forty or fifty yuan. They're worth next to nothing."
A-Cai cut in to add, "There are too many of them. Nothing we can do. Everyone's getting this price."
"Right, so I thought I'd dry them and sell the dried fish myself."
Uncle Lin considered what he had said. "Are you sure anyone will want them? Will they sell well?"
"I'm not sure. I don't know, since I've never sold them