Chapter 8  : Cake

“Then we’ll sell these sleeve guards for 50 cents a pair.”

Su Wen slapped the board and urged her three sisters to quickly eat and shower.

After they had their meal and washed up, the sisters locked the front and back doors tightly and gathered in the back room to work on the sleeve guards.

Su Wen was in charge of picking out the cloth to form pairs of sleeve guards.

Su Qing specialized in sewing as she had good sewing skills.

Su Xiu had been working for the whole day and was so tired that she fell asleep the moment she got into bed. On the other hand, little sister Su was busying herself, full of energy.

One moment, she would be massaging her big sister’s shoulders and pouring her tea. The next, she would be helping her second sister thread a needle. Once the thread on hand was used up, she would immediately replace it with a new one.

The three of them worked efficiently late into the night, stitching a total of thirty pairs.

“Alright, let’s rest for today. We’ll continue tomorrow.”

Su Qing still had to go to her master’s house the next day, so she yawned and went to bed.

Su Wen was the last to sleep, but because she was the only one free in the house, she got up early the next day and went into the kitchen to make cornmeal cakes.

It was soft, sweet and delicious, and the three sisters almost swallowed their tongues.

“Big sister, what kind of cake is this? How can it be so delicious?”

“It looks like the cake that grandma secretly gave to Niuniu!” little sister Su said with admiration.

“Cake?” Su Wen was quite surprised. Did cakes exist in the countryside in the 1980s? However, this reminded her that she could make her own cakes and sell them!

It was not difficult to make a cake as long as there were chicken eggs, flour, and sugar.

She could simply go to the town’s blacksmith to order a few molds.

If the sleeve guards couldn’t be sold, she could make cakes with some money.

She remembered that when she was young, she lived with her grandmother in the countryside. She would often bring eggs and sugar from home. There were people on the street who would help to bring them for processing as long as they paid the processing fee.

At that time, the cakes were so scrumptious, and the eggs were all laid by chickens reared in the countryside.

If any child could take a piece of cake and walk around the village, they would definitely become the most beautiful child in the village.

“Don’t listen to Niuniu brag. Cake, my foot. Big aunt has a distant relative who works in the state-owned steel factory in the city. When she came back, she only told him about it and it was bragged about.”

Su Qing had also heard of it but had never seen it, let alone eaten it.

Su Wen heaved a sigh of relief. It was good that he didn’t! This way, it would be able to sell.

A lot of cakes could be made with just a little raw ingredients. They were soft and fluffy, sweet and tasty, which was definitely not something that peach crisps could compare with.

*****

For the next few days, Su Wen busied herself with making sleeve guards at night. She even made a shawl that could protect factory workers from the sun.

During the day, she visited the village and went to the house of Aunt Chunyan to inquire about the situation. After getting a clear picture of the public opinion in the village, she finally heaved a sigh of relief.

She hadn’t given the 55 yuan away for nothing. She had immediately changed everyone’s evaluation of her.

During this period, Su Wen met Sun Yunyun once in the village. She heaved a sigh of relief when she heard that she was arguing fiercely with her parents about continuing her studies – her brother and sister-in-law were against it and refusing to provide funding.

Go on and make a fuss! If she did, she wouldn’t have the time to provoke her.

However, according to the plot of the novel, Sun Yunyun would continue with her studies in the end. She would even be admitted to a Teacher’s College in the provincial city.

Su Wen sneered inside. Sun Yunyun’s biggest goal was to target the male protagonist, hence her desperation to study.

In the novel, in order for the manipulative female protagonist to be worthy of the male protagonist, the author had forcibly given her a special power.

Through her dreams, the manipulative female protagonist could predict things that would benefit her.

Now, she must have dreamt that the male protagonist would become rich in the provincial city in the future. She was doing this so that she could be closer to him.

After a week of hard work, they had made thirty-one pairs of sleeve guards and twenty-five shawls.

They had originally intended to make only sleeve guards, but they needed elastic bands. Su Qing couldn’t get that many, so they changed them all to sunscreen shawls.

The sunscreen shawls were eye-catching and attractive, and didn’t even require elastic bands.

The villagers had to work in the fields, so the shawl was inappropriate and a bit of a hindrance, but the city residents could use them!

Su Wen’s original plan to sell them in town had changed to selling them in the county.